Articles
By Diresim
Published: Mar. 4, 2007 11:36 AM
Being a ‘Raider Virgin’ before trying out Chrystal Dynamics’ latest action adventure romp, Lara Croft’s Tomb Raider Legend, it was with some trepidation that I first threw the disc in my 360. While I was aware that the first few games in the series, back on the original Playstation, were critically acclaimed and highly successful, I couldn’t forget that every title since then has been thrashed by both the gaming media and consumers alike. It took until a few hours in, but I quickly realised why people love this Lara Croft chick.
Jetsetting around the globe over the course of eight varied missions, visiting places such as Peru, Bolivia, and Kazakhistan, the player is tasked with doing two things. Navigating environments and killing bad guys. In general, each mission provides a healthy dose of both, and much to my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed them all. This was due both to the quality gameplay and the great story. It is interesting, varied, original, and most of all, it makes sense. Backing it up is a solid control scheme, some great puzzling elements, and a healthy dose of action.
The other contributing factor in amongst all this, is the star herself. Lara has attitude, sex appeal, and class. Her dialogue is snappy, intelligent, and well placed, never interfering too much with the action (there’s nothing worse than games which place important plot dialogue smack bang in the middle of loud action sections). What surprised me though, is that she controls so well. Moving her around is fluid, easy to get to grips with, and works well. All of the moves implemented have been done so very effectively. It helps that the camera is freely controllable, as such never getting in the way. This is super important when you’re trying to time that double jump perfectly. You can always line it up just how you want.
Despite the solid control mechanics though, I couldn’t help but wish I could do more. Games like Ninja Gaiden and Kameo offer literally scores of different ways to take out enemies, but in Legend your moves are limited somewhat. A number of different guns make things interesting, such as a mini-gun, a shotty and an assault rifle (not forgetting the awesome twin pistols Lara always carries with her), and there are some good melee moves you can pull off, but I couldn’t help but wish for some more variety in my fights. A lot of them are ranged encounters too, rendering the assault rifle by far the smartest choice in most encounters. Probably the worst thing about combat however, are the enemies. You haven’t seen bad AI until you play this game. Some of these guys must be on acid, seriously.
However, only about a third of the game focuses on combat, so the AI problems don’t hurt the gameplay too much. When you’re not shooting, you’re jumping, flipping, somersaulting, swinging around levels trying to determine how you can proceed to the next checkpoint. There are some really enjoyable scenarios here, but after a while things just get too repetitive. As there are only about five or six different ways to interact with the game world, and most of them are variants of the basic jump function, the puzzles tend to resemble each other quite startlingly. After a while you’ll notice that every problem you come across can be solved using the same set of solutions, and this is purely a result of the lack of options available to your character as far as manipulating her environment goes.
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