Thursday Regulars:
No RetroforceGO! this week: We all have SARS
The Memory Card .46: Insult swordfighting!

Review:
Tomb Raider Underworld

Contest:
Get your running shoes on: we have 80 copies of Mirror's Edge to give away!

News:
Gran Turismo 5 release date still in the air, fast car devs build slow
Virtual Peace 'better than shooting 'em up'
Ken Levine likes PC gaming, would like to have it back
Square Enix expected to bid for Eidos
Character in Animal Crossing tosses out the N-word, Nintendo rescues our eyes
Harrison: Kids will soon refuse to buy discs
Research group says that consoles are the new hotness for on-demand video
Could Brutal Legend news be coming? We all hope so
Qore episode 7 is free this week at the PlayStation Store
How Sirlin struggled with Street Fighter 2 HD
Dress up your Xbox 360 avatar in new duds -- for free, no less!
Animal Crossing Wii character imports region locked: Because that's not dumb
Real bands vs fake ones: the argument goes on
WiiWare manga starts this January with Princess Ai Monogatari
Penn describes motivation behind Desert Bus minigame
Buy this PS3 for the every day low price of $736.99 [Update]
List of streamable videogame movies on Netflix

Rumortoid:
SCEE reminds staff of their NDA after PS3 price drop talk

Offbeat:
The Daily Mail: Win a Sega Megadrive! Or ... not

Galleries:
Screenshots for Suikoden Tierkreis: Because the DS needs more RPGs
Go to Burger King for a heart attack/Nintendo toy combo

Videos:
Mirror's Edge DLC announced, looks bloody weird [update]
Banjo goes to Paris in this absurd Nuts & Bolts promo video
New 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand video displays the art of Counter-Kills

Community:
C Blogs of 12/04/08

It's been a long, hard road for Lara Croft. Her first appearance in videogames was received well by critics and the public alike, not least for her fetching figure and acrobatic gameplay. As time moved on, however, Lara simply didn't and the series began to stagnate.

Then Crystal Dynamics came along to take a stab at the femme fatale treasure hunter with Tomb Raider: Legend. With some gameplay tweaks and an improved camera, Lara felt back on top of her game.

Can Lara hit again? I give you our review of Tomb Raider: Underworld after the jump.

Reviews:

Hasbro Game Night

Block Party Wii

Pet Pals: Animal Doctor

Top 10 Franchises We Want Resurrected

The Gameplay Mechanic: Fixing Sonic

Capcom-Unity Blog: You Want It, You Got It

Impressions here

Reader Niallalot saw me writing about “Tomb Raider: Underworld” in my last couple of Diary entries and wrote: “Now hold on just a minute - did Lara’s latest really leave you so non-plussed? For shame.”

Niallot, because you asked, here’s how I felt about “Tomb Raider: Underworld,” which I finished on Sunday:

Yes, it was my first “Tomb Raider.” I didn’t love it. The game had me cursing at my TV, even. Why? Since it was my first adventure with Lara Croft, it’s hard for me to say if my problem was specific to “Underworld” or to the series.

I wanted to play Lara as an athlete. She animates like one in “Underworld.” But I also hoped that her adventures would be as exciting as those of Indiana Jones. That’s where Lara and I stumbled.

Doctor Jones got to run away from rolling boulders, exchange idols with bags of sand and figure out what it meant that “Only the penitent man will pass.”

Ms. Croft, I’ve learned, gets to go to gorgeous caverns and sea floors where must shove three blocks so she can jump to two ridges, swing around six poles, clamber across a rock and dive through one closing door… so that she can find the first of four stones that will raise a staircase. That’s not a specific puzzle — hey, I’m sparing people a spoiler! — but you get the idea.

I wanted more of an adventure. Instead, I got a lot of interlocked environmental puzzles.

A funny thing happened as I neared the end of “Underworld” while playing on the Xbox 360. I noticed that my buddy from Joystiq Ludwig Kietzmann was also finishing the game. He cleared it about 15 minutes before I did, so I set up a voice chat to vent. He thought I’d gone bonkers. He told me that swinging Lara through a beautiful, lonely section of exotic terrain is the essence of “Tomb Raider.” Having to figure out which wall to leap to next and solving the puzzles of a temples blocks and ridges is the draw of these games. I told him I wanted either more exhilaration moving through the game world — as I got from “Prince of Persia: Sands of Time” and “Mirror’s Edge” — or a more exciting set of puzzles to solve in a set location — as I get from most “Zelda” dungeons.

What I didn’t want from “Tomb Raider: Underworld,” which I get too often from too many games I play, is a sense that executing a solution to a gameplay puzzle isn’t as fun as figuring it out. That’s the problem, for example, with block puzzles in 3D games, of which “Underworld” has a few: you figure out what you need to do at some moment before actually doing it. And those seconds or minutes between figuring it out and doing it are the least fun moments I can have as a gamer. Isn’t there a more fun activity I can be doing than pushing a block? Too many moments of “Underworld” felt like that to me. They didn’t feel like fun. They felt like work.

So maybe I’m just not a “Tomb Raider” guy. Or just not an “Underworld” guy.

Sorry, Ludwig. Sorry, Lara. Sorry, Alison.

Niallalot, sorry you asked?

Got something to ask me? If it’s about games or the people who work on them or near them, I’ll answer. What do you want to know?

Related Posts:
More Games Need ‘Tomb Raider Underworld’’s Flashback Sequence
Watch Lara Croft Model Flip Through Our Office [video]
Crystal Dynamics’ Must-Do List For ‘Tomb Raider: Underworld’ Gamers
Don’t Stress: Deep ‘Tomb Raider’ Difficulty Options Make New Game Super-Easy, Super-Hard

• Eidos announces new Hitman, Tomb Raider and more in 2007 report
  

• Eidos announces new Hitman, Tomb Raider and more in 2007 report
  

• Eidos announces new Hitman, Tomb Raider and more in 2007 report