Tomb Raider: Underworld

CROFT MY HEART, HOPE TO DIE Lara’s not as smooth as she used to be.

Lara Croft’s had her ups and downs over the last 15 years. Most recently, she’s been on an upswing with a death-defying comeback in 2006’s Tomb Raider: Legend and a highly polished remake of her debut with 2007’s Tomb Raider: Anniversary. This latest entry opens on a somber note with figures from past games returning to tease the adventurer with hints that her long-lost mother may be still alive in a mythical realm called Avalon.

The game designers raise the emotional stakes in Underworld’s story, starting with explosions that destroy Lara’s childhood home, Croft Manor, but the gameplay doesn’t keep pace with their narrative ambition. A twitchy camera, niggling technical glitches and loose, uncertain controls combine to make Lara feel uncharacteristically clumsy. Steering her around the exotic environments felt sharp and intuitive in the last two Raider games, but everything feels fumbly in Underworld. The plot mashes together Norse and Arthurian mythologies, intimating that some kind of ancient teleportation system may link the two. Lara’s hunt for clues takes her to the Mediterranean Sea floor, the jungles of Thailand and the snow drifts of Antarctica, eventually revealing a doomsday plot that she must foil. All the locales look stunning and meticulous, which helps the central lure of the Tomb Raider franchise remain mostly intact. But inelegant gunfights against dumb-as-rocks enemies and artifact hunts that force you to backtrack through levels render the exploration boring and confusing.