Tomb Raider: Legend

"Really a Legend, or just a title?"

The Game:

3 years since the last Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (2003), Lara is back again. For the last time the people behind the Soul Reaver series are trying to review the Tomb Raider games back to its original greatness. Do they succeed, or do they fail?
Well, in any case you shouldn't exactly trust this guide. I actually thought Angel of Darkness was a good game. Say what you want, but it wasn't that bad.

With Angel of Darkness the title finished the first time-line, and now they are starting on a new. When Lara was a child, her mother disappeared after touching some magic sword. Where did she go? Well, except Lara's father, everybody thought she was dead, but what if she really wasn't dead? This question gets attached to Lara's mind when she stumbles across James Rutland and a friend she though was dead. For some reason, they are collecting pieces of some magic sword. The following 6-12 hours Lara travels to various countries and places: Kazakhstan, Tokyo and Bolivia are only a few of them.

This is where we stumble across the first flaw in the game. The problem is of course the length. Mostly games in this genre should be about 10-15 hours, but this game is only about 6-7 if you know what your doing. Luckily there are a lot of secrets, unlocks, costumes and stuff like that, that makes the game really re-playable. But still, we want more of the story.

The game-play is great. The climbing gives you the same satisfying feeling like in the Prince of Persia games. Climbing such heights and doing stunts like that. It is pretty fun. When it comes to climbing and running the game-play is flawless, but when you turn over to the fighting and puzzles, it isn't as flawless as it should had been. The fighting is really easy, you just jump around and shoot and you're almost impossible to kill. Well, we have the melee attacks which makes the fighting a bit more interesting, but its still thin. And then over to the puzzles. Besides being too easy they are pretty much great. They aren't really original neither, but they are fun, and thats whats important, right? Another effect to the game-play has been added. So-called "Interactive Cut-scenes". For example Lara has to shoot something in a cut-scene and the triangle button shows up on the screen. If you don't press it, Lara misses and dies. If you do presses, she hits it. Well, before you starts screaming God of War rip-off, RE 4 was actually the first game to have something like that in our modern time. It works well, 'cause the scenes usually are pretty cool, like driving a motorcycle over a drawbridge or something like that.

The music in the game is pretty mediocre. Wanna-be epic theme tune and other music tones you really don't notice while you play. Not exactly something that makes you search for the game soundtrack. The voice-acting is very good and fits the characters, unfortunately the voices aren't synchronized with the mouth movements as they speak. Well, at-least in the Play station 2 version.

The Graphics of the game (in the PS2 version) are pretty mediocre. It isn't anything special. A little pixelerated in some scenes, like when she's riding a elevator. But the water and dirt effects work really great, and the HUD looks good too. All in all the graphics are pretty ok. Not exactly Metal Gear Solid 3, but pretty ok.

And now over to the control. After Angel of Darkness which had a really confusing control, Legend is here with a very improved control system. Everything works well. Like in for example God in War, Legend uses triangle as a "Action Button" which is used for many things. Like shooting a object while aiming at a enemy or put your left hand up and catch a ledge if only your right is etc. This isn't anything special or new, but it is a pretty ok set. The fighting control mostly works around holding your L1 button to lock-on then press R1 to shoot while bashing the circle or square button to dodge whatever the enemies might throw at you. Kinda reminded me of what you find in licence action games like Spider-man. You now again have better control on the camera. The whole Right analog stick is dedicated to controlling it, though i suggest inverting the X & Y axis before playing. It's pretty confusing with the camera turning left, when you push it to the right, but someone may like that.

Score:

- Gameplay: 8
- Sound: 7
- Story: 7
- Control: 9

Final word:

All in all, Tomb Raider Legend is a fantastic adventure game that gives you a interesting story, witty dialog and a great gameplay. I paid full price for it even though I barerly could afford it. And I'm not dissapointed even though its pretty short. So if you like Action Adventure Games, this is a game you really should play.

Final Score:

7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/12/06