Despite its popularity, the Tomb Raider series always got a bad rap. As anyone who’s spent time on forums or looked at blog comments knows, gamers can be horribly misogynistic — just ask Jade Raymond — and because Tomb Raider starred an attractive woman, it was often thought to be a mediocre game covered up by a pretty virtual face (among other things), catering only to horny teenage boys.  After all, it was Lara Croft, not the game design, that inspired two Hollywood action movies. Imagine my surprise when I played Crystal Dynamic’s previous outing, Tomb Raider: Anniversary, and found it to be an immensely satisfying and thoughtful puzzle game.  The story was laughable, but the quiet, haunting atmosphere and brutally challenging puzzles were a far cry from the guns n’ boobs drivel on which the series hinged its marketing.  

I loved the game so much that I went back and played Tomb Raider: Legend, supposedly a rebirth of the franchise and Crystal Dynamic’s first stab at the series. It was a solid action/platformer, but a bit generic and nowhere near the same league as the lonely, sadistic Anniversary, which after all was a remake of the original game. Could they could craft an original adventure of the same caliber with Tomb Raider: Underworld?

The answer to that question is not quite so simple.  Tomb Raider: Underworld gets a lot right. At its best, it’s the most beautiful, lavish, well-realized iteration of the Tomb Raider saga to date. At its worst, it’s tedious, bloated and unpolished, and perhaps even a tad regressive at times.

The core of any Tomb Raider game is its environmental puzzles, and as such, a Tomb Raider game lives or dies based on its level design. The series works best when it focuses on the titular tomb raiding, unleashing you unto a vast room with no direction, forcing you to keep your wits about you as you scurry about the scenery, pulling levers and grabbing ledges in a desperate attempt to sort out whole sorry mess.

Tomb Raider: Underworld is chock full of these moments, and in some ways, it’s better than ever. There is a linear flow to the game, but often you can solve multiple pieces of a puzzle in any order. The puzzles are generally not as complex and multi-tiered as those in Anniversary, but their scope makes up for it.  In some later levels, for example, you are given a motorcycle and can drive to various points of the map collecting ruins to unlock one giant puzzle. Underworld achieves true brilliance through set pieces like this, and they only get better as the game progresses.