Tomb Raider Legend
AH! Why do they keep making new Tomb Raider games? This has to be the sixth or seventh game in the series. Maybe they think if they keep making more, that they will eventually get it right and make a half descent game. Well my friends let me tell you…they finally did.
Tomb Raider Legend is newest game in a continuing series of hopeless, crappy, tomb raiding shite. Ok, I’ll admit the first Tomb Raider game was good. I bought it and played through it a few times. Then the second Tomb Raider game came out and I bought that as well. Only this one wasn’t that great. Maybe it was more of the same or maybe that initial ‘wow’ factor finally wore off. Either way I never finished that game.
But they kept coming as you playing Lara Croft running and jumping through ugly and outdated caves and tombs. The graphics never seemed to change and neither did the game play. The Tomb Raider series became a laughing stock. With news of another Tomb Raider game coming to the shelves you could hear the moaning of most gamers as they all sarcastically whisper “great.”
That was the response of most people (including myself) when news came of a new Tomb Raider being released called Legend. But after a while the game started to look better and better. When the game was finally released, it received quite a few good reviews. So I took a chance and got the game. I have to tell you I was not disappointed. This game made me fall in love with Lara again (not literally of course, just with the game series).
Graphics
The graphics are on par with most current games today. They are nice to look at but nothing really incredible that just makes you stop to enjoy them. I had a few graphical glitches where I could see through landscape (snow) or weird shading would occur on some of the characters. I also couldn’t seem to get any smooth frame rates with AA enabled so I had to play with it off. But I’ll admit that even the AA off, the game still looked good.
Sound
I really don’t pay that much attention to sound in a game. All I know is that stuff makes sound. But some of the background music was kind of nice. The music would also change or up-tempo if an enemy saw you or you were in a combat situation.
Game play
The game play is the biggest improvement of this series. The jumping puzzles were fun and challenging at times. I spent literally several hours just in Croft Manor trying to find and complete all these jumping puzzles. The gun fighting was also enjoyable. No longer can you just aim and shoot, but you also have these special moves to make fighting more fun. You can kick people when close to them, jump on their head and shoot from above, or slide under them to shoot from below. Some of these special moves put you into a ‘bullet time’ state where it goes into slow-mo for a more enhanced effect.
Difficulty
Don’t laugh but this game was difficult for me. Some of the puzzles took me a while to figure out as well as some of the boss battles. But I enjoy that. I like games that challenge me, even if I do curse and yell at them. At other times though, the game felt too easy. You hardly lose any life while fighting enemies or bosses. The environment seems to do more damage to you. Running into a pungee stick equals 1/2 dead, while getting shot 47 times equals only 1/16 dead.
Replay
Probably zero to none. The only replay this game offers is a Time Trial mode to see how fast you can beat the levels. Yawn. No thanks.
In the end this game was fun and kept me busy for a week. I would recommend it to any Tomb Raider fan. It’s a hell of a lot better than any previous Tomb Raider game. It also gave me a nice break from Oblivion.
Now back to Oblivion. 🙂
