What’s that? I’m sorry, you’ll have to speak up. You want me back? You’ll do anything, you say? Well, Tomb Raider, I’m a bit skeptical. You burned me bad. Plot holes, camera issues, a sad lack of tombs—I have not forgotten what you did. I am a fair man, though, and I’ll give you one more chance.
Tomb Raider has a new subtitle, a new developer, and a brand new console to play on, along wit the old favorites. Lara’s adventuring reaches new heights in acrobatic gameplay and graphics, but while generally fun, her latest outing is no Legend.
Yes, the Angel of Darkness has been resurrected. In fact, your feelings about the previous Tomb Raider game—if you played it at all—will not have any effect on how much you enjoy Tomb Raider Legend, unless you just hate third-person games, in which case you can stop reading right now.
Legend’s story is not dependent on knowledge of past games, and it attempts to evoke real emotions. The opening movie shows a pre-teen Lara Croft traveling on a charter plane with her mother. Disaster strikes, a mysterious portal opens, and Lara’s mother disappears.
The game follows the adult Lara, a modern, female Indiana Jones, as she tries to find her long-lost parent. That task is neither simple nor easy and naturally requires collecting diverse artifacts from places like Nepal Japan, and England—often from people who do not want to give them up. Some of these places feature actual tombs with ancient traps to welcome you.
As far as emotion goes, the story is more involving than past incarnations, but the cutscenes are over-the-top and funny more than anything else, which isn’t a bad thing. Plus, the game’s story is better than The Cradle of Life, so I can’t complain.
The eight missions Lara enjoys are set indoors and out, in tombs and skyscrapers, but all environments are fundamentally the same. At least half of the gameplay is exploration, and no matter where you are, there will be ledges, poles, ropes, and platforms for Lara to play around on. The icy cliff in Nepal becomes a railing in England. The swinging vine in Bolivia becomes a steel cable in Japan. The challenge of getting from one area to the next is very similar to Prince of Persia’s core gameplay, and can be tedious at times. For the most part, though, the levels find new ways to combine the same structural elements.
Sometimes progress will be impeded by more than a just a complex series of platforms. Some puzzles in Legend are easy, some are hard, and some just appear hard because you’re too focused on one thing. One of the earliest puzzles in the first mission had me stumped long enough that I needed to take a break, and it wasn’t hard at all. I had to jump on a see-saw thing to flip crates up onto another platform. In retrospect it was the simplest thing, but I just couldn’t see it. However, because I knew what objects could be manipulated thanks to high-tech binoculars, I eventually found the solution. The game doesn’t intentionally throw red herrings at you, so all puzzles can be solved by stepping back and looking at what you have to work with.
Combat is cumbersome, though, rather than the dainty precision you would expect from someone of Lara’s caliber. Guns work by locking on to one target—all you do is pull the trigger. This is probably better than free aim, though, because of the inability to crouch or strafe while firing. There is a way to aim with the mouse, but it’s like a GoldenEye flashback—you cannot move nor do anything but aim when this mode is enabled. It’s useless in combat, and is really meant for solving puzzles that require a well-placed bullet.
Non-human enemies may wear different fur, but they all just run at Lara and knock her down. Enemy soldiers sport different uniforms but perform identically—unsatisfactorily. Difficulty is provided by their numbers instead of their tactics. On any difficulty, they will occasionally just stand there while Lara walks right in front of them. You can pick up weapons enemies drop, but the selection is limited and generic (i.e. shotgun, assault rifle) and Lara can only carry one weapon in addition to her infinitely supplied dual pistols. Grenades are also along for the ride, but they feel underpowered. If you find the combat to be a turn-off, you can set the difficulty to easy and breeze through the battles, free to enjoy the acrobatics and academics of the gameplay.
A new addition to the gameplay is interactive cutscenes which require contextual input from the player. For instance, the view will become cinematic while Lara retrieves an artifact from a plane perched on the edge of a cliff. It of course starts to fall and as Lara dashes to safety you must follow on-screen commands to hit direction keys, making her duck and leap at the right moments. If you have trouble with these, they can always be memorized because they are scripted. When you fail to press a key in time, Lara often dies grotesquely, with rag doll physics that will probably make you laugh and even try killing her again after the game loads your last checkpoint.
When you are able to stay alive traipse about Legend’s worlds, you may notice something—they’re gorgeous. The XBox 360 and PC versions have “next-generation” content, a silly title considering that it’s here today. On my main computer, armed with a NVIDIA 6600GT, enabling this makes the frame rate slog into the mid-teens (although the version 1.1 patch significantly improves framerate with these features on), but I don’t need smooth motion to tell me how good the game looks. Advanced shaders mean realistically rippling water and grimy temple walls, as well as a fairly realistic looking Lara. However, for PCs users to enjoy this beauty, I’d say they need at least a NVIDIA 6800. Otherwise, they’ll join Playstation 2 and Xbox owners in enjoying something that looks more like Max Payne 2. Instead of lush jungles, there is sparse ground and everything shiny looks dull. But hey, if you’ve got the hardware, you get the goods.
The single player game can be breezed through in under 10 hours, but Legend does its best to extend the fun. There is another incarnation of Lara’s mansion to explore and train in. Once you beat a main mission, a time trial is opened that you play on the normal difficulty. Scattered throughout the levels are bronze, silver, and gold treasures to be found. Beating trials and finding treasure unlock extras like cheat codes and character models. This may not add much value to every gamer, but XBox 360 owners also have numerous achievements to earn for their gamerscore.
Tomb Raider: Legend is a bit of a throwback, albeit one with cutting edge graphics. A 3-D platformer, the missions are packed with jumping, puzzles, and mindless shooting. It’s easily better than the previous game in the series, and has the greatest number of acrobatic actions to date. However, the combat is its weakest link, and seems stuck in the past. If you liked the older Tomb Raider games, though, you will probably enjoy this latest adventure and Lara’s next-gen makeover.
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