Believe it or not, until last week I had never played a Tomb Raider game before. Shocking when you consider I LOVE platformers and am a male who likes purty ladies. Not to say that I never tried, but until a few weeks ago my only experience with Tomb Raider games is the demo of the original way back in late 1996 which never let me play for more than a few minutes before crashing. This is about as far as I ever got. :p



Not too long ago though I saw Tomb Raider Legend on sale at a pawn shop for cheap, and figured why not. From the various gameplay videos I've watched over the years It looked to have similar platforming aspects as the Prince of Persia games which I absolutely adore. Plus it stars a hot busty British woman with guns. I mean, if there is anything that's sure to lure a guy in it's tits, guns and video games right? Well, as you may recall my good pal Black Yoshi stopped by a few weekends ago, and we decided to check the game out. Being late to the series I wasn't sure how I was supposed to play the game, so I went with how I figured most guys prefer to play with Lara Croft



Didn't seem to enhance the experience... Although maybe I was just doing it wrong, because after getting dressed and playing through the game I'm left with mixed feelings.

The brief rundown of the story is that you're Lara Croft, rich explorer extraodinare. The game centres around your mother, who died when you were a child, Amanda, who died in the recent past on an archeological dig, and an ancient sword with mystical properties. I was unaware of any of the Tomb Raider story and was quite surprised about how deep it was. While a good bit of the story was pretty predictable there are some good plot twists that I didn't expect, and while it's certainly not award winning it was enjoyable enough and certainly seemed like it could tie into a series.

Funnily enough though, it was Lara who actually seemed more like the villain in this game to me. Not sure if that's how she comes off in other games, but to me she was just a spoiled know-it-all who was always used to getting her way and never failing at anything. This particular adventure wasn't for any reason other than personal gain, and the final villain while kind of a jerk didn't seem nearly as self-absorbed as Lara and actually got more sympathy from me. The ending in particular really set me back, where Lara's actions reminded me more of an anti-hero who lets emotions rule their actions, constantly antagonizing people and using them for her own gain until they have no other choice but to attack her.

A brief mention on the graphics and sound is that they are good enough. The levels have very good art direction and are well designed, but don't expect cutting edge graphics or effects. The sound is similar, providing good background noise with reasonably good voice acting.

The good and the bad continue when we take a look at the meat of the game: the gameplay. As already stated, it's a puzzle platformer. The game primarily consists of a series of puzzles that you have to solve, one after the other, to progress. The game is completely linear, although there are some side paths that leads to rewards (the "collect 'em all" item that seems to be required in games these days...). The puzzles themselves are mostly quite enjoyable and satisfying to complete, including some of the reward puzzles which sometimes span a significant portion of the level. The game feels very much like the Prince of Persia games, which I'm not surprised at as I've been lead to believe that the two series have inspired each other before. There is no time manipulation here though, which unfortunately means you'll suffer many frustrating deaths at the hands of a slightly off jump or bad camera angle.

In between all of this puzzle solving are combat and driving sequences, which are done well enough. The auto lock sometimes just refuses to lock onto the enemy right next to you however, preferring the enemy that conveniently happens to be out of range. Thankfully this is little more than an annoyance as even on hard the only thing you need to worry about in combat are the instant-death things, such as grenades or driving head-on into a tree. The game thankfully knows its priorities and really only includes these to give the game more variety, and with all of Lara's jumping and rolling abilities combat can actually be fun. Unfortunately the dreaded quick time events make a far to frequent appearance in the game, which is only slightly helped by the rather funny ways that Lara will die if you mess up.



Once you're finished the rather short game (my first run-through on hard took about 9 hours), there isn't much else to do. There are time trials you can go through, however given how linear the game is it really is just a test on getting through the level without screwing up. For completionists the collectible rewards offer extra unlockables such as new outfits, concept art, character bios, and cheats. From the main menu you can also explore Lara's Mansion, which offers some more rather challenging puzzles but ultimately won't add more than an hour or two. I barely put in more than 10 hours to unlock everything and don't expect to ever play it again.

So in summary (because that's all people ever look at if there is no score) it's a solid platformer that sadly is lacking on content and replayability, and make the tragic mistake of including quick time events. However it was worth it for the price I paid and something I'd recommend if you find it used and like platformers. Or if you have an unhealthy fixation on pixelated women. Personally though I prefer the real life variety: