11.7 hours played
Written 27 days ago
So... The Angel of Darkness is a Tomb Raider that had an ABSURD potential, with the knife and cheese in hand to be one of, if not the BIGGEST and BEST of the saga if it weren't for just ONE FACT... that failed miserably... the completely BUGGED gameplay!
because the game itself has a very good plot (VERY DARK and deep for a Tomb Raider), beautiful graphics, spectacular soundtrack, good dubbing...
This Tomb Raider is "unfairly treated", so to speak
If you want to know why the gameplay is buggy, then here we go: That classic gameplay of the previous TRs has undergone changes.
When we arrived at a table and wanted to climb on it, we had to approach it, press the action button together with the directional pad, and it would rise. Now, they decided that all we had to do was press the directional pad up and it would rise... the game became so stupid that there are times when you climb on it only with the directional pad and others when you need to press the action pad as well.
I don't understand this thing about sometimes there's no action, sometimes there isn't. Either you put it in all at once, or you take it out.
Although the game's animations have improved 200%, the way Lara walks, goes down stairs, and goes down ramps under obstacles is still very fluid, less robotic than before. However, on the other hand, she's much slower to do things. When you want to start a movement, it seems like there's a delay of one second. For example, you're looking in the direction and you want to run to the left out of nowhere. Lara thinks about turning and thinks about it again. You can start walking and then she runs. And there's more. There's a problem that's very serious for platform games that happens here, which is the damn "extra step."
I'll explain this quickly... platform games require precision when jumping. In previous Lara games, the precision of timing to execute a jump is the key to success. This type of element is not present in today's platform games. You don't need to be more precise to do things. The characters jump by themselves, hold on by themselves. It's very easy... like Uncharted, for example!
Anyway, when we're going to calculate the distance of a long jump, you calmly observe, run and jump. But if you want to stop during the run, your character stops, brakes immediately or by physics. Depending on the time of the game, of course, he'll take one or two extra steps to stop.
In this game, Lara takes this damn extra step regardless of her speed, which can cost her death. There's NO reason for this type of extra step. It's very stupid.
She still rolls on the ground to reverse her path when she's running, but that roll in the air that she got in Last Revelation is gone. Now, when you hang on, a stamina bar appears. When it runs out, you fall.
When you interact with something that requires strength, Lara will say I'm fill strong now, whenever she says this, something will change in your gameplay... for example, you go through several doors and boxes and apparently you can't interact with anything, after an I'm fill strong now... there are great opportunities for her to now be able to break down doors, doors with her shoulder or kicks and drag boxes that she couldn't before.
The combat system is crappy, the camera locks onto enemies, in the past Lara's aim would aim at enemies, but the camera would stay on her. Now the aim and the camera stay on the enemies, if you are surrounded by them or you are too close to them, the camera will spin and keep changing all the time until it completely confuses you.
And look, this game WAS supposed to be a TRILOGY but it failed... it kicked Core Design out the door (just like Microsoft did with Bungie in relation to Halo), BEING that EIDOS was MAINLY RESPONSIBLE for the failure of Angel of Darkness!
Those who played it know that if the game had the necessary time due to the respect on Eidos' part, this whole story would be different...
Anyway... I don't recommend this Tomb Raider even to my worst enemy...
I REALLY hope that the Remastered version HAS fixed the Angel of Darkness and that it is playable... so I can give it a chance in the future!