I shouldnt care but...

Tomb Raider is a cruel love of mine. I have never gotten the same experiance from TR1 from any other game. Uncharted: Drake's fortune came close. The fealing of adventure was there but the fluidity of combat and sense of exploration didn't measure up. Nor did the feeling of confidence that you had with leaps of faith in the old games thanks to the grid based system.

I loved every TR title on the PS1. I played them all to death. Then the Angel of Darkness came out on PS2. The controls were changed. The grid was gone. I wasn't happy.

Strangely I look back on AOD with fonder eyes than I used to play it. It is by no means a good game. Nor is it a TR game. That said, it had decent length and was closer to being a TR game than the next game in question, Legend.

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend decided to keep the naming system used by the now ousted Core Design (the origional dev was replaced by Crystal Dynamics). This should have been my first sign. AOD's story was long winded and over the top. If the game play was better it could have worked though. What the two games have most in common is a desire to focus on Lara rather than the tombs.

It's all in a name. "Lara Croft Tomb Raider" as oposed to "Tomb Raider featuring Lara Croft". The tombs had precidence before the character out grew them.

Legend was a bad game. It was short, buggy, easy and most of all, It wasn't Tomb Raider. Even on hard mode a decent gamer can finish the game in about 2 hours. The game has decided to keep the 2D type controls of AOD but loosen them up a bit so as to make the game more "fluid". Instead they made them slippy and sloppy.

In the origional games the "clunky" controls gave you precise control over how you moved and with practice you could pull off complicated manovers that required skill and dexterity. In Legend there is always the element of chance that the camera will decide to swing around, changing what up on the analogue stick means and causing you to plummet off a cliff. I died a lot in the old games but at least then it was my fault.

Legend was a critical success. A "return to form" for Lady Croft. Alas the core gameplay that created the legendary adventurer was left by the wayside. Because of the Lara fans far outnumbering the TR fans the game went on to spawn a remake, no, a "Re-Invisioning" of the 1996 title that started it all. All the "key moments" were there. What wasnt there was the bulk of the tombs, (some levels like the Cistern were condensed into a single room. It wasn't even concidered a level in "Anniversary"), The exploration, the origional character that delighted fans.

These "unimportant" features were replaced with the dodgy controls of legend (with more bugs!) A plethora of check points (some of which were looping as in the Midas level), Arena boss battles  and of cource the "new and improved" Lara Croft.

Allow me to explain what I mean by this. In the origional game Lara was tough. She was a mysterious character who displayed small snippets of her personality in the short, action packed cutscenes. She was a strong and independant character. In the re-invisioning she was softer, more afraid and less intriguing. The story is altered and expanded changing beyond recongition the classic character. What we are left with is a warbaling character who bursts into tears after gunning down one of her assailants. Why? This is not explained. All we know is that the Lara that set the world on fire, inspired girls to become stronger and taught boys that women can be heros while retaining their femininity is not present in this game. We are instead left with a stumbeling mess who wouldn't have made a dent in the gaming industry if she hadnt the 7 other console games, 2 movies, comic book series, books, and hand heald games behind her to hold her up.

I should be content with the still vibrant TRLE community that to this day releases several levels a week using the Tomb Raider 4 engine. But I want a title that I can buy. I want to feel like respect for the classics still lives on. I want to play a full, official Tomb Raider game.

This brings me back to the origional point of the post, Tomb Raider Underworld.

That is it's name. Tomb Raider. Not Lara Croft Tomb Raider, just Tomb Raider! It could be a return to what a community that still uses a game engine for a game released in 1999 wants. A revival of the grid, or at least the true exploration. Now the trailers for the game do little to comfort me in my hopes but a part of me cant help thinking this time, after moving on from a PS2 era of atrocious games that this time the new Tomb Raider game could be good.