Tomb Raider: Legend

Lara Croft finally returns to action after a few dismal outings...

Now, I didn’t ever play the reviled Angel of Darkness, the Tomb Raider adventure that nearly did for Lara once and for all. In fact, I’d lost interest after Last Revelation, figuring that Ms Croft was no longer waving but drowning.

Like many, many other journos out there, not to mention a lot of real people, I was surprised to find myself not only playing yet another Tomb Raider game, but really quite enjoying it. Lara hasn’t so much confounded and sucker-punched her critics as apologised politely over a decent dinner in a comfortably familiar restaurant.

It is very odd playing and reviewing Tomb Raider: Legend. It does absolutely nothing new. In fact, the problems the game has (and there are more than a handful) are largely the same ones that the franchise has always had. To this is added the fact that, despite the game appearing on the 360 and having some nice lighting effects other formats don’t have, it’s still a PS2 game. Only a lot more expensive. Finally, Lara has had rings run around her by the very spry young-ish pretender Prince of Persia. He not only stole her crown, he rifled her underwear drawer and forgot to put the toilet seat down when he’d finished.

Oh, and Samus left some Prime graffiti on the Croft Manor walls…

So why is it that I spent the majority of the game grinning like an idiot? Why is it that the game works? To answer that, let’s start with the ways Tomb Raider: Legend is little broken.

The graphics in the 360 version can look stunning. However, there are enough average to bad moments to convince you that you’re playing the PS2 version. The clipping is dreadful. Lara’s hair keeps flowing into her head. She often stands a virtual inch above the ground. Stacks of boxes hover in the air after you’ve shot out the lower ones. In the gym in Croft Manor, Lara can jump and hang off empty space when a fold out ladder isn’t there. Lastly, Lara can still make a running jump with one foot well over the edge of the drop.

The motorcycle levels are utterly woeful, the controls muddy and unresponsive, the opponents uninteresting, the graphics uninspiring and the collision detection distinctly suspect. Even on the hardest setting, however, you can get through these bits with little real effort or involvement. This is a damn shame, as they snap you right out of the atmosphere the game otherwise creates rather well.

The level design is both a strength of the game and, while not exactly a weakness, is something that needs to be worked on. With certainly the first of the recent Prince of Persia trilogy, there was a feeling of working one’s way through an actual environment; a place that made sense within the overall setting. You could actually see that things had an original and logical purpose before the Prince used them to swing off.

This is sometimes the case in Tomb Raider: Legend. The environments are, with a couple of exceptions, very beautifully realised. One of Lara’s team, speaking in her ear from the Croft Manor base camp, says that we’re seeing the crumbling remains of something spectacular but thousands of years old and a bit tumble-down. There is a genuine feel of this, and it’s a feel that is occasionally spoiled by a pole or platform that serves no other purpose than to allow Lara to get somewhere.

This is particularly the case in the modern levels, Tokyo and Kazakhstan. They really suffer from the Austin Powers bad guy’s lair syndrome; all that is missing is an unprotected self-destruct button to blow up the Yakuza building, for example. Actually, the ex-Soviet research lab levels are also more than a little bland to boot.

At certain key points in the game, the developer has chosen to show you a semi-cutscene where, in a nod to un-interactive games such as the Dragon’s Lair series, you must hit a button when prompted to save Lara from various situations. Sometimes, you’re given an unhelpful and shifting view of a situation (a rolling boulder or charging enemy point-of-view), and you have to run and jump as best you can.

Presumably, these moments were supposed to increase tension and do something a bit different. Unfortunately, they just annoy and distract. It would have been better to have designed these stand-out moments so they could work with the regular controls. Instead, you’re left fumbling with a suddenly clumsy controller, and are reminded once again that you’re just playing a silly game.

The last thing that deserves a wrist-slap is the combat. If you have yet to play the game, do yourself a favour and start it on the hardest setting. That way the fighting will be a little more challenging. On any other level, it’s just a minor distraction before you crack on with the platforming. On hard level, combat is a medium-level distraction. It’s just a case of holding down the fire and target button, and occasionally tapping Y to blow some bit of the scenery up.

The regular bad guys are really stupid, and will happily perish running through big, obvious gouts of flaming death to try to get to you. The few bosses follow traditionally limited attack patterns that defy their in-game personalities, again annoyingly snapping you out of the immersive atmosphere.

With all of the above, what is it with Tomb Raider that works? Well, its exuberance pulls you along. Those moments when, thanks to the newly fluid controls, you string together a short series of running, ducking, jumping, swinging and catching gymnastics that’ll leave you smug and any audience breathless. Sometimes, as in Ghana at the waterfall, the environments are really deeply impressive. The tombs you raid are deliciously devious at times, but never frustrating. OK, so you’ve done it all before, but that doesn’t matter when what you’re asked to do is so much fun!

It’s worth pointing out that the sound is pretty good and that includes, thankfully, the recorded dialogue. The voice acting is universally strong, and the plot carries everything along nicely. The ending leaves you hanging a little, but not in a frustrating way (Halo 2 take note). Also, you will be left with an uncomfortable feeling that Lara is actually not a very nice or well-balanced person (duh!), but you’ll forgive her when you unlock the catsuit.

Ah, yes, the extra stuff. Tomb Raider: Legend is not a very long game, even on the hardest setting – eight levels, and two of those are short, plus Croft Manor. To make the game slightly worth revisiting, and to make those 360 achievement points slightly tougher to get, there are bronze, silver and one gold reward items to pick up on each level. You need to collect ‘em all to unlock everything (costumes, pistol upgrades, artwork, character profiles, etc) and get that 100 percent completion satisfaction. You can also go through each level against a virtual clock for those last achievement

In conclusion (for those of you who have cut straight here), Crystal Dynamics has done a great job of reminding us all of why we fell in love with Lara Croft (it’s that catsuit again) and the whole Tomb Raider thing. If there is to be a sequel, and I join the rising chorus of voices demanding one, it is going to have to properly develop the core (design) gameplay that Tomb Raider: Legend gets back to. If Eidos and Crystal Dynamics decide to just tread water, then Lara will sink beneath the waves forever. And, what’s more, she will deserve to.

This review comes courtesy of our friends at Boomtown.net .