Early on in Tomb Raider: Underworld, you’ll find yourself standing on the decks of a huge container ship, shooting it out with the regular cast of faceless desperados. You’ve killed off the first wave and now, trying to get to the bridge, you might end up fumbling around at various hatchways, all of which will refuse to open.

The solution, of course, lies not with doors but with the containers themselves, and a breathless race to an upper gantry by means of careful platforming. Brief COD4 flashbacks might have led you to temporarily forget what Tomb Raider’s all about, but the eventual payoff suggests that Crystal Dynamics certainly hasn’t. If anything, after last year’s Anniversary, the developer is continuing to dig back to the roots of the franchise.

That violent shootout is the exception rather than the rule once again and, bar a few memorable exceptions, Underworld plays out in desolate shrines and undersea temples – out of doors and far away from modern civilisation – in a lonely world of clockwork and runes. And it’s a pleasure to be reminded how exhilarating that world can be.

Frowny, velvet-voiced and with just the right level of physical caricature, Lara Croft is a charmingly uncomplicated protagonist. She knows exactly what she’s good for, as do her custodians, and Underworld is a monument to the joys of graceful movement and precision puzzling. As Croft’s moveset gently expands to include wall springs, more advanced abseiling and some solid flying kicks, it’s approaching the point at which you genuinely feel you can do anything you want; occasionally adolescent level design may waste no opportunity to get her soggy or mud-splattered, yet few videogame characters have the ability to make you feel this particular combination of power and grace so deeply.



Further in, there are yet more indicators that Crystal Dynamics is making the most of the licence. Underworld has finally worked out something semi-interesting to do with Croft’s motorbike, and then it comes to spectacle, the game’s more than capable of surprising you with a sudden shift in scale, perhaps revelling in the sleepy stirring of ancient machines.

Combat has benefited from a handful of additions, too: there’s dual targeting, melee attacks, and you can now shoot while clinging to a wall. But even if Tomb Raider still can’t quite bring its gunplay to life, it has at least come up with some explosive distractions – namely the deliriously satisfying sticky grenades and a resoundingly conclusive manner of finishing off zombies – to cover that up.

There are a few glitches along the way: the camera continues to struggle in close quarters, turning a few too many jumps into leaps of faith, and exiting backwards off a pole remains as difficult an activity as it probably is in real life. Yet none of this damages the overall poise and classiness that characterises Croft’s latest outing.

While it’s occasionally fiddly, it has pace and spectacle and style to spare. Underworld is that rare game that manages to provide a real adventure to go along with its action.

8/10