Like one time we had chickens running around a village and you could shoot them. But would Lara actually shoot chickens? You get lots of weird conversations about stuff like that. It's Fair to say that Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider franchise have taken one hell of a battering in recent years. After her hugely successful first outing, the square-breasted aristocrat must have felt nigh-on invincible.
Sadly, years of subsequent abuse at the hands of uninspired games developers, not to mention a couple of dodgy movies, have worn down the lady's veneer of perfection, and the series has degenerated into something of a sad joke in gaming circles. But all that is set to change. At least, it is if you believe what publisher Eidos is saying. Yes, yes, we know this is the same company who promised the horrifically bug-ridden Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness would reinvigorate the third-person sepulchre-looting genre, but this time it's got an ace up its sleeve in the shape of original Lara Croft creator Toby Gard, who's been hired as lead character designer for Tomb Raider: Legend.
As these screenshots show, Gard has applied a touch of what film directors often describe as a re-imagining' to Lara.
She's unmistakably the same feisty posh bird we all enjoyed accompanying on her mausoleum-robbing sprees all those years ago, but she now carries frag grenades and sports a pair of non-ridiculously-sized norks although her shorts appear to have shrunk in the wash. It's a new Lara for a new generation, or something. As well as the new character model, she's also getting freshly-animated moves, expressions and abilities, and neat little features like reactive eyes. You'll also get plenty of gadgets to help make your catacomb-based thievery go smoother than ever.
Aside from the famous dual pistols, Lara's now packing communications gear, binoculars, a magnetic grappling thingummy and something that Crystal Dynamics refers to as a personal lighting device' - what's wrong with torch'?
The developer is also making noises that suggest a return to Lara's old-style crypt-burgling antics is on the cards, and this can only be a good thing in our eyes.
The team has poured over the reactions to each previous Tomb Raider title, replayed them all and conducted new research in an effort to unearth that elusive fun factor. In our humble opinion, a well-balanced mixture of exploration and puzzle-solving was the cornerstone of the first game's appeal, and if Crystal Dynamics can successfully recapture that, then we could finally see a new Tomb Raider game that lives up to the Lara legend.
Full playtest soon. I'm Not Sure when things started getting out of hand with Lara Croft She's been on the cover of the late great Face magazine where she was compared to Pamela Anderson and Yoda , the subject of numerous feminist academic research papers and she's been described as both a cultural icon and 'one of the most fascinating and enigmatic figures of our time' by the developers of course.
The trouble is, when you start concentrating on extra-curricular activities like this, your day job suffers and one of the things that made her famous - the Tomb Raider games - have now made her a laughing stock. So it's make or break time. And despite fearing the worst the good news which I'll get out of the way early doors, is that there's plenty of life in the old dog yet Crystal Dynamics have taken the essence of Tomb Raider , tightened the dynamics and delivered a solid, if short game without any visible bugs.
It kicks off with a flashback - a narrative device that's used throughout the game to piece together Lara's past - to a plane crash in Nepal, before moving to the present-day and the obligatory tutorial which deposits you in a good old-fashioned tomb.
And this is where you get on with what Lara does best - solving puzzles, pushing and pulling crates and dispatching bad guys and endangered wildlife with your trusty pistols. And while it doesn't manage to create the same sense of awe as the original, you have to put that down to the fact that we're spoilt for choice these days.
The pacing of the game is almost perfect You're propelled through the game on the edge of your seat without spending too much time working out where to go or what you're supposed to be doing. Regular checkpoints mean that you never have to backtrack more than one puzzle or several somersaults if you die, but it never feels like you're on rails.
Everything's been designed to make the game flow as smoothly as possible. Take the new grappling hook, which you use to retrieve crates or swing to remote areas of the level. Rather than letting you work out which objects you can use through trial and error, relevant surfaces shimmer to give you a visual clue.
And if that's not enough, you can use your binoculars to analyse objects and see whether you can move them, grab them or shoot them. In addition, your new 'accurate-aim' crosshair changes colour to ram the message home, as well as letting you shoot precisely at remote targets. This perfect balance carries through to the puzzles, which are on the right side of frustrating, while being entirely logical and hard enough to give you a real sense of satisfaction when you crack them.
I must admit to almost whooping after cracking one first time, but thankfully I came to my senses in time. The developers have even managed to avoid relying on obtuse methods of dispatching the end-of-level bosses, although the final battle is keyboard-smashingly hard, especially if you get sucked in without the maximum number of health packs.
The story takes in a huge span of Lara's life, and it's a quest to discover what happened to her mum and best friend Amanda, both of whom are missing presumed dead.
And while much has been made of the fact that Legend takes Lara back underground, good game design means you don't have to keep a good woman down to provide the necessary thrills. In the eight big levels, you traverse the globe, taking in not only tombs, but a military base, a museum in Cornwall and a couple of giant skyscrapers in Japan.
And it's the latter level that perfectly encapsulates the new game. It's so good that I'm not going to spoil any of the details for you, aside from the fact that Lara's definitely got a bit of Posh about her in a black cocktail dress.
The only criticisms I've got - and they're fairly minor in the grand scheme of things -hark back to the fact that Tomb Raider is a game that's a lot more comfortable on a console than a PC. You might be getting a simultaneous release across all platforms which is most welcome , but the combat is fairly clunky - never less than playable, but definitely driven towards dual analogue sticks.
Also, the visuals, while extremely pleasing to the eye and occasionally epic in scope, aren't going to blow you away. It's a bit like criticising fast food for being unhealthy though - Legend was never designed as anything but a console game. You could also if you were nit-picking argue that it doesn't try anything new, which points to the fact that the developers were more interested in delivering a safe but solid game than taking a flyer on anything. But again, that was - given the size of the problems that beset the series before this -entirely the right thing to do.
And in a way, that sets the tone for the review. If you're addressing specific, almost non-higgles like this, you have to admit the overall flow of the game is relatively spot-. Thankfully, it's good enough to guarantee another outing, and after finishing this in two sittings I can say that not only is it hard to put down, but that this reviewer is already keenly anticipating the next chapter, and that's something I never thought I'd say about another Tomb Raider game.
It just reminds you how good the Tomb Raider games used to be before the madness took over. It's not a Classic, but it's a defiant return to form and that's a huge step in the right direction.
Legend is a back-to-the-cat-acombs re-envisioning of Lara Croft's musty franchise. Eidos jumpstarted the series by handing it over to developer Crystal Dynamics, which hired Croft creator Toby Gard to lend a hand. After six games that failed to evolve Lady Croft's clunky, prehistoric control scheme, she finally moves like a 21st-century game hero. Think Prince of Persia --Croft soars from ledge to ledge and swings from pole to pole with the greatest of ease. Lara's leaps feel a little more user-friendly, too.
As long as Lara lands near a ledge or pole, she'll extend her arms and latch on automatically-- even if you're not lined up perfectly. Slip off a cliff and she'll save herself with a last-second grab, thus saving you from lots of cheap-death frustration.
That's not to say death doesn't surround her. We saw halls crammed with spinning-blade traps and other nasty surprises. Fortunately, Lara comes with a new grappler that makes swinging over spike-filled chasms easy. The gizmo factors into the game's newly streamlined puzzles, too. She uses the grapple, for instance, to haul over a raft and pull her way across a subterranean river. Instead of the side-scrolling fare GB gamers are used to, this new handheld Tomb Raider uses a pseudo-3D overhead view.
The result is a game that feels more like the original PSi game and less like a generic platformer with the Tomb Raider name slapped on. In one word, short. In two words, short and awesome. This game may not hit any balls out of the park, but it hits a knee high line drive that gets us at least a double play.
With satisfying visuals, good voice acting, and a nod towards the gameplay that made it great, Tomb Raider has returned in a big way. After perhaps one of the more embarrassing series failures of all time, it looks like Crystal Dynamics may have pulled it off, reinvigorating this once tired and sad franchise.
This time around Lara is packing a healthier, slimmer look, complete with' ahem, polygons' that don't make her look like she'd break her back during simple stretches. Backing up the new look is a gameplay that's been tweaked ever so slightly to improve on the classic pattern.
Will you like it? I think so. I did. The story is familiar. Hunt down a powerful artifact. Learn secrets from Lara's past. It's all stock standard stuff, but entertaining too. This time, Lara Croft comes back more renewed than ever and with a new aim: Find a reliquia in South America. Tomb Raider: Legend shows us a lot of differences compared with the previous versions of the game, among others, the game has been translated into several languages, including voices and comments.
The graphical environment has been enhanced thanks to Crystal Dynamics and the character is even more real. Now, Lara Croft has new equipment, like a torch or a PDA which will become her new ally when searching the correct way and contacting her new friend.
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