Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness
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 "Leave me alone. I'm busy."
That sums up the whole game. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness is the sixth video game in the Tomb Raider series, acting as a direct sequel to Tomb Raider: Chronicles and The Last Revelation. It was developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive and was released for the PlayStation 2, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X in June 2003. It was the first Tomb Raider game for the PlayStation 2. Despite selling 2.5 million copies worldwide and earning Greatest Hits status, the game received mixed to negative reviews due to the things mentioned in the following list.
It is also the final major game that Core Design worked on, and it was their final Tomb Raider title.
Why It's Full of Darkness
- The game had suffered from an troubled development since while Core Design was developing it for the PlayStation 2, Eidos Interactive put it in for a hasty deadline. Core, thinking that development would make the game miss the deadline, had to cut out many story points and features (such as Paris originally being a open hub area instead of a linear level) and rush the game out with barely any testing.
- The controls are completely outdated, as it still uses the tank control scheme from the early Tomb Raider games, only in a much worse way because as by 2003, games such as Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Max Payne 2 used more advanced control schemes, such as the right thumbstick being used to control the camera, while in this game, it's used as the strafe button.
- And of course, the game isn't without having terrible controls, since not only does they are horribly clunky but also unresponsive to the point of being even worse than the PS1 games, and the Levels are obviously not designed with the terrible controls, making the game almost unplayable.
- The platforming sections are absolutely atrocious and are somehow worse than in the PS1 games (which had decent platforming), since because of the jump controls being so stiff, it is incredibly hard to jump on the next platforms, and because of the awful platforming, to not start to the beginning you will had to save at almost all the platforming sections, and this is one of the main reason of why this game is so tedious to play.
- This game's camera is outright terrible, as it either won't give the player a proper view, or will just do as it pleases. Because of said terrible controls and unreliable camera, this makes jumping and platforming a nightmarish chore , as you often miss a platform and fall to your death constantly.
- Tedious and repetitive combat. Melee combat is new to the series, but its execution is just terrible.
- Weak and flat voice acting, especially with the NPC characters. Despite Jonell Elliott returning to voice Lara from the previous two games, it feels like a downgrade, and she sounds as if she doesn't want to be in the role.
- The French dub is somehow even worse than the english version because it sound completely lifeless and had no emotions, it's even being to the point of making the French dub of the 2004 Garfield game sound better (even though that game had funny voice acting).
- Not to mention that even if it's bad, it doesn't even sound funny at all, unlike the english voice acting that while not great, some lines sounded funny, here howewer it sound lifeless and annoying.
- The French dub is somehow even worse than the english version because it sound completely lifeless and had no emotions, it's even being to the point of making the French dub of the 2004 Garfield game sound better (even though that game had funny voice acting).
- The Paris levels feel more like a rip-off of Shenmue, except without the charm of that game nor the good level design that game offered, and feel very empty.
- Poor optimization, especially on PC, as it suffers from numerous frame drops at various points. Sometimes, the game will just run in slow motion.
- Multiple bugs and glitches that can make the game virtually unplayable at times.
- A particularly irritable glitch will cause the start of Lara's falling-from-a-high-place scream to play in an endless loop, if you pause the game during Lara's fall.
- There are no checkpoints at all. The game even lacks an autosave feature. Having to manually save the game every five minutes is a giant pace breaker. Again, this came out in 2003. To add insult to injury, the game never prompts you to save your game, something that even Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) does.
- Poor enemy AI. In stealth, you can walk right up to an enemy to the point where you are touching them, and they won't even react.
- Speaking of the stealth sections, it is almost unnecessary because you can just run and kill the enemies without problems and you don't even fail the mission if you get caught, also it feel very rushed because of this reason.
- A strength upgrade system that feels rather mundane. Lara is an acrobatic and physically strong character, so why does she need to gain strength to shimmy along the rooftops? Also, since when does kicking a door open make you stronger? That's not how exercise works!
- Multiple stealth segments which feel like an unnecessary addition to the game, since Tomb Raider was never about stealth. Poor implementation also doesn't help matters.
- A poorly handled tutorial was is somehow even worse than the tutorial in The Last Revelation. Lara stops in her tracks every other step to explain the controls for that particular action. However, because of the drawn out layout and poor controls, it can take much longer to complete than it has any right to.
- There is a point where you take control of a different character, Kurtis Trent, a first for the series. Unfortunately, he somehow plays even worse than Lara does! Plus he just appears out of nowhere.
- False advertising: The cover shows Lara holding her Dual Pistols, but in the actual game the only way to get them is either by Gameshark for the PS2 version, or a patch if you're using the PC/Mac versions.
- Also, despite the name of the game being Tomb Raider, you aren't raiding tombs in this game; mainly public facilities like nightclubs, warehouses, sewers, and a museum. Not exactly what one would call "tombs" now, is it?
- Features a dialogue choice system, but the choices have minimal impact on the story.
- The story feels more like a crime thriller rather than an action/adventure game, and the feeling of discovery that previous entries had is completely absent.
- The overall game design is extremely outdated; because of the aforementioned bad controls and dated save system, it literally feels and plays like a PS1 Tomb Raider game, except somehow way worse.
- The game feels a lot more like a Resident Evil game than a Tomb Raider game, for the following reasons:
- The grounded control scheme.
- The darker tone.
- More urban environments.
- The fixed camera angles.
- Zombie-like enemies.
- And the segments of the game where you switch to Kurtis.
- Paramount Pictures, in their infinite wisdom, blamed the game's poor performance for the box office of the Tomb Raider film that was out at the time (The Cradle of Life), which sounds like scapegoating, especially considering that Cradle of Life came out over a month after the game. There are some reports that Eidos pressured Core Design into releasing the game without proper bug testing so that it would tie in with the film's release, but even so, much of the game is so badly designed that no amount of extra bug testing would have saved it.
- The Paris level is filled to the brim with loading screens, almost on the same level as Sonic '06.
- Overall, the game was so bad that it almost caused the franchise to die and even caused the developpers, Core Design to shut down because of the disastrous commercial and critical failure.
Redeeming Qualities
- Very interesting and engaging plot. The game's tone is a lot darker and grittier compared to previous entries in the series, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
- Amazing, smooth and detailed graphics. As always, Lara herself looks great.
- Good soundtrack, courtesy of Peter Connelly, who composed the score for the previous three Tomb Raider titles, and later Ubisoft's Watch_Dogs and The Crew.
- The mechanics that were experimented with in this game, however poorly they were done here, would be implemented better in later entries.
- The infinite Lara scream glitch can be funny to some.
- The PC version does have a modding community, with mods that can fix the game, and make it an overall better experience.
- The art of front cover looks decent, especially for the early 2000's standards.
- The upcoming remaster might improve all of the flaws the game has and restore all cut content, most notably being able to obtain dual pistols.
Reception
 "What were they thinking?"
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The game received mixed reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100, the game received an average score of 52 and 49 for the PlayStation 2 and Windows version, respectively. In the aftermath of the game's release and poor reception, a potential trilogy was scrapped. Eidos Interactive took the development rights away from Core Design and assigned them to Crystal Dynamics, who is known for creating the Gex series. The Angel of Darkness was so poorly received, the Tomb Raider series was rebooted in 2006 with the first entry developed by Crystal Dynamics, titled Tomb Raider: Legend, which launched to strong critical and commercial success and put the series back on track.
In 2010, GameTrailers placed Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness 5th in their "Top 10 Worst Sequels" list, and Watchmojo.com ranked the game 2nd in their list of "Top 10 Games that Ruined Their Franchises" video. James Rolfe (AVGN) was critical of the title, taking issue with the bad camera and controls, pointing out a few glitches, and poor level layouts. He even mentioned elements of the game that were eventually cut during development.
TheRetroReplay called Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness a perfect example of a franchise killer, criticising the game's camera, controls, story, save system, gameplay mechanics, and overall severely outdated design. He gave the title his "Bubsy 3D" rating; being a game that killed the original Tomb Raider continuity, he felt it deserved the lowest rating on his scale. He concluded his review of the game by saying that "any area that resembles a tomb or ancient city is nothing more of a reminder that the games before this one are better".
James Rolfe reviewed this game in 2018, when it became old enough for him to review as the Nerd. Angel of Darkness was the main focus of the video, and he was extremely critical of the game's technical performance, poor controls, bad camera, and overall lack of fun. He briefly talked about Core Design's eventual shut down after the game's disastrous critical and commercial performance.
Trivia
- Angel of Darkness is the final game in the original series, where it was rebooted when Tomb Raider: Legend was released.
- When Angel of Darkness was released, it was planned as a trilogy. Core Design were developing the sequel to Angel of Darkness at the time, which would take place following the events of the previous game. However, Angel of Darkness was a critical and commercial failure, causing for the game to be cancelled. They would later go on to attempt to develop a remake of the original Tomb Raider, but that was cancelled in favour of the Crystal Dynamics headed Tomb Raider: Anniversary.
- The Crystal Dynamics version changed several story elements to fall in line with other aspects of the Legend Timeline.
- Despite being a PlayStation 2 release, the game did not appear in Tomb Raider HD Collection for PlayStation 3.
- Whilst other games in the series are classified as action-adventure games, Angel of Darkness combined survival horror and RPG elements.
- This was the first Tomb Raider game to feature a Lara Croft model with over 5,000 polygons rather than 500 in the previous games.
- Whilst the game takes place in Paris and Prague, unused data was found for levels that took place in Germany and Türkiye.
- Jean-Yves, who appeared in The Last Revelation and the beta version of Tomb Raider: Chronicles was set to appear in Angel of Darkness. He was to be killed in France at the start of the game, before it was decided that Von Croy would be killed off instead. This was due to legal issues with real life French archeologist Jean-Yves Empereur.
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