GameSpy Review of Tomb Raider: Legend

When she burst onto the scene in 1996, Lara Croft was unlike anything the gaming world had seen before. Here was a woman who was more comfortable in a dusty tomb than at a cocktail party; one that preferred to let her pistols do whatever talking needed to be done. The star of CORE Design's Tomb Raider took the world by storm, spawning a number of sequels and two full-length feature films. However, Lara's world came crashing down around her with the release of Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness in 2003. The game was so bad that the repercussions are being felt to this day. Fearing that Lara's days were numbered, Eidos recently took the development reins from CORE, giving them to Crystal Dynamics in an effort to pump some new blood into the franchise. After playing through Tomb Raider: Legend, we're happy to say that Lara's back, kicking ass and taking names in her most enjoyable adventure to date.

The game kicks off with a bit of an introduction to Lara's tomb-raiding roots. The plane carrying young Lara and her mother crashes in Nepal, and it's not long before the girl has stumbled upon an ancient sword lodged in a stone. I don't want to ruin the story for you, as it's likely the most coherent and enjoyable of the franchise. There are a number of cutscenes, although most of the exposition is handled by Zip and Alister, the two men who feed Lara information through her headset. The story takes the player all over the world, from the jungles of Bolivia and the frozen wastelands of Kazakhstan to the ruins of an English amusement park and a high-tech high-rise in Japan.


Fans of the series' early games will be overjoyed to hear that Legend brings much of the action back into the ancient tombs and tropical jungles for some good old-fashioned platforming. Gone are the days of meticulously lining up each and every one of your jumps, as you can now fluidly leap from ledge to pole to rope with the grace of a gymnast. Lara can adjust in mid-air, allowing her to grab onto ledges with one hand and save herself with the push of a button. The platforming is similar to that seen most recently in Prince of Persia, which, naturally, borrowed heavily from the Tomb Raider games. However, you won't be spending all of your time just jumping and swinging around, as the game features some diabolical environmental puzzles.

In the series' early titles, Lara spent a good deal of time sliding enormous square boxes around in an attempt to find the hidden switch that magically opened a far away door. Thankfully, those days are behind us, and we're instead treated to some puzzles and intricate contraptions that would make Rube Goldberg sit up and take notice. The game features a pretty robust physics engine, which allowed the developers to create some puzzles that don't have obvious solutions. You'll have to throw your memories of the previous games out the window, as you can now flip metal boxes through the air, push boulders off of cliffs, and float on coffins. While the puzzles are far from unfair, there are quite a few "Duh, why didn't I think of that in the first place?" moments to keep you humble. Like the previous games in the franchise, there's plenty of gunplay to keep the proceedings intense (although dodging booby traps will be exciting enough for many people). The combat is fun for the most part, although it doesn't really offer much of a challenge. You'll be able to lock on to your nearest foe and fire away, switching whenever necessary with a quick flick of the right analog stick. It's pretty basic stuff, though we were happy to see the mechanic that allows Lara to shoot any highlighted objects to take down her enemies with an environmental kill. The developers also did a great job of pacing the game, with much of the exploration and puzzle-solving bookended by heavy combat sequences.

Legend also offers a number of gameplay mechanics that haven't been seen before in the series, including a number of entertaining survival mini-games. Like the classic Dragon's Lair, pressing the wrong button or moving the wrong way in the mini-game will send Lara to her death, and the developers made one for each segment (be sure to check out the "Unfortunate Mishaps Video" in the Special section). Lara's also got plenty of cool gadgets that you'll need to use if you want to progress, including a personal lighting device and binoculars that allow the player to find points of interest (such as movable objects) in the levels. We should mention the two long motorcycle chases that blend driving with gunplay, but the less said about those the better.


Tomb Raider: Legend is being released simultaneously for the Xbox, PS2, and Xbox 360, and it's essentially the same game for all three systems. Basically, the differences between them boil down to graphics and controls. Not surprisingly, the Xbox 360 version is the best looking of the bunch, but it suffers from some frame-rate slowdown when you're using the lighting device or panning the camera around. On the current-gen side, the PS2 game offers slightly easier-to-use (and tighter) controls than the Xbox, although it's the least visually appealing version of the three. Finally, the Xbox is the only one that runs at a buttery 60 frames per second, but the combat controls could use a little work.

Our biggest qualm with the game is actually one that can be easily remedied when it comes time for Crystal Dynamics to start crafting a sequel: It's too short. Sure, you can spend a few extra hours searching for the hidden artifacts spread about the levels (bronze are easy to find, gold are nearly impossible, and silver fall somewhere in the middle), but the game can be beaten in one extended sitting. It took me just under 8 hours to complete 90% of the game, and it's not a terrible stretch to imagine someone rushing through it in 5 or 6. It's a good sign for a game when players want more, and it's further proof that the Tomb Raider series is back in a big way.

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