Sprinting through the gate located directly behind Lara, she stumbles across the chunkiest super-bike the Tomb Raider series has ever seen. She revs up the engine and races through a small assault course of stunt jumps over gaping crevices to reach the climax of the level. As the bike speeds toward the gates we are introduced to the final cinematic of the demo. Lara slides hastily under the almost sealed gates on the side of the super-bike just in time, heading straight for a pit of spikes. Fortunately she manages to stabilise herself before she plunges into the spike pit, giving a look of sheer relief.

The soundtrack to the game was the one thing I was most anxious about. After the fantastic scores accompanying both Tomb Raider Legend and Anniversary, was Underworld going to set itself apart and raise the bar once again? While Troels B. Folmann, award-winning composer behind the soundtracks for Lara’s previous two adventures, is still heavily involved in the compositions for Underworld he isn’t the main composer, so I was a little wary. After watching the demo, I was wrong to be worried. The soundtrack was phenomenal; Underworld takes on the musical style of Anniversary,  only playing scores when something important is happening.

The pieces we heard were epic and sounded as though they were composed for a movie rather than a video game. There is no real way to describe the amazing music we heard that will do it justice, however we would say that it was a fantastic mixture of classic Tomb Raider, Anniversary, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and the Harry Potter movies – a great mixture making for an epic soundtrack.

Tomb Raider Underworld really seems to have stepped up to the plate, not just graphically but with all the brand new ideas and features it offers players. The introduction of environmental interaction has knocked the linearity of Crystal Dynamics’ past two titles on the head giving the player more than just the one route or option, this will appeal largely to hardcore gamers who were frustrated by the meek attempts of Tomb Raider Legend. The inclusion of a unique lighting system allows for a much more realistic appearance to the game’s lush environments which, when coupled with Lara’s new motion capture animations makes for the most realistic gaming experience we’ve ever seen from a Tomb Raider game.

It’s fair to suggest that if the rest of the game is as impressive as what we have previewed so far then Eidos may well have managed to turn the series around for the better. Time will tell. So far we give the game a fair 3 out of 5 PLi points.

Be sure to stick with Planet Lara as April sees the next preview of Tomb Raider Underworld when we will be venturing to Eidos HQ in London to demo the next level from the game.

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