Tomb Raider: Legend

Lara Croft and the Legend of the Naughty Dog was the first reboot of the franchise. It lost some of what made it a distinctive game, but Crystal Dynamics delivered a polished, by-the-book, well paced, if very short and a little mindless game. It took from Sand of Time and mixed it with light puzzles, fresh dialogues, fast-paced action... it's a formula that would become trite, but not here, not yet.

A whole department of the studio was dedicated to making Lara look great and it shows. She's expertly animated, sounds great, movement is fun... for the most part. The gameplay is extremely linear, you jump when you're told to jump and how you're told to jump, otherwise it doesn't work. It's the same old dilemma of video games that try to follow a film/TV narrative rhythm.

Classic adventures with badass -amazing ass- Lara (*Where*Is*My*Mother!). I lost count of what Naughty Dog would borrow, it's hilarious, I'm starting to think they didn't have an original idea, yet they would master the genre. Lara herself has borrowed lots from Indiana Jones, Batman, Prince of Persia, etc...

Tomb Raider Legend is the first console game in the series to not be developed by Core. Crystal Dynamics modernised the game which can be seen as a major positive or a negative. Core churned out many games on an old engine, and then despite Angel of Darkness being on new hardware (PS2), it felt largely like a classic Tomb Raider game.

The grid-based movement is completely gone now, so Lara can move freely, and the platforming is more forgiving with a larger reach (you have to press a button to increase grip if you mistime your jump). Even though the old system was clunky and time consuming, it really made the game distinctive and made you really think about your next move. Navigation itself was like a puzzle.

Angel of Darkness introduced a stamina system for climbing. The system has been reverted to the classic style (no stamina). You can now navigate faster though by timing a button press when shimmying. Some of the climbing feels more like Prince of Persia with the classic crumbling of ledges as you pass over them, and leaping from wall to wall.

There are a few Quick Time Events (QTE) in the more cinematic scenes, with Lara needing to duck or shoot her way out of a perilous situation.

The game is very linear, so there's no backtracking unless it is part of a story to do so. Progression never involves finding a key in one locale and then navigating back to use it. So you only solve puzzles with objects in the current room. Lara's Binoculars can highlight points of interest but I didn't feel this was very useful.

Many of the puzzles are now physics based, so now you will be rolling balls into place, weighing down see-saws, and moving blocks. Lara has a magnetic grapple that she can attach to objects and pull them towards her. She can also swing across chasms, or steer makeshift boats. It's a large part of the puzzles and navigation.

Finding the secret items in the level unlocks new outfits, character models, information, concept art, cinematics, etc.

The linear design and agile movement means that you can progress quickly through the game, and it is the shortest game at around 8 hours.

Another change to the game is the streamlining of the inventory. Lara can only carry 3 health packs (it was unlimited before, but they are now found more frequently as a reward for defeating enemies), carry 4 grenades, and one secondary weapon; you can constantly pick these up from downed enemies, and this includes the likes of assault rifle, shotgun, grenade launcher. Her primary weapon is the iconic dual pistols with unlimited ammo (which were missing from Angel of Darkness). There are no flares, but now she has a rechargeable light.

The game's primary enemies are humans but there are a couple of animals. The combat often seems a bit mindless. It's a bit like John Woo's Stranglehold but without the bullet time and not as many extra objects to smash. Lara runs fast and can jump/flip around then you are mindlessly ploughing bullets. Even though the game uses an auto aim system, most bullets don't hit the target. It's quite frustrating to shoot that many bullets and see them miss the target like a Stormtrooper from Star Wars. In many fights, there are explosive barrels to shoot to quickly dispatch nearby enemies. Some sections may have other structures that you can destroy for more carnage. There's a couple of turret sections, which I found I had to switch to the Mouse since the Gamepad is far too sensitive and I couldn't see an option to adjust this.

There's a few boss battles but these were quite annoying due to it not being clear what your objective was. You are often required to do specific actions otherwise the boss cannot be defeated. There was one boss I was battling with and could only hurt him down to 10% health, at which point he disappeared and came back with full health. You were supposed to grab an artefact to end the scene rather than actually fight him. Another boss requires you to shoot specific objects repeatedly to distract them, but the auto-aim can lock onto the wrong thing, and the "stun time" was quite strict.

There's 2 motorbike sections where you are mainly travelling down a wide area, with occasional obstacles, and you have to shoot other enemy bikers. These sections go on for far too long and the checkpoints are too infrequent.

While you can save manually, when you reload - you'll always start at a previous checkpoint.

The story is based on the mythology of King Arthur, and sees Lara go on another adventure around the world, from Bolivian caves, Japanese skyscrapers, Ghana, snowy Kazakhstan, and an English museum.

I've seen some reviews claim they toned down Lara's feminine features, but I don't see it. Some of the costumes are the most provocative in the series. There's a new voice actor who is faithful to Lara's sassy personality. Throughout the game, Lara talks to her team, Zip and Allister; so there’s dialogue and general banter throughout.

On the PC, there is an option to enable "Next Generation Content". This mode can look very dark. There's some crashes here so you may need to switch back at times. Also, in one of the motorcycle sections, I briefly saw medpacks that glitched out. By switching this mode, I then saw many more medpacks so it was much easier.

There's some animation glitches, a few where I got stuck in a looped animation. I often found Lara climbed ladders at a slanted angle which threw her movement off when she jumped - so often leaped to her death.

Tomb Raider Legend modernises the franchise and takes inspiration from other games like Prince of Persia, but at a cost of its identity. The game is decent but nothing special.

Following The disastrous Angel of Darkness, Legend breathed new life into the franchise with improved presentation, smoother controls and a bigger influence of action.
For the most part it succeeds in a fun thrill ride of an Uncharted game before Uncharted existed. Where it fails is with unreliable platforming and simplistic puzzles.
While the franchise would soon see a needed overhaul, I can't help but always prefer this version of Lara, a badass wise-cracking adventurer and not the "oh my god every second of my life sucks" younger version.

i'll admit theres not much in the tomb raider series that interests me. most of it is puzzles and I kind of hate puzzles. you awkwardly platform yourself around in drab caves and cliffs until you finally find the right section, use the right tool, get the right item, and progress. ok now for legend, I pretty much don't like anything about it. the platforming sucks because the controls are shit (keyboard and mouse) everything feels like a chore.

i feel no satisficaton platforming and solving stupid puzzles just to play the next awkward gunfight (spam one button and it auto targets) the "combat" is terrible. and thats the entire game...platform a few sections, fail half a dozen times, do it exactly the way the game wants you to in order to progress, find the right item, put it in the right slot, progress to an auto aim combat sequence OR even worse......god awful forced driving sections (puke). really just not a fun game at all for me, and it really makes me worry that i'll never enjoy a tomb raider game...


4/10

Legend was easily one of the weaker Tomb Raider games on PS2 and the problem is that it just hasn't aged very well. Sure it was a huge improvement over the terrible Angel of Darkness, but at the same time, Legend just felt really dull, linear, and lacked originality or excitement. Most of Legend I just felt the game was stringing me along a set path with set action pieces and motorcycle shootout segments. The story of the game is just forgettable with a lame villain and Lara looks a bit odd in this game to me for some reason. The other thing is the boss fights in this are terrible, there is an annoying boss with a giant sea serpent and you have to use gates to pull the chain to a trap to knock onto him, problem is if you mess with the chain before the boss you can glitch the fight out and the trap doesn't work, meaning you have to start the whole chapter over and redo the entire segment, which can be anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour of gameplay. On top of the terrible bosses the platforming segments that Tomb Raider is known for aren't that well-designed in this and are mostly just basic and incredibly straight forward. Legend might have been the start of Tomb Raider being revived after a series of awful games, but I feel like Anniversary just made so many improvements and Legend just feels awkward and outdated. Plus the game is incredibly short as well, and characters hardly get any time to develop.

The jumping is alright, albeit a little restrictive, but the overall experience feels pandering, almost baby-ish, with too many prompts driving the puzzles and so many failed attempts to hide shallow and unsatisfying gunplay, which with an atmosphere unsure of how it feels about previous entries leads to a game with an identity crisis. Picking this up again in almost ten years was painful.