The evolution of the Tomb Raider series has moved from the blocky, grid-based visuals of the original Saturn/PlayStation to the more organic eye candy of today's console. The Xbox 360 version of Eidos' newest in the franchise, Tomb Raider: Underworld, looks amazing.

From the moment you pop in the disc, Underworld impresses visually. Whether you first ponder the lush environments or ogle the main character far too long - you know you did - this game doesn't disappoint. Sure, this game may not be the most beautiful game on the 360, but it impresses nonetheless. Where I find the game to truly shine is in the lighting, and the way that lighting becomes a factor in level design, sometimes "lighting" your path or giving a subtle clue as you progress. It should be said that the lighting isn't flawless, as sometimes the shadows flicker and aren't as nice looking as one would hope.

After you take your eye off the visuals and pay attention to what your ear is listening to, you'll soon realize that the ambience of the game's audio strives as well. No matter if you are indoors or out, this ambient sound helps pull you into the environment. Unfortunately, the voiceovers do not. The voice of lead character Lara Croft is decent, but not great. In fact, many of the others that lend their talent also fall a bit flat and don't offer up an excitement in the cut-scenes.

If you've been living in a virtual cave for the past twelve years, the Tomb Raider series is one of adventure, exploration, and puzzle-solving, with a bit of action thrown in for good measure. In short, you control Lara Croft, the most adventuring archeologist on the planet. In Tomb Raider: Underworld, you will once again be taking Lara on another adventure through the jungle, a ship, and numerous other locales.

While Underworld's gameplay sticks to the basics of the franchise, it also strives to improve on the formula with new move sets and interactions. Since most of the game is based on the exploration of ruins, let's begin there. Ms. Croft still has her standard walk, run, and jumps to keep her flying high, but she can also balance on beams, bars, and pedestals. Adding to her death-defying aerial moves, she can now wall-jump back and forth in close-quarter areas, and she can swing across chasms using her grappling abilities. In addition, you'll be able to control our heroine across broken walls and the sides of cliff thanks to the new wall climbing feature.

On the combat side of things, Lara now has a special Head Shot move available to her when the adrenaline meter is full (typically when a number of baddies are present). This one-shot-kill move slows down the gameplay as you line up your target sight and fire a round off before Lara hits the ground. The catch is that you have to let the enemy get in close before you can trigger this special. The lock-on feature for combat is a saving grace as well because the camera tends to have a mind of its own far too often. Locking onto an enemy keeps him always in front of Lara, enabling you to not lose sight. The negative side to the combat is that, in general, it almost felt tacked-on at times. The combat itself was good, but whether fighting other humans or defending against approaching animals, I couldn't shake the feeling that at times these sequences just didn't fit in and were only there to add mindless challenge to the more interesting puzzle aspects of the gameplay.

The camera problems don't stop with the combat, however. Unfortunately, the camera is enough of a problem that it takes away from the gameplay in more ways than one. Most of what lies on the disc entails exploration, and as such, Lara finds herself on the edge of death as she navigates vast (and usually steep!) environments. Because of this, when the camera doesn't exactly react as expected, it is quite easy to plummet to your death from high above the earth. A specific example is that you'll often have to be quite patient when leaping from ledge to ledge because, depending on the camera angle at the time, controlling Lara's leaps may be slightly different. In addition, her Spiderman-like wall-sticking ability is often more annoying than helpful as she sometimes sticks to unintended walls, and an accidental jump at that time may launch her three stories below to her death.

Tomb Raider: Underworld also adds some simple physics into the mix that do a pretty good job overall. As mentioned before, Lara can now use her grapple to swing, but it goes beyond that. You can actually work your way into a direction change and can use this device for both rapelling and grappling in select locations, as well as climbing other select walls, as long as a grapple point is present. You even have the ability to wall-run back and forth from your hanging lifeline. Certain objects also react to Lara's (and the environment's) actions. While it is possible to see a few buggy physics items (like floating objects that are dropped next to ledges), most of the interactions are sound.

The gameplay of Underworld is still quite engaging, even with some of these mentioned minor issues (okay, so the camera thing isn't so minor). In Tomb Raider: Underworld, be prepared for a lot of acrobatics and other craziness in your exploration. While the developers could have maybe tweaked some of the interactions a bit more to prevent the mindless plunging to death after death after death, I never really felt overly frustrated as I have with some games of this genre. In all, I love exploring and puzzle-solving more than combat anyway, so Tomb Raider: Underworld is a near-perfect match for that style... near-perfect because more puzzles to solve would have been a nice addition.

Tomb Raider: Underworld actually allows you to choose from three levels of difficulty as you begin a new campaign, which is unlike any other game in the series that came before it (to my knowledge). What this means is that newcomers to the series have the option to lessen the effects of being shot, bitten, or the like, and seasoned veterans can opt to turn the game up a notch from the start.

Aside from the difficulty settings, Underworld starts you off with on-screen icon clues and hints at certain points in the game, especially those where you are about to do a new interaction for the first time. Due to the game's closely-related pallet of colors, sometimes it is difficult to see objects of interest at first glance, so these icon hints come in quite handy until you tune your eye to spot these secrets. Once you get the gist of the core gameplay, you can always turn off these hints and go at it on your own, like a true adventurer would. Doing so, one has to really pay attention to the environment, especially in the jungle levels (there is typically a lot of concealing foliage) and where you may have to spot a ring to grapple. It is a nice addition that the developers kept the visible icons and hint text as separately tunable items, so as not to make the game feel too easy, yet still gives a clue to new moves and other important information. There is also the ability for the player to either ask for a hint or even find out the solution to the next problem through Lara's PDA, so anyone who feels lost can at any time get back on the right track. Sometimes these cheats are helpful, and other times they are a bit too generic, unfortunately.

The biggest difficulty of Tomb Raider: Underworld doesn't come in the form of shooting down bad guys, battling wildlife, or even solving puzzles. In fact, the exploration tends to be the area where I perished the most. This game has you leaping in every direction, and the awesome new interactions and the smooth animations allow for a fairly dynamic range of motion, which can sometimes assist in your apparent suicides. The camera is sometimes the culprit too, though, and that part of the game is just not acceptable.

Being that Lara has what feels like a ton of new interactions, the controls seem to have progressively gotten more complicated, yet at the same time, the basics are still quite easy to pull off. The most peculiar interaction that has a short learning curve is during the Head Shot slow-downs. It took a few times before I got the hang of it, partly because the cursor I needed to move started nearly off-screen, and partly because I didn't understand the initial hint text explaining the new move.

The camera tended to interfere a bit with the gameplay too, as it was hard to control in tight and close-up situations. More than once, I found myself not knowing what my next step (or more often than not, what my next leap) should be simply because I was unable to swing the camera around far enough to see what was behind my character. In these cases, I often would make a leap of faith to hope there was another ledge to grab hold off. Sometimes this approach worked, and other times I found myself on the end of an auto-load from the last checkpoint. Fortunately, there are a fair amount of checkpoints throughout each level. So while you can certainly pause and save frequently, it generally isn't necessary until you wish to quit the game session.

Even with the crazy camera and lack of control that it gives you, Tomb Raider: Underworld is a nice progression in the long-running franchise. The new move sets are a great addition and the smooth animations and transitions from ledges and other handholds make this game feel more fluid and natural than past games in the series. For every two steps forward, the game did take a step backward, but in general, fans of Lara Croft will be happy with how Tomb Raider: Underworld plays out. I do wish that the cut-scenes gave off a bit more energy. Even though the story in this new adventure may be forgettable, the gameplay does make up for it in many ways. Now, let me get back to raiding more tombs...