- It's pretty obvious playing Underworld that developer Crystal Dynamics is determined to adhere to the grand traditions of the Tomb Raider design. No, I'm not talking about Lara's short shorts (although they're certainly one of them). I'm not talking about the raiding of tombs (although there's plenty of that – now featuring the sport of 'ancient vase kicking'). I'm not even talking about treating impossibly elaborate archaic mechanisms as a personal jungle gym.

Nope, I'm talking about wildlife shootin'. Within five minutes you've killed a couple of Great Whites, then within hours you've moved on to black panthers, by way of spiders, bats, skeleton dogs, giant monitors and tigers. Tigers for god's sake! It just wouldn't be Tomb Raider if you weren't indiscriminately killing things that are on the verge of extinction. Bravo Crystal Dynamics!

The question is, however - is there a correlation between the number of nearly-extinct (or extinct –T-Rex's haven't been brought back yet, right?) creatures you get to kill in a Tomb Raider game and its quality? Angel of Darkness, after all, featured close to [MEMORY NOT FOUND]. Oh, bugger, that's right. Sorry folks, I forgot (ha!) that I had all memories of that game surgically removed from my brain. All I have is a vague recollection of eating chocolate bars off the ground in the sewers of Paris. Shame, because if Angel of Darkness didn't let Lara drain the bile from Asiatic black bears or club snow leopards to death, then we could have established a correlation. Guess you'll have to let me know in the comments.

Kill it real good Lara!

In any case, killing stuff is probably a pretty good place to start with in Underworld because the combat is by far the worst aspect of the game, so we might as well get it out of the way early. Frankly, we're not sure what Crystal Dynamics was thinking. Combat is completely mindless, with a stand and deliver mentality that's about as pertinent to modern videogames as the printing press is to the Internet. Taking cover? That's for pussies. Real gunfights consist of standing in the open, shooting at your enemies as fast as you can, while hoping your health bar is longer than theirs. Fancy flips and rolls while shooting are optional.

Put simply, gunfights are nothing but filler in this game, with no effort made to make them interesting. Half the time you're being assaulted by creatures that pose no actual threat – bats, spiders and the like. Just spam the trigger as fast as you can and the auto-aim will take care of the rest. Humans are a little trickier – not because they display any more intelligence, but because they take longer to kill and can shoot back. Dastards! As mentioned, you can't take cover, so the only real tactical options you have are lobbing sticky grenades at them, trying to get up close for a melee attack or using your – essentially superfluous - adrenaline metre. And then there are the enemies that fall into the 'beasts' category. These creatures can't shoot back, of course, but tigers and giant monitors can run at you and pounce, so you wind up jumping around like a jack in the box trying to avoid them while shooting. Or you wind up dropping something big and heavy onto their head, as in the case of the

giant squid. Blind I tells ya! With the auto-aim the combat really does take close to zero skill. And I just have to say it again – why are we killing tigers? Couldn't they be robot tigers or something? Or, hell, crippled, sad-faced orphans would be better.

About the best thing we can say about the combat is at least the game doesn't focus on it too much. Aside from the throw-away enemies (spiders et al.), you're not going to be killing things all that often. That's still no excuse for the quality of the combat experience, however, especially when compared to New School Tomb Raider, aka Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, which, although having a mite

combat for our liking, was at least thoroughly modern in approach.

So that's the worst part of the game. No prizes for guessing what's the best. Yes, it's the environmental puzzle solving, the traditional strength of the series. Underworld sees Lara roaming all over the world, from the hypnotic deep sea opening to Thailand, Southern Mexico and beyond. In each location, massive ancient structures beckon to be deciphered and conquered, and it's an absolute pleasure entering each new area, and exploring its mysteries.

Not pictured, the Norse ruins underneath the Thai ones. What a crazy world!

There's nothing all that new here in puzzle terms – you'll be placing concrete blocks on pressure pads to open doors, shifting mirrors to reflect focused beams of light, moving stone bridges in order to access alternate doorways, manipulating shadows to match patterns on stained glass windows, that sort of thing. It's all good stuff, however, and while never requiring any real brain power to solve, is still innately satisfying. It's one thing that Tomb Raider has always done well – encouraging the player to survey the environment, to look for things to interact with, to gradually unravel how to get around and open the way forward. The reason it's so satisfying is that you work out the pieces of the puzzles in chunks, with momentary pauses in between where you're looking around wondering what to do next before it clicks. And it almost invariably clicks in a timely fashion… with an exception or two.

The areas the design falls down are when the game breaks its own rules. For instance, the team has shoehorned bike riding (yes, again, but it's not as bad this time) into the Southern Mexico level, and what that means is that rather than having a self contained area, where everything you need to do is located within that one spot, it's spread out here in order to force you to use the bike to get from location to location. What this means is that you'll find yourself at the main temple, on a raised platform at one end, a big field with stone ruins in the middle, and an identical platform at the other end. You'll solve the puzzle at your end, which makes the central area change. Now, given the way previous levels have worked, one would imagine that you'd climb down somehow, cross the middle section, then scale up to the platform on the opposite end. There is, in fact, no good reason why you can't and you'll probably spend some time trying to work out how you're meant to do this. What you don't realise, however, is you're not meant to do it this way. You're meant to go back out the way you came in, hop on your bike and drive around to the other side. Now, that's fine, but it flies in the face of the previous levels, so the play experience isn't as smooth as it should be.

Crazed WalMart Shoppers fight over Xbox360/Guitar Hero bundle

http://www.planetxbox360.com/article_5237/Black_Friday_People_Fight_over_a_Stack_of_Xbox_360s

Epic rolls out patch for Gears of War 2

http://www.planetxbox360.com/article_5236/Epic_Rolls_Out_First_Title-Update_for_Gears_of_War_2

GAMESTOP now selling GTA4 DLC Token Cards

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/56136

COMMAND AND CONQUER : Red Alert 3 demo now available

http://www.planetxbox360.com/article_5232/Command__Conquer_Red_Alert_3_Demo_Now_on_LIVE

JASPER hardware changes

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3171556

JASPER consoles hit the store shelves, what to look for

D-LINK DGL-4100 Wifi G Gaming Router on sale $50 today only

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833127158&Tpk=33-127-158

LEFT 4 DEAD movie posters now available from Valve

http://www.thebbps.com/blog/2008/11/27/more-proof-that-valve-are-marketing-geniuses-left-4-dead-movie-posters-now-available/

Un-announced Midway Title being called 'Better than Gears of War 2"

ok, im trying to create a splash page for my graphics website, and here is the problem im running into.

i was able to extend the blue on each side to fit whatever resolution people are running, and that wasnt a problem, but how in the hell do i do the same for the top and bottom of the image in the middle, i dont want the image to scale, i want to slice the top and bottom and stretch that to the resolution so i dont stretch the image. does anyone who knows html have any ideas? my only other option is to change the image so the blue goes all the way around but i dont want to do that.

the image is below, click for full screen

A gamer's fourth Xbox 360 red-ringed, and a veritable who's-who of consoles turned out to pay their respects and show their anguish that so many are dying so young, and so senselessly.

* - Not Mine.

After a LONG, awful 16 hours of driving, I'm home.  I dropped my mother off at her house and drove another hour and a half in an almost white out blizzard.  What a way to end a trip.  Everyone but me and the kid felt crappy on the way home.  My mother worst of all.  The only thing I had wrong with me was a little bit of a headache and my neck was so stiff that I had a hard time turning it left or right.  Nevertheless, I left New York at about 7am CST and arrived home at 12:30am.  I may be getting older, but I can still do it!  lol 

I don't know about everyone else, but I'm feeling pretty damn good this morning.  A slight bit of a stiff neck yet, but nothing compared to last night.  I guess I should call my work peoples and see if I have anything to do.........even though I am enjoying a slow morning and looking at the snow outside. 

MJ

P.S.  - If you feel this crap that I had coming on, drink a bottle of gatorade and a bottle of water.  I think it's the only thing that really kept me from having the full blown effects like everyone else did.

I woke up to over 4 inches of snow to be shoveled.

Did it, couldn't get back to sleep.

Did my morning ritual, including vitamins and medicine, which upset my stomach. Yeah. That much. *flush*

At least I'm not really sick, right guys? ('course, I was sick early in November with the same thing)

"I hate Mondays" - Garfield

Well, what a week this has been, the wife was off ALL WEEK, I had some time to digest all the reported changes that my organization will be undergoing....and we managed to survive yet another family holiday. We made a run through the normal difficulties of Gears 1 and 2....AWESOME! and caught up on about 5 weeks of DVR that we have been neglecting. I'm still really depressed about being back at work.....again.....

but on a lighter note, we happened to run across something very very funny over the weekend....so, I present to you our submission to Failblog. Any votes to get this up on the main page would be appreciated.

http://mine.icanhascheezburger.com/view.aspx?ciid=2719021

now if you'll excuse me, it sounds like someone is stuck in my office's elevator....again....

Auto out-

I woke up this morning with a huge headache and feeling like I had been running all night instead of sleeping.  Why?  This stupid dream i had, i suppose.  All night long I was running from giants, goblins, all sorts of monsters, and falling into all kinds of traps.  I managed to escape, but when I came back, everyone else was being chased and whatever, so they screamed at me "how do you stop this?".  I screamed back "turn it off!"  Wow, to be inside a video game is just not as much fun as playing it!  Whew.

It's back to work today after 4 days off.  Blah!  I did get some serious cyber-shopping done, tho.  Oh, I didn't buy that much, but I did replace my router, which should come tomorrow.  And i bought Fallout.  I think that will wait and be put under the Christmas tree.  Yeh, I always end up buying my own Chrismas presents, which means, sometimes I get nothing at all.  That's fine.  It's my life.  Oh, yeh, and I bought a 46" LCD HDTV.  w00t!  The one I have the xbox hooked up to is a 32", sad but true.  What else?  Ah, some stuff for the gkids.   And, I started thinking more about my next road trip.  Still don't know where I'm going, but I need to goooooo.  My daughter told me the other day that she has the Wanderlust, like me.  Oh, yeh, she is sooooo my kid.  If I didn't intend to misbehave, I would take her with me.  Oh well.

Over the next month I won't be posting or on here as much as before with me driving an hour to work and back.  So yes this means I will be actually working from 8 am to 5 pm with a 30 minute break.  Will I enjoy this manual labor?  No I wont and can't wait for my vacation time to start.  Plans have to be made, but then again it is only going to be good when finding a job and getting selected for it as well. 

I have tried Sonic Unleashed and yes it might not be for everyone, but then again I go out to try the games that are different.  Also watch out for articles for the 2Old2Play Art Auctions that might start today.  Help Rebuild the site and just take a look.  All the artist have put time into this and have come back with some really good stuff.  So have a wonderful day and talk to you all later.