Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness

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Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness is the sixth game in the Tomb Raider series, and is the sequel to Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation. It was developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive. The game was originally released in 2003 for PlayStation 2 and PC. The storyline follows Lara Croft as she is hunted across Europe, accused of murdering her former mentor Werner Von Croy.

[edit] Story

Accused of the murder of her one-time mentor, Werner Von Croy, Lara becomes a fugitive. Following notes written in a journal by Von Croy, Lara races to recover five hidden paintings before a secret organisation whose ultimate goal is world domination and immortality; they planned to achieve this by reviving an ancient biblical race known as the Nephilim.

Pieter Van Eckhardt is the main villain in Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness. He was a 15th century alchemist who created a powerful weapon called the Sanglyph. To keep the Sanglyph safe, Eckhardt split it into five pieces and hid each piece behind five paintings he created, depicting evil imagery.

As time went on, Eckhardt grew ever more evil and powerful, and eventually created an order known as The Cabal, a group of four individuals who all shared the same desire for immortality. To attain this immortality, the Cabal prepared to resurrect an extinct race known as the Nephilim (the product of relationships held between fallen angels and humans). Eckhardt believed that by using the Nephilim he would attain immortality and, in the end, dominate over all. However, an order called the Lux Veritatis (Latin for 'Light of Truth') were able to put a halt on Eckhardt's plans. The Lux Veritatis acquired three ancient weapons of light called the Periapt Shards and, led by Brother Obscura, used them to seal Eckhardt in a deep pit. The seal on Eckhardt would only last if the three Periapt shards were combined. Brother Obscura then confiscated the five paintings that contained the pieces of the Sanglyph, and painted over the previous images of evil with new religious images. These were hidden throughout Europe in locations known only to the Lux Veritatis, and were christened the Obscura Paintings. A copy was made of each, referred to as the Obscura Engravings, with each engraving containing an encoded map to the location of the original painting.

In 1945, something happened and one of the shards became separated from the other two. Eckhardt escaped the pit he vowed revenge against the Lux Veritatis and revived the Cabal basing it out of Prague. The new Cabal became devoted to hunting down any members of the Lux Veritatis. Eckhardt also managed to obtain the Periapt from the Lux Veritatis. He hid these shards in his old laboratory, deep underground beneath the Strahov, the headquarters of the Cabal. Eckhardt and the Cabal set out to reclaim the five Obscura paintings, in order to acquire the Sanglyph. By the time Lara became involved in the plot, the Cabal had already attained three of the five paintings. Eckhardt then hired Werner Von Croy to find the last two; Von Croy did learn of the location of the fourth painting beneath the Louvre from the Obscura engravings, but he never informed Eckhardt. Von Croy then asked for Lara Croft to assist in finding the paintings.

Lara found the two remaining paintings in Paris and Prague, though Eckhardt reclaimed from her before retreating to his old laboratory, where he started reviving the Nephilim race. The Cabal had retrieved the last Nephilim specimen from Turkey: a Nephilim body which had been named "the Sleeper". During the final confrontation with Lara, Eckhardt starts the process of reviving the Sleeper. He battles Lara using the Sanglyph, but he is eventually killed by Karel, his right-hand man, who stabs Eckhardt with the third Periapt Shard. Karel revealed himself to be the last surviving/living Nephilim and that all the people who have helped Lara died at his hands to avoid the destruction of the Sleeper. He then offers Lara a chance to join him in his resurrection. Lara refuses, and decides to put an end to it by using the Sanglyph on the Sleeper--thus destroying it and Karel.

[edit] Gameplay

Much like the Tomb Raider games before it, The Angel of Darkness is a 3rd-person action-adventure-puzzle game that stars Lara Croft. The player controls Lara as she explores twenty-nine levels, maneuvering carefully across traps and solving puzzles to progress. Lara's new moves include a back-flip, a small hop, stealth, army-crawling, rolling out of the crouch position, hand-to-hand combat and the "super-jump" that can be performed whilst sprinting. Unlike other Tomb Raider games, it is sometimes necessary for Lara to acquire a strength upgrade to manage to clear certain jumps. An RPG element was added to the series, with the player choosing what Lara says in conversation, such as polite questions, bribery, or threats. Although this does not affect the main storyline, it does alter the route taken to ultimately reach Lara's goal. For example, she enters the club 'Le serpent rouge' differently depending who she talks to, and may be shot by Bouchard by saying the wrong thing. This however is only really the case at the start of the game (Parisian ghetto); after that, choosing what you say only affects the replies you get while dialoguing with another character.

[edit] Reception

The highly anticipated sixth installation in the series was planned to be the most ambitious yet, with improved graphics and a new look for Lara coupled with an involving storyline. However, The Angel of Darkness would prove to be the worst-received game in the series. It was heavily criticized for its flaws which included numerous bugs, drastically different controls from previous releases, and a poor gaming structure.

The overall result suggested that the development of The Angel of Darkness had been rushed, despite numerous delays prior to its release to possibly improve the final product; difficult-to-overlook plot inconsistencies (or leaps) and frequent continuity errors added to the belief that significant 'cuts' were made from the original design. While it was not the first (or last) game to suffer such abridgment, the results were especially jarring and confusing. For example, in the final encounter between Lara and the overall perpetrator, they appear to recognize each other--without it ever being previously established that either even knew of the other.

Criticisms also concerned the lack of actual tombs in the game as the majority of action takes place in large, urban environments (such as a nightclub), as well as abandoning Lara's trademark akimbo pistols and other aspects of the series (although dual pistols are amongst the hidden features that never made it to release, they can be used with cheats).

The amount of criticism the game provoked caused the series' publishers, Eidos Interactive, to replace developer Core Design with Crystal Dynamics who developed the last two episodes of the series. Core had developed each game of the series since its inception.

An interview with members of Core Design in the August 2006 issue of Edge magazine saw the developers claim that the game was rushed to release by Eidos in order to meet quarterly financial targets, despite it not being completed. As a result, large sections of the game (particularly in Paris) were drastically cut down in scale or removed entirely in order to meet the deadline, and play testing - of the control system in particular - was truncated.

Despite having some negative reviews the game was praised as having the best storyline in the series along with its Original Soundtrack performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.