Tomb Raider: Underworld (Xbox 360)

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Lara's back and as thrill-seeking as ever

We've seen Crystal Dynamic's latest Tomb Raider a few times over the last year, and each time we've come away impressed by what we saw. Lara Croft has been around for so long that it would be easy for gamers to grow tired of her acrobatic, endangered animal shooting ways, so making something that seems fresh and new isn't as easy as it might seem. Having recently played through a nice chunk of the PS3 version of Underworld it seems Eidos and Crystal Dynamics have another hit on their hands, and something of a fondness for figure-hugging swimming costumes.

If you haven't been following Lara's latest adventure in the lead up to its November 21 release, we'll briefly explain what's going on and what the Underworld in the title refers to. Lara's searching for Thor's hammer, believed to be the fearsome weapon of the Norse god. It's been thought of as nothing more than a myth, but Lara discovers proof of the Norse Underworld on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea. This is the start of her journey, searching the ancient world for the weapon that could end civilization.

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It's all pretty dramatic stuff, although the section of the game we played didn't really have a great deal to do with Norse mythology, but more to do with what happens when a boat starts sinking. It begins with Lara climbing up an anchor which runs up the side of large boat. We're not entirely sure why, seeing as we didn't see what happened leading up to that point, but there were crates to climb, enemies to shoot and a strangely familiar winged woman to meet.

Combat uses a target lock on system (L2 on PS3), with Lara not needing to manually aim - R2 fires whichever weapon you've got equipped. As in previous games you can jump around, somersault and generally do all you can to dodge bullets while holding down the trigger of a gun. Combat doesn't seem overly difficult, but Lara isn't a bullet sponge, so death will come quite quickly if you're not careful - thankfully checkpoint placement seems quite generous based on what we played. It's not all guns either, with sticky grenades coming in very handy.

Underworld looks just as good underwater as it does on land

Once we'd dispatched a few generic enemies we met with the winged woman, but she didn't hang around for long, being whisked away by helicopter as the ship got into some trouble and started to sink. What followed was an escape sequence, with Lara running through the ship trying to get to high ground. Boats don't sink by shifting downwards - they tip up and generally cause chaos on board - so this escape wasn't as easy as finding the nearest exit. With a wall now the floor and doors being blocked by debris, we had to make use of various hold points in order to climb to safety.

Climbing has been improved in Underworld to make use of Lara's new animations and what is being called free climbing. This isn't quite as revolutionary as it sounds - you can't climb wherever you want - but scaling structures is no longer a case of hopping from one ledge to another. On the boat various pipes served as objects Lara could grab hold of, so she made her way to the top without incident, before dropping onto a conveniently placed broken beam that led her to safety.

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