Tomb Raider: Underworld

Author: Joe Martin
Published: 28th November 2008
Comments (17) Stumble

Graphics

Tomb Raider has always been near the fore-front of the graphics race ever since we were first introduced to the T-rex and the massive Lost City.

Hell, we remember how excited we were when in subsequent games Lara’s ponytail actually started to move as she walked. Was this the future of computer-led hairdressing? Only time will tell.

Tomb Raider: Underworld though isn’t as close to the forefront as its predecessors and uses an only slightly improved version of the engine that first debuted in Legend back in 2006. It’s still a good looking game of course, with Lara having a higher poly-count than ever before, but it also has flaws.

One of those flaws is the rather limited capacity for tweaking the graphics. There’s only really two settings that have an overwhelming effect once you’re out of the water levels, and we’ve got details of them both below.

Texture Detail

This texture setting is the biggest and most important setting and it comes in three flavours – Low, Medium and High – with each one piling on more detail than the one before it. Check out the screenshots below to get a feel for how the game might look on your PC.

Tomb Raider: Underworld Tomb Raider: Underworld - Graphics Tomb Raider: Underworld Tomb Raider: Underworld - Graphics Tomb Raider: Underworld Tomb Raider: Underworld - Graphics Texture Detail in Tomb Raider: Underworld on High (left), Medium (centre) and Low (right), click to enlarge

The place to look here is on the rocks to the left of the screen, so if you're looking at the enlarged image then try to tear your eyes from Lara’s bust if you can. At the start of every level you can choose what Lara will wear and we elected with something sensible here just so you wouldn’t get distracted.

On High detail the view looks great and there’s plenty of detail built into those rocks, as well as the rest of the scenery. Drop the slider down to Medium and the rocks take only a minor reduction in fidelity. As soon as you hit bottom though, the game blurs up significantly and the game looks much worse for wear.

Thankfully, the system requirements for the game aren’t all that steep (Recommended: dual-core 2.2 GHz, 9800 GTX / HD 4800 or higher, 2GB RAM) so there’s really no reason not to aim for the higher settings here. Hell, if an Xbox 360 can do it then you should have no problem!

Shadows

Shadows in Underworld are, just like they were in Legend, odd. There are a lot of them, but most seem to be static and unmoving and this setting only affects the dynamic ones with a simple on/off toggle. Dynamic shadows meanwhile tend to appear fuzzy or jagged around the edge unless AA is bumped up.

Tomb Raider: Underworld Tomb Raider: Underworld - Graphics Tomb Raider: Underworld Tomb Raider: Underworld - Graphics
Shadows in Tomb Raider: Underworld On (left) and Off (right), click to enlarge

Here, in the screenshots above you can see how the shadow setting can have a pretty drastic effect, eliminating Lara’s shadow as well many of those from her environment when turned off. The good news though is that in most of the later levels you’ll be inside anyway and, even in the Thailand jungle levels, the number of static shadows means this isn’t a huge problem.

It shouldn't matter all that much though - as we said before the game isn't very demanding, so there shouldn't be any issue with turning shadows on for nearly all gamers.

Still, some players (read: Jamie) might want to turn the shadows off anyway as the dynamic shadows don’t exactly look amazing. Even with every setting on full they tend to be jaggier than a Rolling Stones concert and while a lot of people aren’t going to have an issue with that, it may still be worth turning the setting off on some of the better lit levels, though the jaggedness is only really noticeable close-up.

On the plus side though, you can at least spend ages staring at this picture of Lara in her ultra-skinny wetsuit. There’s a rather hilarious moment late in the game where you can get her to wear this even when she’s swimming in the arctic sea too. Talk about pointy...

Shopping



Dragonage