Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness From:Eidos , Eidos Interactive ,
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Amazon Maximum Age: 240 months
Amazon Minimum Age: 144 months
Binding: CD-ROM
Brand: Eidos
EAN: 0788687100090
ESRB Age Rating: Teen
Format: CD-ROM
Weight: 20 hundredths-pounds
Label: Eidos Interactive
Legal Disclaimer: Warranty does not cover misuse of product.
Manufacturer: Eidos Interactive
Model: STOADPUS00
Packaged Height: 130 hundredths-inches
Packaged Length: 750 hundredths-inches
Packaged Weight: 47 hundredths-pounds
Packaged Width: 540 hundredths-inches
Platform: Windows 98
Platform: Windows Me
Platform: Windows XP
Platform: Windows 95
Publisher: Eidos Interactive
Release Date: 2003-06-30
Studio: Eidos Interactive
Feature:
- Character evolution - improve Laras abilities and witness her adapt to how you play the game. You are rewarded for puzzle solving and exploration in the form of improvements to Laras jumping ability, brainpower, upper body strength etc.
- Character interaction - for the very first time in a Tomb Raider game, Lara has the ability to talk to characters. The choices you make in conversation will affect Laras route through the game.
- Take more direct and fluid control over Lara with an entirely new control system and experience new levels of gameplay with hand-to-hand combat, stealth attacks, last chance grabs and more.
Product Description:
A series of grisly murders brings Lara into conflict with a sinister Alchemist from the past, and a secret alliance of powerful individuals shrouded in mystery. At the center of these mysteries are the Obscura Paintings - five 14th century pieces of art that the Alchemist is desperate to repossess. Accused of the murder of her one time mentor, Werner Von Croy, Lara becomes a fugitive on the run. Pursued by the police, she follows the Alchemist into a dark world of blood, betrayal and vengean
Customer Reviews:
 As bad as advertised, 2007-11-03
Was this a serious attempt at a Tomb Raider game, or a desperate attempt by a developer to be fired? CORE Design went from a creative, ambitious group ten years ago to one of the most passive-aggressive developers ever.
In their seventh (and final) attempt to kill off Ms. Croft, CORE rebuilt the graphics rendering engine for new platforms, but managed to retain and intensify every infuriating staple of gameplay inherent in Angel of Darkness's predecessors. Control input, regardless of gamepad or keyboard, is delayed and sluggish. Lara's movement engine is as slow and graceless as ever. CORE always had trouble distinguishing between the importance of clever pre-rendered animations and actual controller response. Despite the bloodcurdling screams of gamers and reviewers, they refused to rethink their control schemes. And poor Lara dies a thousand deaths because of it.
The highly anticipated new game world engine drops the old grid-based environments that made old Tomb Raiders somewhat predictable. At first, this sounds like a great idea. Unfortunately, CORE retained their love of brutally difficult jumping exercises that now rely solely on guessing horizontal distances. Combine that with the complicated and clumsy 3 types of forward jumps, a slow-responding "grab" button which is now timing based, and a cruel placement of tiny ledges and instant-death laser beams, and AOD is an exercise in quicktrigger quicksaving.
I will assume that CORE spent most of their development time on world building. Because the puzzles and combat are so laughably bad that they can't be the result of a good effort. The ease with which all enemies can be killed, bosses included, has to be the result of some last-minute difficulty sliding before release. With the awful autolock and camera, enemies with any armor would be impossible and the whole game unbearable. A complete lack of AI makes Tomb Raider I's T-Rex look like Stephen Hawking. The puzzles sadly haven't evolved, athough pushing levers and pulling switches is still fun in the right environment. There are occasions where a complete lack of sense is evident: Did you know that on one level, steam from a broken pipe is a harmless animation? Did you know that on the next level, identical steam from an indentical pipe is an instant death trap? Play AOD, and you will!
Graphics would be the one area of criticism I can't agree with. AOD on the PC is a sharp looking game, inarguably. There are a few visual missteps like the broken distance blur rendered by the "post-processing" option (I was able to fix it by setting it to "on" instead of "high"). But mostly AOD's enviroments are well-detailed with nice color and lighting, and reasonable shadow effects. Tombs and derelict apartments are dark and spooky, and underwater scenes sparkle with a clarity not available on the old Playstation. The settings themselves are largely inappropriate for a Tomb Raider game, but that's more of a criticism of the story concept.
Sound design is exceptionally good. Weapons sound great, voiceovers are passable, and enviromental effects are really suberb. Moody scores pop in at the right moment, and overall the acoutics of the game set a beautiful atmosphere. I even hear Martina Hingis supplied Lara's grunting effects.
A build 52 patch is available which fixes the worst of early release problems like crashing. There is no fix for the bad design and crushing gameplay, though. Angel of Darkness is for diehard Tomb Raider fans only. And you will die hard, over, and over...
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