Lara Croft Tomb Raider - The Angel of Darkness

The Angel of Darkness is best understood as a reboot that was never allowed to finish. Core Design spent years on it, moved it onto the PlayStation 2 for the series' first real jump in hardware, and released it in 2003 in a state that the studio itself later seemed to regret. Its reputation is built on that gap between what it attempted and what shipped.

The ambition is easy to see. Lara is hunted across a gloomy Paris, accused of a murder she did not commit, and the game trades the series' sunlit ruins for rain-slicked streets, back alleys and a gothic undercurrent. The tone is far darker than anything before it. Lara has a new, heavier movement model, and the game adds light stealth, conversation trees with a few choices, and basic character stats. Midway through, you also take control of Kurtis Trent, a second playable character with his own abilities, which was a notable break from the series' lone-heroine formula.

The execution is where it stumbles. Controls are stiff and tank-like, camera angles fight you in tight spaces, and the new stealth and combat systems feel thin beside the platforming and puzzles that made the series. Lara's redesign and the moodier story did not win over many players at the time, and technical roughness made the whole thing feel like a draft. Critics were hard on it, and the series' publisher moved the franchise to a different studio afterward.

Played now, it is a frustrating curiosity rather than a hidden classic, but not a worthless one. The atmosphere of the Parisian sections is distinctive, and the willingness to turn Lara into a more vulnerable, hunted figure still stands out from the later entries. It deserves a look as a record of a franchise trying to grow up before it was ready.

The tragedy of this one is that you can see the better game hiding inside it.