When I attended the Tomb Raider: Underworld press conference earlier this year I must admit that, given the series’ rather indifferent history over the past few years, the main excitement I got out of the lead-up to the showing was that there was a superb bar and a lovely PR girl to chat to (come on, we’re all human). The fact that I came away about an hour later actually rather enthused about the game itself was therefore pretty impressive given my liking of free drink and lovely ladies, and that enthusiasm has carried on for the most part to the finished product.

Of course, it’s probably best to remind folks at this early stage that, for all the next-gen shine and such, this is still very much a Tomb Raider game in the same vain as its predecessors, with combat and the like taking a back seat whilst jumping between pillar and post occupies the majority of your time. There are a couple of new tweaks chucked in to keep the thing feeling relatively fresh of course, but as the old saying goes, if you don’t like the general feel of the previous titles then there’s a high chance you might not feel much love for Underworld either.

The game kicks off with a relatively cleverly disguised tutorial inside Croft Manor, leading to events that initially confuse you until you realise that you are then being flicked back a week to start the lead up to what had been going on. From here it’s the usual melodramatic mixture of Lara hunting down her mother whilst also exploring and discovering a hotchpotch of mythological settings and artefacts, none of which seem to be particularly bothered about being particularly historically accurate.

Still, it is immediately apparent that Lara now moves and shuffles around the place in a most pleasing manner, enabling you to climb those conveniently-ridged walls and leap across chasms of doom with relative ease. Part of this is no doubt due to Tomb Raider games of late being rather more forgiving than the earlier ones and allowing you to get away with being a few fractions off of where you were intending, and part is due to Lara having an increased move set, which includes the very Mario-esque ability to wall-jump up narrow gaps.

Thus, on one side of the coin Underworld ticks the major box it had to and has made exploring and navigating fun. There is a dirtier side of the coin, however, and that’s mainly due to our old chum Mr. Awkward Camera rearing his ugly head depressingly often, mostly in the usual tight confine situations. Whilst the easing of the series’ insistence on being spot-on with jumps alleviates the pain of this a little, it’d be nice to always be able to comfortably see the pole or ridge you are leaping at rather than having to employ a bit of blind faith.

You’re no always hemmed into tight confines, though, and quite a bit of the game is actually quite open with multiple routes being offered through certain sections. To this end you are given a motorbike that you can use, and in latter levels this comes into its own as things open up and you find yourself travelling around quite a bit. Rather than the annoying tempo-changing tactic of having entire levels dedicated specifically to it, this time around it pops up at various points before you leave it behind as you venture inside.

Another newer feature shown to us back at the start of the year is Lara’s ability to ‘free climb’ certain sections of the environment, rather than having her limited to vertical or horizontal progression. To be honest this isn’t a particularly life-changing feature and simply means that the designers have been able to throw a few more grippy surfaces in so you can guide Lara around, up and under certain obstacles, but it does the job well enough. Likewise, the grappling hook allows Ms. Croft to swing around, pull objects and – on occasion – knock things over, and whilst not being a massively impressive offering it does the job when required. All told the little touches here and there go a long way to increasing the options you have to progress, and as a result you end up enjoying your runs, jumps and rolls a lot more.

The same can’t really be said of the combat, although admittedly the game does its best not to focus on that and make battling an infrequent inconvenience rather than a recurring nightmare. Throughout the game you’ll find yourself battling against not only all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures native to your surroundings, but also humans who somehow are less intelligent than their animal counterparts and willingly stand around waiting for you to polish them off (does that sound rude?). In general you end up running around spraying bullets as quickly as you can into anything that even moves the wrong way, which might lead someone reading that to presume that it isn’t particularly involving or fun. Those people would be right.

Thankfully, though, it’s definitely a case of exploring and adventuring than running and gunning and hence the game doesn’t cripple itself. You’ll enjoy traversing the scenery and pondering over the puzzles, and you’ll dig those little lightbulb moments when you finally notice a protrusion you hadn’t before, or find an item that’ll solve a puzzle that you had been stuck on for a while. You’ll still be enjoying it all when, suddenly, the game ends just less than ten hours in, which is a great shame. I suppose on one hand that fact that I was left wanting a bit more was a good sign, but I couldn’t help but feel that they could have tied it up in a rather less abrupt manner. Oh, and if it turns out that (as rumoured) some levels were just cut from the game to form upcoming DLC, I will not be impressed. Neither will Jay, and that’s a whole can of morose worms that you do not want to open.

Still, there’s plenty to be positive about when it comes to Underworld. The puzzles are a good bunch and are – on occasion – as clever as a particularly crafty fox, the game looks fantastic and will satisfy all teenage men with the graphical touches such as mud spattering and water dripping off Lara’s torso as she runs about some rather lovely ruins and the like, and the exploration is, for the most part, good fun and much more forgiving than previous Tomb Raider games. The camera issues, poor combat and longevity do hitch a snag around Lara’s ever-so-small shorts and hoik her down from a higher score, but overall it’s another step along the right path.