Tomb Raider Legend

The Tomb Raider series has finally caught up with current technology in the release of Legend. The old problems of sloppy control and difficult camera use has finally been replaced with a very smooth new Lara Croft adventure.

The Legend storyline involves our favorite explorer, Lara Croft, collecting pieces of a magical sword from all over the world to reassemble them into their unbroken state.

Lara is investigating her mother's death from several years ago, and this leads her to finding the story behind the sword. There are references to King Arthur which doesn't really fit in the mission, but is thrown in for interest since no exploring is done for this topic. The storyline does not necessarily make any sense, but visiting new countries, collecting artifacts, and blasting bad guys are Lara's specialties and that's why we play Tomb Raider.

Lara gets to visit several exotic locales on her quest. Remote lands such as Bolivia, Ghana, Peru, Tokyo, England, Nepal, and Kazahkstan offer a wide variety of landscapes and the opportunity to move Lara through different environments  add pizzazz to the game. The scenery is intricate in detail, and it doesn't matter if Lara is riding a motorcycle on top of a skyscraper in Tokyo, or performing swan dives off a cliff in Ghana, the visuals of Legend are firmly solid and impressive.

Puzzle play for Legend video game is a bit daunting at first, but once you solve a couple of them, the rest are child's play. The majority of them involve switch-type puzzles where Lara pushes or pulls a box onto a switch to activate something else. The real action in Legend lies in the acrobatic nature of Lara as she travels in these exotic places. The camera views are pretty good, so if Lara is hanging on a ledge, or swinging on ropes, or jumping from a platform to a ledge, you can move the camera angle to see where she will be moving to. Lara has a magnetic grapple which allows her to swing over distances too long for her to jump. The game is jam-packed full of this type maneuvering and the display is very fluid with Lara's movements.

With the puzzle play and acrobatics are plenty of opportunities for Lara to shoot bad guys and the occasional leopard. No animal cruelty sympathy please - they are trying to kill her and are very hungry. Fighting moves for Lara are the basics although she does have a slow-motion flip and shoot maneuver that is neat to watch. She carries two pistols which have unlimited ammo, but are short-range weapons. Lara does pick up other weapons as she goes along including shotguns, automatic weapons, and grenades.

In addition to fighting bad guys and flipping around environments, Lara gets to ride a motorcycle for some sequences in a shoot-em-up type ride-for-your-life  series. Once you get the hang of the controls for the bike, it is still challenging to survive the ride with bad guys shooting at you, steering to avoid trees and rocks, and shooting back, replenishing your life as you go.  

With all the action provided by Tomb Raider Legend, the game is not long enough. Even adding in the time trial features to unlock new outfits, or game movies does not overly-extend the playing time.  Overall for the price, Legend is an excellent game. We can only hope future Tomb Raider video games will contain a wider array of complicated puzzles and more levels for play.

Author Bio - Heather Giles

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