Tomb Raider: Legend (Xbox 360 and PC)
For some time there, things weren’t looking too good for Lara.
Feeling unfinished and cluttered with ideas never delivered upon, Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness heralded the death of what many thought to be a franchise that had gone far past its prime. The game that was meant to be the triumphant return of Miss Craft was instead more death knell, than anything else.
It would be up to the developers at Crystal Dynamics, best known for their Legacy of Kain series, to reinvent the property. Toby Gard, Lara’s original character designer who had left the franchise after the first title, was invited to return and lend his expertise as a creative consultant to the new chapter. Now, a few years later, the question is whether or not this is the start of a new Legend, or the epitaph for the series.
The Past
The interviews and previews provided on the ‘net hinted at the kind of changes that players could expect from Crystal Dynamics in Legends. Promising a far deeper treatment of Lara’s character as well as a return to the kind of tomb raiding that had made her famous, Legend had a lot riding on its release. Fortunately, Crystal Dynamics seems to have pulled it off, creating what is undoubtedly the best Tomb Raider experience since the original.
The story picks up in the jungles of Bolivia, where Lara is tracking down a particular artifact that is something of a personal quest for her. Much of the game will revolve around her history and flashbacks will reveal more about Lara than anyone has ever learned from her past exploits. She’s also no longer challenging deadly ruins in deathly silence with only her footsteps to keep her company. An ear piece that she wears keeps her in touch with Zip, her technical wizard back home, and Alistair, the well-read scholar that tries to keep pace with Lara’s discoveries by providing the history behind them. Together, they’ll be facing off against a ruthless gallery of villains as they track down the pieces of Lara’s past…and face an old friend that is waiting for her there.
Spelunking
Legend has taken most of what was aggravating about the previous Tomb Raider installments in terms of controls and has thrown them out completely in a long delayed refresh. Those dump truck tires strapped to her feet for the past six titles have been replaced by the weathered hiking boots of a far more intuitive and polished system that is comparable to that found in the Prince of Persia franchise.
What this means for players is that jumping from ledge to ledge, pulling off acrobatic stunts, and rolling beneath blades and over pits has never been easier in a Tomb Raider title. Veterans are in for a treat while newcomers should be able to quickly take to the game. Tutorial hints will show up on the screen to remind players of the controls, leaving the learning curve in the dust.
She’ll even try and reach out with one arm to catch ledges that are almost out of her reach, hanging on for dear life until the player hits the “Y” button to bring up her other arm to pull herself up. Little nuances like this are found everywhere. There are also certain sections that present themselves as ‘interactive cinematics,’ where you might find Lara doing several things at once with the appropriate button coming up for you to hit at just the right moment. I didn’t think they were bad and they do look great, but some players may feel that this kind of Dragon’s Lair gameplay doesn’t really belong amidst all of the other spelunking that you’ll be doing.
The game is viewed from a third person perspective camera angle that is easily controlled by the player. There are times when it can get a little ‘in your face’ from certain points of view as you do things in the game, but those moments were few and far between. Again, to veterans from the previous Tomb Raider titles, this is going to be something that they have waited to see in a Tomb Raider title for some time. The camera, in addition to the polished movement controls, make Legend extremely easy to handle and get into. The camera can be positioned most anywhere without trouble to give you the best view on whether or not you’ll be able to make that backwards leap to the next crumbling ledge.
Just as it is as easy to move about in the world of Legend, it’s also just as easy to fight off the baddies that don’t quite respect the kind of archeology that Lara is interested in doing. A lock-on system enables you to keep your aim focused on foes with a simple flick with the right analog stick allows you to switch between potential targets in quick succession. Weapons that enemies occasionally drop can be picked up along with grenades, although you’re limited to one other weapon outside of Lara’s pistols. The other weapons that you pick up are also limited in their ammunition, unlike her famous pistols that always seem to have an endless feeding bag of clips. You can even use a sort of ‘aiming’ mode with your weapons to take a bead not only on foes but on things in the environment such as chain links or crates as long as you have a weapon with the right range. Grenades are also available to send as gifts and Lara even has a few personal moves to mix things up with.
Lara no longer has to depend solely on her firearms to get the drop on her foes. She can now slide into foes to try to knock them off their feet, or execute a flying kick to send them flying into the nearest stucco wall. There’s even a move that she can pull off if she gets in close that allows her to jump up and then vault over an enemy’s head, initiating a kind of ‘focus’ mode where the action suddenly slows down and every shot that she triggers has an even greater impact. She’ll also be able to roll and dodge out of harms way, something that you’ll be doing a lot of especially in the later chapters. However, given how much firepower is in your way and how many times you’ll be using it to equal the odds, this feature didn’t see a whole lot of use in my playthrough, especially with the bosses.
There’s also a lot in the environment that Lara can key off of to make things much easier, such as exploding barrels or in setting off small avalanches of rocks to bury her potential suitors with. Most you can try and target yourself, but others will be indicated by the action button icon showing an opportunity to do some real damage. This is also something to keep in mind for the boss fights that will occasionally come up to end her adventures. One or two of them are straightforward button mashers, but all of them make use of their environment and some even go so far as to bury what you will need to do within them to survive.
Lara also has a few tools to help her explore, equipped with a self recharging light that illuminates the dark hallways and a PDA that allows her to keep track of what she is doing as well as a few other pieces of information. She also has a pair of binoculars that allows her to scope out what is ahead. An additional mode called the “RAD” mode allows them to scan ‘active’ surfaces and other items of interest, making a note of them. For example, you might scan a particular piece of machinery and suddenly hear Zip exclaim over your headset how cool it is. An icon will light up at the bottom of the binoculars to tell you whether you can move it, destroy it, or if it is part of the mechanism that will open the way ahead. This can be helpful as many of the puzzles and mechanisms that you need to use to get through them are subtle a parts of the environment.
She also comes with a magnetic grapple that she can use to swing over pits just as one other famous archaeologist is known for doing with a certain bullwhip. The grapple can attach itself to ’shiny metal’ surfaces and you’ll definitely see a lot of them as they glimmer to catch your attention. It’s pretty useful, although the controls for ‘aiming’ the thing isn’t something that I thought was as polished as the rest of the controls. This comes to a head later in one particular boss fight when you have to switch between your weapons and the grapple, making it frustrating not because of the difficulty involved but because I felt as if I were fighting the grapple controls at that point.
Taking a page from the trend started in titles such as Everything or Nothing, there are also action sequences where Lara will find herself on the back of a motorcycle in a high speed chase through desert canyons or the frozen steppes of Kazakhstan. The bike can be a bit touchy, but it controls well enough to send you flying over ramps and over one crevasse after another as you try and fend off the mercenaries that want to give you a deadly dose of road rash.
As for saves, the checkpoint system is back but the checkpoints are handled in such a way that you will rarely find yourself repeating massive sections just to get back to where you had died. The system does a great job in keeping you in the game without frustrating you by forcing you to repeat half an hour’s worth of work because you screwed up at the last jump. There’s also a save function, but it only saves the game at the last checkpoint that you had cleared which, given how balanced it is, is not as bad as it sounds.
Local Sights
To help bring the world of Legend to life, the game features a physics system that is not only used to make falling stones and tumbling walls look good, but it also impacts many of the puzzles in the game. You’ll be launching stones, tripping weights, and pulling blocks everywhere to open up that last door that stands between Lara and the prize she’s after. Unlike in the previous Tomb Raiders, the blocks and items you pull and tug are no longer tied to an invisible grid. The physics handle everything here and the free movement afforded by the controls is not just for climbing cliff faces or dodging bullets.
True to their promise of bringing the tombs back to Tomb Raider, the locales that Lara will be exploring feel every bit as ancient and as mysterious as they are supposed to be. Ancient murals cover walls, columns covered in strange glyphs and symbols rise into the darkness overhead, ancient mausoleums and catacombs continue to hide the dead away behind deadly traps, and ice buries forgotten corners of Nepal. None of these feel like a generic series of tunnels put together just to add another location to the plot.
Each one of them was made to be a vivid representation of their corner of the world and the artists at Crystal Dynamics have done a remarkable job in pulling this off. Some of the puzzles and the levels that they are in really stand out from the rest, with a former funhouse as one locale I wasn’t expecting to see but was a lot of fun to play through. Croft Manor is also included in Legend, chock full of other secrets and acrobatic puzzles that you can find to unlock as a fun “side mission” outside of the main game. If you’ve ever wondered what Lara’s house in the country is like, you now have a chance to find out. There’s still the occasional strangeness in these levels, though, such as torches already lit in what are supposed to be sealed tombs.
If there was one thing that Angel of Darkness did well, it was to try and make Lara appear more ‘real’ and less of a blow up doll. Fortunately, this has continued in Legend to make her look more like an adventurer, with extra weapons slung on her back, pistols at her sides, ‘nades hanging from her belt, and a grapple line ready to go. The changes work, although she’s certainly not someone you’d expect to see walking on the street as she and the other characters still retain that ‘videogame’ look about them. But as far as gaming femme fatales go, she fits the bill with a whole slew of costumes and slick animation work. There were a few times, though, that the animations did seem a bit off, especially if you were locked on foes and watched as her lower body pivoted like a turret, but overall, it’s a welcome change.
The special effects and the lighting in the game are also extremely well done and look great on the 360. The flashlight plays across the rough hewn walls of forgotten tombs and ancient caves, highlighting the bump mapped textures and other details. The water and other environmental effects are also well done, with crackling fire casting long shadows on the floor and the walls around you and the water rippling in your wake as you swim to shore. One criticism leveled at 360 titles is in how plastic some of the graphics can look, but Legend has done an exceptional job sidestepping this potential pitfall.
The crackling ice falling from the ceiling of an ancient temple, the weapons and exploding grenades, the thunder of a waterfall, to the hum of electricity and the mechanical thumping of machinery are just some of the ear candy that is in the game for players to experience. The music, especially, helps to make each area stand out with locally flavored tunes following Lara everywhere. The faint vocals found in the track for Nepal, the Soviet inspired notes that follow Lara into a Cold War tomb of technology, and the whacky party music from Japan are only a few examples of the great music to be found in the title. The sound team at Crystal Dynamics has done a good job here.
Depth of Character
As mentioned before, another large change to the Tomb Raider formula is in its story. The story is actually pretty good. It’s a lot more personal than I had expected it to be, with much more revealed about Lara’s past, adding a much needed (and somewhat missing) dimension to her character. Instead of appearing to go from one tomb to the next with only a cut scene in between to show the transition, players will get to see the plane crash that started it all and the events that underlie her passion for adventure.
Her sidekicks that she hears through her ear piece add to the general story of the game, following her exploits and trying to lend some of their wisdom to what she is experiencing out in the field. The banter between her and her friends back home is really well done and there were more than a few times that I had gotten a chuckle from Zip’s dry wit to Alistair’s near hysterics over Lara’s less-than-gentle handling of historical relics.
As for the villains, they’ve also got quite a bit of a flair for the dramatic, but you’ll be blowing through faceless hordes of mercenary fighters for the most part which lends a sort of dull edge to the combat as a whole. The key villains, which aren’t that many to begin with, are basically given almost bare lip service. Don’t expect there to be a great deal of setup with most of those that get into Lara’s way, although the main nemesis that Lara will inevitably face does provide the kind of character that the others seem to lack.
While the main game is great and I expected to see it topped off with an ending worthy of the experience to get to it…let’s just say that while it set everything up for a sequel and a fresh angle on the entire Tomb Raider franchise, it still felt as if it left me hanging off a cliff. If you’ve played Halo 2, you’ll know what I’m talking about. I was hoping to play through another seven hours of Tomb Raiding, though, but I’ll just hope that the inevitable sequel will do a much better job.
Field Notes
As fun as the title sounds, it’s not without its faults. While it’s a huge step forward for the Tomb Raider titles, it doesn’t do anything radically new that other titles such as Prince of Persia, Beyond Good and Evil, or Everything or Nothing, have already demonstrated. That might be a good thing, since many of those gameplay concepts helped to make those titles accessible and entertaining at the same time. Just don’t expect Legend to turn the world upside down.
On a more technical note, there were a few things that stood out during gameplay that weren’t so great. One technical gripe I have is in the delay in loading saves and restarting from the last checkpoint. Even if it was only a few minutes from where you had died, it felt as if the game loaded up the entire level just to get you back to where you were a few paces ago.
While the narrative itself is a welcome advancement of the Tomb Raider story, there were moments in the game where there was the occasional continuity gaffe. At one point, your friends get in trouble and seemingly drop off from contact…yet when you use your binoculars to scan items in the background to see where you need to go, you’ll hear them as if they’re just fine. There was also one instance of where I had tripped some dialogue from Zip, only when I backtracked through it and then back out again, I heard it again. And again. It was odd, but considering how well polished the rest of the title felt, I was surprised to hear this.
One strange bug that stopped me cold was when I found myself stuck between a floating raft and a wall. Somehow, I was trapped as the raft bounced against Lara’s feet when she should be falling off of it into the water only to end up stuck against the wall she was next to. As a result, she was pretty much trapped there, caught in an infinite ‘falling’ spiral until I reloaded from a previous save.
But perhaps the greatest criticism that I can level against Legend is its relatively short play time. On the default difficulty, most gamers can probably expect seven to eight hours total to get through the main game. Although the inclusion of extras such as Croft’s Manor and the hidden artifacts that you can try to find during the main game to unlock bonuses and achievements for your 360 can help keep the game fresh, there’s not a whole lot else to do outside of that once the main story is finished.
Return of a Legend?
Crystal Dynamics has pulled off what some had thought would be impossible with Legend. It doesn’t do anything innovative gameplay-wise, per se, but it is a solid game that Tomb Raider fans should like. This is the kind of gameplay that should have been brought into the series long ago, complete with a strong story, interesting characters, and a globe hopping adventure.
As short as the main adventure can be, though, whether or not you want to shell out the bucks for the XBOX 360 version depends on how badly you want to pay for the extra eye candy especially if you have a PC (the 360 version retails at $60 USD, while the PC is $40). There’s no doubt that it looks great and there are extras enough to keep you busy after you’ve finished it, but for some it might not be enough to consider it more than as a rental. Nevertheless, no matter what system you play Legend for, it looks like Lara may have been only fashionably late to the party.
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