Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend for Windows

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Tomb Raider is back. After the fiasco that was Angel of Darkness (AOD), not to mention those god-awful movies, many of us thought the franchise was doomed. Legend seemed to have promise, but we've been disappointed by false promises before. I'll tell you right now that I'm an old-school Tomb Raider fan-- I just think it doesn't get better than the original, and I still love to whip out the old games and play them sometimes just for fun. I'm so old-school I still think it should be played strictly with the keyboard. While writing this review, I loaded up all my old Tomb Raider games (except the original, which is the greatest, but the hardest to run on modern systems) and took them out for a spin, and even though the graphics are pretty sad-sack by today's standards, they're still fun to me (except AOD, of course, which was hellish right from the start). It's pretty entertaining to laugh at the lame fog and ambient lighting effects that were so impressive in 1998. Tomb Raider Legend is anything but old-school, but it gets a cautious thumbs-up from me.

The Backstory

Legend delves into Lara Croft's mysterious past, and changes a few details along the way. All Tomb Raider fans know that the devil-may-care adrenaline addict we know as Lara Croft was created years ago when Lara, then a precocious young aristocrat, went down in a plane crash over the Himalayas. Previous lore has told us that Lara was the only survivor of the crash, and surviving for weeks alone in the world's roughest terrain had a profound impact on her psyche, lighting a lust for adventure and danger in her soul and turning her away from conventional society. By way of flashbacks, Legend reveals that Lara was not the only survivor of the plane crash, after all-- her mother was in the plane as well. After taking shelter in a nearby ruin, Lady Croft was killed after Lara innocently fiddled with an odd stone carving in the ruins. It turns out Lara's obsession with danger is actually an obsession of a different sort. Lara has spent her life seeking to understand the force that killed her mother, and in the present day, she gets a tantalizing clue from an old friend which ultimately takes her around the globe in search of a mythical sword in a stone.

Controls

When Core designed Angel of Darkness in 2003, they tried to make the controls less finicky than the old grid-based system used to be (remember trying to line Lara up perfectly so she could make a jump, activate a lever, or push a block?), but they overcompensated by making the action TOO idiot-proof, allowing Lara to climb ladders, etc just by walking too close to them. Crystal Dynamics has largely managed to avoid the pitfalls of either extreme, making for a more natural gaming experience. The new "saving grab" feature in particular makes precision jumping more forgiving while retaining an element of challenge. If you fall slightly short, Lara will catch the edge with one hand, and you have to tap the Interact key quickly or you'll fall. It beats the heck out of falling to a grisly death 27 times because you didn't line the jump up perfectly. Another feature that makes things easier while retaining challenge is that you can do most actions quicker by tapping the Interact key quickly as you do it, and sometimes you need that ability to survive.

While the new control system is a vast, VAST improvement over the AOD controls, it has its own flaws. My major gripe is that the direction keys are tied to the camera angle rather than Lara's position, and the camera rotates freely as Lara moves, which means the direction keys are always morphing to different directions. You can use the mouse to move the camera back to a more comfortable angle in most cases, but there are moments where Lara has to jump backwards and do a 180-degree twist, grab a ledge, quickly shimmy to the side, and then do another complicated twisting jump before the ledge crumbles. Dealing with morphing direction keys under those circumstances is no picnic.

Minor gripes include the fact that it makes some things a smidge too easy, like the fact that you don't have to actually do anything to hold onto a ledge, rope, pole, or zip line. I also don't like Lara's habit of automatically spinning and grabbing a ledge when you casually walk off-- this is one feature AOD got wrong, and Legend fails to correct. In the old Tomb Raider games, Lara could back up, and in order to drop and grab a ledge you approached it, turned around, and backed off while grabbing. That made sense, but the "new" Lara doesn't go backwards. Instead, she turns and runs toward the camera, which makes backing off a ledge impossible. So you have no choice but to rely on the auto-grab feature. The worst part is that the ledge-grabbing trick is unreliable at all the worst moments, resulting in some unnecessary deaths. Combine that with the checkpoint system mentioned below, and you have a major annoyance. And it really becomes a PITA during Time Trial mode, when you want to simply run off low ledges to save time, but the game won't let you. Finally, I dislike the new swimming controls, but I like that Lara can swim efficiently on the surface of the water for the first time ever.

Gameplay

Although the controls and the graphics engine are all new, the elaborate puzzles and jumping/climbing sequences that are Tomb Raider's hallmark are still present in spades. And they're more fun than ever due to the more fluid control system. Most of the puzzles are fairly easy to figure out, and there's almost never a question about where to go or what to do next. In some ways, that's a bit of a shame, because sometimes exploring the scenery and trying to figure out where to go and what to do next are half the fun (although I hesitate to say that after experiencing Tomb Raider Last Revelation, where the solutions to puzzles were so arcane and counter-intuitive that it was almost unplayable without a walkthrough). I think one of the big problems with designing adventure games is figuring how difficult to make it, and unfortunately game designers seem to have accepted the idea that solving a puzzle is always going to be a set difficulty. Very often, the puzzles are either too easy or too hard, and adjusting the difficulty level gives you more health packs and ammo (that's how Legend works), but the puzzles are always the same. Why not design the game so that on Easy level, you get hints in the form of small cutscenes giving you a look at where to go or what to do, highlighting things that can be manipulated, or comments from Lara giving her thoughts on what might be important, but allow the player to turn those off by increasing the difficulty setting, so that you're totally on your own among the scenery? (Actually, I realized belatedly that they DID do a little of this-- hazards and movable objects are highlighted on Easy or Medium level, but the highlighting is turned off on Hard, and you have less time to negotiate hazards on Hard. But they could have done a lot more to make gameplay truly adjustable.)

I think Crystal Dynamics has come up with the best scheme for secrets, or rewards as they're termed in this game, yet. In some of the older Tomb Raider games, secrets consisted of hidden stashes of supplies or better weapons, and in others they were simply shiny statues that had no real value other than the thrill of finding them. And in some incarnations, like AOD, there weren't any secrets at all. In Legend, there are numerous rewards in each level, some bronze, some silver, and always one gold. They're color-coded according to the difficulty of finding and obtaining them, and your PDA keeps track of how many you've gotten, so it provides a way to "keep score," and adds replay value if you don't get them all the first time through. They also unlock game extras, which provides some actual incentive to go after them other then the simple thrill of finding them. Granted, most of the extra content is silly and pointless (who wants to spend time looking at a 3d model of a grenade?), but a few of the extras are pistol upgrades, which have actual game value. Then there are the extra clothes, which have eye candy value. I would have enjoyed having a secret bonus level unlocked by getting all the rewards in the game, something we've had in at least one previous release that I recall.

Another new aspect of gameplay is that Lara no longer has a bottomless backpack and a staggering array of weapons. Lara's trusty twin pistols with infinite ammo are back, and they were sorely missed during AOD, I can tell you, but other than that, but there are only four other weapons in the game (shotgun, sub-machine gun, assault rifle, and grenade launcher), and Lara can only carry one of them at a time, slung across her back, and she can only carry a few clips for each weapon, and four grenades. Firefights are slightly more realistic now because Lara has to pause and change out clips when one runs dry. Add to that the fact that you can only carry three health packs at a time (each of which only heals you 50%), and staying alive is a whole new challenge. To compensate for these limitations, the game has three difficulty levels, with varying amounts of health and ammo lying around.

The save/load interface is one of the game's low points. They didn't even bother to create a normal save/load system for the PC version, and everything is based on checkpoints. Annoying. On the other hand, the days of quick-saving are over, since the game automatically saves at every checkpoint. So if you die, you never have to worry about forgetting to save at a crucial moment, because you always go back to the last checkpoint. On the other hand, that may mean having to redo a tough sequence over and over again in order to get to the part where you keep dying. Another thing that's kind of cool but kind of annoying is that the game is designed to allow you to replay levels you've completed to try to get more rewards while still keeping track of your overall progress in the game. That's great, but don't try to save while you're replaying a level. You can't save your current progress through the level, you can only "Save Rewards." Saving the new rewards you've found is all well and good, but if you need to go do something else while you're replaying a level, you can't save the actual point you were at, and if you close the game and attempt to return to it later, you'll find yourself starting that level over from the beginning.

In between solving puzzles, Lara gets in fights with bad guys. They usually show up just as Lara is leaving the ruins with the prize in hand. Evasive maneuvers are essential for surviving the mobs of bad guys, and strictly during combat, Lara can pull her familiar old acrobatic moves, flipping and rolling all about while unloading both barrels in between. She even has some melee moves that work this time around, including a pretty effective slide-tackle, and the obligatory Matrix-style slo-mo airborne death-from-above move. In this Tomb Raider universe, for some reason, weapons and ammo aren't just lying around in random spots (?!?), so you have to pick up whatever you can get off of dead enemies.

The only vehicles used in the game are Ducati motorcycles, and there are several sequences involving driving a motorcycle at breakneck speed over rough terrain while dodging obstacles, jumping ramps and chasms, negotiating curves and tight spots, all while engaging in a firefight with a bunch of baddies. These sequences also involve some fun but improbable (that is, even more improbable than the rest) bits where Lara jumps the bike onto a speeding flatbed truck and onto a speeding train.

Ambiance

Yes, the graphics are great. Outdoor environments (and there are a lot of them) are the best and most naturalistic they've ever been in a Tomb Raider game. That could be faint praise, since the Tomb Raider series isn't exactly known for excellent outdoor graphics, and the outdoor environments here, although noticeably improved over the last release, don't quite stack up to 2006's truly high-end PC games like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. There are some high-altitude sequences, including a jaunt across the rooftops of Tokyo and a precarious climb through the high Himalayas, that will have your heart in your throat. Textures generally are very good, allowing moss-covered stones to look like moss-covered stones, carpet to look like carpet, and moving water to look a lot like water (although again, not as amazingly lifelike as Oblivion). But vegetation is still sub-par, and plants appear to float, bobbing partially submerged under the ground. Indoor environments are beautifully textured with great attention to detail as well, from a luxurious Tokyo penthouse club to a dilapidated museum to a ruined Himalayan temple. Lara herself is incredibly detailed and lifelike-- you can see individual wisps of hair on her neck, the striations in the irises of her eyes, the seams of her t-shirt, the tendons on the backs of her knees, and every strap and buckle on her gear. I also enjoy the "freebie" animations that are tailored to different situations-- in the winter levels, she wears a sweater and tends to shiver and rub her arms occasionally, and in evening wear, she straightens her skirt and adjusts the back of her dress. She even reaches realistically for her gear (which you can see hanging from her belt-- even the four grenades strapped to the back) when you activate it and puts it away again.

Nothing will ever be as good as the music from the original Tomb Raider. The basic theme was awesome, and the in-game background music was the best-- it was mostly a minimalistic array of eerie whispers, clanks, echoes, and dripping noises that was as much sound effect as music, with a light touch customizing it it to the different locations. It was just freaky enough to give you a slight atavistic shiver, without being over-the-top horror-movie creepy. In other words, it set the perfect mood for exploring a mysterious, probably dangerous tomb in which you might very well meet a grisly death. Variations of that same theme, composed by Nathan McCree, were used up through TR III, and some of those great ambient sounds are reprised in TR III, but it remains unmatched by any of the later releases, including Legend. The basic theme music for Legend is pretty good, and captures the adventuring spirit of the game, with a hefty dose of danger, but doesn't have the haunting quality of utter solitude and reverence for ancient places of the original theme. In-game music is good, but tends to be overbearing, although it blends in better than some previous releases. I particularly liked the meditative Nepal theme. I was neither impressed nor non-plussed by the actual in-game sound effects.

Technical

Legend's minimum system requirements are fairly modest by today's standards, and after upgrading my system to play Oblivion, one of the year's most power-hungry games, I didn't have any trouble at all running Legend. Legend ran like a dream-- always smooth, quick load times, no crashes. I noticed very few visual artifacts in the game-- there were one or two textures that were translucent, and once an enemy got caught on a corner. Better him than me. One odd glitch is that whenever Lara is standing in front of a water texture, her body shimmers and bobbles along with the surface of the water. The menu system is also slightly annoying because you can navigate it by mouse, but mouse clicks often don't work to activate sub-menus and keep them active-- you have to use the arrow keys and Enter. Finally, Lara draws and fires her guns anytime you save or load. But these are minor annoyances. Overall, I have to give Crystal Dynamics kudos for turning out a reliable product the first time.

Pros:

Excellent graphics (though not quite mind-blowing) with incredible detail. Great 3D physics. And all this with quick load times, too!

Interactive cut scenes in which full cinematics combine beautifully with timed action sequences. Most of the cut scene action is fairly simple, requiring you to press the correct key quickly, but there are a few running/jumping/rolling sequences as well.

The magnetic grapple is one of the game's coolest items, allowing Lara to leap into midair, latch onto any magnetic object, and swing to safety. Nifty.

Almost no screaming moments due to awkward camera angles that can't be changed. Those who complain about the camera obviously don't remember what it USED to be like. When they want to make sure you see something important, they stop the action and insert a quick cutscene to show the detail, then resume the action, instead of forcing you to move Lara while watching from a bizarre angle. And since you have total control of the camera with your mouse hand as you're playing, you virtually never have those camera lag moments where Lara rounds a corner and you can't see what she's facing next.

Croft Manor is far more than just an Easter Egg-- it's a complete level with plenty of fun and challenges and a whopping 27 rewards to be found, although nothing there is deadly. You can visit the manor as many times as you like as you progress through the game, change clothes, work out in the gym, take a dip in the pool, find a few rewards, and save the rewards you've collected during each visit. Easily the most engaging part of the game, to me. But I was a bit disappointed that you can't explore the grounds outside, as in previous games.

The handstand walkover pullup move is back! Yessss! So is the swan dive.

The boss fights are challenging but generally not ridiculous, like in AOD-- as long as you know what to do. But I don't think I ever would have figured out how to win some of them without hints.

Cons:

The PC version of the game is pretty clearly an afterthought, with the emphasis being on the console platforms.

The more realistic Lara gets, the harder it is to ignore what a skank she is. Some of her new outfits literally gave me the creeps. Who the hell raids tombs wearing all that eyeliner and rouge? And who on earth wears a flak vest that shows cleavage?? Not to mention showing up at a ritzy party in Tokyo wearing something that looks like it cost $29.99 at Hookers-R-Us? (OK, so you might be asking, Who the hell raids tombs in short-shorts and a tank top anyway? Also a valid question...) I think the answer to all those questions is that somebody's been watching too many porn movies.

Why, WHY, did they have to keep Zip and Alistair, Lara's annoying backup crew who were created for AOD? Lara Croft works ALONE. Where's the off switch??

The game is too short! I knew it going in, I milked it for all it was worth, but I was still left disappointed at how quickly it was over. I'm currently replaying TR III just for fun, and it's already obvious I'll be spending considerably longer on it than Legend took, even including the work I put in trying to get all the rewards. And that's replaying a game where I at least vaguely remember how to get through it. Although to be fair, it's hard to say how much of that extra playing time is due to all the stupid dying and reloading you do as a result of the finicky controls in the old games.