Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness - The End of an Era

Ah, so we've finally reached it, the black sheep of the Tomb Raider series. The production of the game was...rocky, with only one member of the original Tomb Raider team - Gavin Rummery - left. Additionally, there was very little enthusiasm for the project.

Stick with me, that last bit will make sense in a bit.

Let's get into it.

A Rocky Production

Like I said in my Chronicles review, at the insistence of their publisher, Core Design went back to Lara Croft - much to their dismay, I'm sure. The company split into two teams, one would work on Chronicles and the other would work on Angel of Darkness - which was meant to be Lara's big break onto the then new PlayStation 2 platform.

The 6th game in the series, Angel of Darkness, went into production way back in 2000 - around the same time as Chronicles, and it was meant to be the start of a new trilogy. Unfortunately, however, the development cycle was packed with problems.

Apart from the general fatigue, health issues, and unhappiness around being forced into doing more Tomb Raider, it seems there was also some bad blood between the two teams (Chronicles and Angel of Darkness were being developed at around the same time). Additionally, the PS2 was new hardware which posed its own problems.

Most of the work that had been done had to be scrapped and re-worked with long hours and a bad work environment shredding the team’s morale. It didn’t help that nobody seemed to know where to go or what to do.

“It was 30 or 40 people, it didn’t have any organisation to it. It wasn’t clear who was in charge, who the leads were. There were lots of people with headphones on just all working on their bit and then one disaster after another as they realised things didn’t tally up.” - Gavin Rummery.

The game was delayed twice and several levels had to be scaled back to meet deadlines. Eventually, the game did release for PC and PlayStation 2 on June 20, 2003.

Critics praised the game’s story, but faulted the controls, camera work, and numerous technical bugs. The game sold 2.5 million copies, but it got the most negative responses of all the games so far. This negative reaction caused Core Design to lose control of the Tomb Raider IP.

The Story

Some time after the events of the Last Revelation, Lara Croft is framed for the murder of Werner Von Croy. Now she's moving through the streets of Paris trying to find a set of paintings and figure out who killed her mentor.

What Works in Angel of Darkness?

Okay, so what works here?

• Well, the graphics are nice. I liked how the game looked, the devs did a good job putting the visuals together. They fit the darker storyline perfectly.
• Peter Connelly's musical score is great! It's a much gentler, more melancholic score and it works really well.
• I loved Lara's denim outfit at the start of the game.

What Doesn't Work in Angel of Darkness?

Angel of Darkness has a number of problems.

• First off, the story is great, at least, conceptually. The idea of Lara being on the run, is a good one; but there isn't really any real payoff.
• The controls are really problematic. Movement is fine, but as soon as you draw your weapons, the controls change for combat which makes things difficult.
• I also hate - and I mean HATE - the stamina and strength system! The idea that Lara isn't strong enough to do basic tasks is just ridiculous.
• The camera has a mind of its own.

Another problem that I had with Angel of Darkness was the objective conveyance. I talked about this in the previous two games as well, but it's worse here. Navigation of the levels is beyond difficult and it frustrated me more than once.

The End of an Era

Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness was, as I said before, met with a largely negative reception. That negative reception was so bad that Core Design lost the Tomb Raider IP completely.

Putting it simply, Angel of Darkness' negative reception brought about the end of an era.

Now, I haven't played the remastered version of Angel of Darkness yet, but I'm hoping that the glitches and technical issues have been fixed.