Lara's no stranger to the Nintendo DS, having enjoyed an adventure on the dual-screen handheld in Tomb Raider Legend. But with Tomb Raider: Underworld ready to hit the consoles in a month's time, Eidos has put a handheld team onto a project to coincide with this year's release.

The game's been developed by Santa Cruz Games, not a stranger to the DS platform either. But it looks like the development team have shaken out the kinks caused by Godzilla Unleashed and Superman Returns on the platform, because Tomb Raider: Underworld seems to be quite solid, and easily a more impressive take on the franchise than Human Soft's Tomb Raider Legend.

In the Nintendo DS version, Santa Cruz Games has taken the scenarios and storyline from the console design and paired it down into a more cut-and-dry action game. The game features a full 3D engine but the experience takes place entirely in a 2D side-scrolling perspective, which sort of takes the design back to its Prince of Persia-like inspiration.


She's all 3D, baby. Mostly, anyway.



The levels are entirely based upon the ones from the game, but now rigged for play in the side scrolling environment. They're a little shorter, too, designed with the quick pick-up-and-play mindset of the handheld experience. Lifted from the console game are the cutscenes that tell the story -- Santa Cruz Games has jammed a 128 megabyte cartridge to the brim with compressed video clips from the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 game.

There are also a few touch-screen elements -- just like in the Wii version, the DS developers rigged up puzzles that utilize the stylus. You'll pop open treasures by sliding around Tetris pieces, and put together ancient mechanisms by maneuvering gears around.

Tomb Raider: Underworld is expected to ship along side the console versions this November.

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