For us the main reason for that was to see if the "real" tomb raider could in one foul swoop eclipse the great pretender come most successful Playstation adventure series ever. But in order to sway gamers away from the more pleasant rear view of one Ms Croft and instead follow a sweaty, dusty middle-aged bloke LucasArts was definitely going to have to pull a few decent tricks out of its creative bag. We think it's certainly done that to a degree but must add that Eidos/Core didn't exactly put up the best fight of its career in order to combat the title contention as Lara's latest sojourn was by no means the engrossing or polished product it could have been. Not that the Emperor's Tomb could best be described as "polished" either though. Read on.

The story behind the Emperor's Tomb is a fairly straight-forward archaeological adventure such that we've come to expect from the Indiana Jones movies. Set in 1935, Indy's latest quest is to track down a valuable Chinese artifact known as the Heart of the Dragon - a black pearl that is said to harbour the power of mind control. Problem is that seeing as mind control is yet another "tool" the evil Nazis wish to acquire and use for world domination, Hitler has sent his best treasure hunter, one Albrecht Von Beck, on the trail of said artifact also. What ensues is a globe-trotting romp across several locales including the jungles of Ceylon, a large castle in Prague, Hong Kong and several other exotic places where Indy must battle it out with Nazi bully-boys and other baddies and creatures.

Most of the levels are huge, fairly detailed and laid out in such a fashion as to best allow Indy to show off all of his 3rd-person running, jumping and climbing skills. And you'll have to do plenty of these 3 things plus employ a whole range of other feats to get through every situation you encounter. For instance Indy's whip plays a big part as he uses it to swing across gaps large and small by latching onto conveniently placed objects jutting from the side of buildings, bridges and the environment. It's a versatile implement that can also be employed to remove weapons from the grip of approaching enemies so that Indy can quickly pick them up and use them himself or it can folded up and placed over zipline cables for quick escapes.

As well as a healthy dose of puzzles which fall comfortably between too damn easy and controller-biffing hard difficulty wise, the Emperor's Tomb is blessed with some very pleasing combat action. "Pleasing" because the hand-to-hand combat is some of the best we've seen in a game of this type. The Emperor's Tomb was built using a modified version of the engine used in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the combat system here is a simplified version of the one seen in that game. The X and square buttons, corresponding to your left and right fists (or primary and secondary attacks), are used for punching. If the enemy is on the ground then the same buttons will produce excruciating kicks. Grabs can be performed by pressing both buttons together and several combos are available by using a combination of successive button presses together with the left analogue stick. Indy's fighting style is slightly exaggerated which makes for some brutal fisticuffs and we liked it a lot especially when you punch an opponent so hard he topples backwards off a ledge from a high up area. The resulting extended scream as he plummets to his doom is disturbingly satisfying!

As well as hand-to-hand fighting Indy can also use a nice arsenal of weapons from the era including pistols, shotguns, automatic weapons like the famous Nazi MP-40 and later even a good old rocket launcher. Now the thing we really liked here is that a melee attack is also included with weapons as in some 1st-person shooters these days (Medal Of Honor: Spearhead for the PC springs immediately to mind). This is performed by pressing square while holding a gun and you can perform a back-handed swipe with the pistol and a two-handed butt smash with larger guns. Nice touch! All weapons and items such as the whip, water bottle, med kits and maps can be accessed and equipped via the inventory using the d-pad.

Controls are generally quite smooth to use and whilst at first they may feel a little loose and not all immediately intuitive they are not tricky to employ on-the-fly once you've played a level or two. The first level anyway serves pretty much as training for what's to come. Apart from those buttons already mentioned the left analogue stick provides main movement (there's no proper strafing while running around), right analogue for looking/camera movement, circle for jumping, triangle for action, R1 for guard mode, R2 to reload, L1 for look mode/rolling/resetting camera and L2 for drawing/holstering weapon or choosing the last item used. A 1st-person mode using a crosshair is employed by pressing L1 and aiming with either analogue stick. This comes in very handy to take out a few enemies before they spot you as once they do there can quite often be a whole gang of them to take on and picking one or two off first makes your job a little easier.

All-in-all gameplay in the Emperor's Tomb is a nicely paced, action-filled romp combining a good balance of puzzles, platform-style as well as open area adventuring and varied, well implemented combat. While paths throughout are generally fairly linear there's enough freedom of movement and quite a few different choices thrown in here and there to keep it from ever feeling too restrictive or predictable.

Now though we come to the part that prompted our lack of "polish" comment back in the second paragraph. Frankly the graphics in the Emperor's Tomb are pretty crap for a title that's only just been released! Ok, that's a fairly general statement because level design and scale, character animation and environmental effects are good if not excellent. But problems abound visually to the point of being crippling and ruin what otherwise could have been a top-notch title. Overall the game just appears unfinished having an extremely blurry look to it throughout plus the framerate is just about the worst we've seen ranging from slightly choppy to a rate that at times feels like it dips down to the low single figures ie. almost to a halt! The XBox version from which this game was ported had a few graphical problems but it's even worse here leading us to believe that this is just a badly ported and probably rushed effort. It certainly appears no attempt was made to even address the original glitches and we're wondering if maybe the game testers were on holiday when they rushed this game out (if they exist at all!). Very shoddy!

Sound does its best to try and recoup some self-esteem for the game and its movie-based soundtrack that interacts nicely with the on-screen action is well produced. There's no Dolby support here but its dramatic style will please those who enjoyed the effect the original movie soundtracks provided. Voice acting is also good with Indy sounding like the real McCoy even though Harrison Ford himself didn't provide the vocals.