Tomb Raider: Legend review
April 29th 2006 04:07
Lara Croft is back at it again with her latest gaming instalment of Tomb Raider: Legend. It is approaching 10 years since Lara made her debut on gaming screens and Crystal Dynamics – Lara’s new developers have put together a gem of a game.
Bolivia is the starting location for Lara in this new episode, with a strong focus on plot development and interaction with cut scenes. This in turn brings the player closer to the storyline – something which was quite missing in the previous instalments of the game.
Moving around in the maps is now not subject to a set path where Lara must perform annoying and specific steps and jumps to proceed to new areas. This helps reduce the frustration and repetition of miss timing jumps (from the previous games) and hence makes the game more progressive.
The regular character movements such as climbing on poles, cliff sides, ladders and swimming, running and jumping are all included making Lara still the dynamic adventure character she is. Additionally, Lara can perform a variety of summersaults and Olympic-type manoeuvres as she jumps off cliffs into lakes!
While engaging in combat, the third person perspective is still used to control Lara as she auto-locks onto targets and blasts away while jumping and running. A special feature which has also been included is a “focus” mode whereby Lara jumps off an enemy at close range and swiftly puts them down.
Being an adventure game, this game follows the traditional puzzle solving elements in order to progress. However don’t be dismayed from the previous titles where keys and back tracking endlessly to find certain a “piece of the puzzle” was necessary. Crystal Dynamics has changed this annoyance and made puzzle’s more “central”. Players will be more involved in the environment when solving puzzles, which makes the game again more progressive.
Overall, Crystal Dynamics has created a new Tomb Raider game which addresses the flaws in the old series. This in turn creates an excellent adventure game with stunning graphics and intriguing cut scenes to match. Unfortunately the adventure is somewhat short which might annoy some hardcore gamers.
The game is currently available on the PC, Xbox (and Xbox360), PS2, and soon on the PSP.
Official Website
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Comment by Stanley
Comment by Dani
Well this time around, the developers have opted for a more realistic representation of Lara (toned down a bit). Still looking good as ever though !