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Fun gameplay, but far too short for its price

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 39 / 45
Date: April 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Lara is certainly back in top shape in this newest game. Tomb Raider: Legend may be the best in the series outside the original game, returning the focus to exploration and puzzle-solving, although there is certainly some gunplay. But it's far too short, with a story that literally ends midway without resolving major plot elements, leaving you feeling a little cheated once it's all over.

First the positives: The graphics are gorgeous even without the next generation content turned on -- the tombs themselves are very well realized -- and the game will run well even for those of us that lack a supercomputer. The voice acting is terrific, and the story is involving. The gameplay also is top notch, relying less on quick reflexes than on brains, with smart level design.

But there are several negatives that detract from the game. The levels are short and not nearly as large as in some of the other TR titles. You'll find yourself often saying "That's it?" The game itself can easily be beaten in two or three quiet evenings, even at normal difficulty, with not much replay value after that. The controls are clumsy, lacking the fluidity and responsiveness of the Prince of Persia games. Many times you know what you want to do, but can't do it because Lara won't respond the way you want her too. The bosses are unimaginative -- with the exception of one encountered outside a medieval castle -- and there are too many of them. And, in what may be the worst sin of all, the story ends without any sort of resolution to the mysteries it raises. Legend is obviously meant to be the first chapter in a larger story, like the first Lord of the Rings film, but when you've invested so much time (and money) in a game title, you're entitled to a well-rounded story experience.

The plus for PC owners is that Legend is cheaper than its console counterparts at $40, although $30 would be more reasonable given how short it is. If you own a console, this is a renter. Too bad the company didn't spend a little more time investing in a longer gaming experience - I suspect poor sales will finally spell the doom of Lara Croft, which is a pity.

A Return to Form That's Great While it Lasts

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 32 / 36
Date: April 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I have been a Tomb Raider fan since the beginning. I fell in love with Ms. Croft the second she unsheathed those dual pistols, just as many other gamers did back in 1996, and followed her to her ungainly demise. After Tomb Raider III, I sat back and lamented the fall in quality, silently hoping Eidos would either just kill the series altogether or find a way to make it work.

Tomb Raider: Legend (the seventh iteration) finds itself in the hands of Crystal Dynamics. Thank god for them, too; they take what was great about the original and revamp it into a good, if not necessarily brilliant, game.

We gain more backstory for Lady Croft in this game than we have in the past. When she was a small girl she and her mother suffered a plane crash in the Nepal. While trying to reach safety, they come accross an artifact that whisks Lara's mom into some strange portal, never to be seen again. It's not consistent with the previous games, but given their lack of interest in a cohesive storyline, that's not a bad thing.

The voice acting is usually quite good, especially on the part of Ms. Croft. To her benefit ( or detriment, depending on your personal prefference), she is alwasy in contact via an earpiece/camera with her comrades back home, so there is always dialogue being delivered. It helps to keep the mood light, and the writing can be funny at times, but it sometimes comes off as corny. Based on various reviews, it's bound to be a love-it-or-hate-it kind of device. Personally, I think it helped flesh out Lara as a character (let's face it; irregardless of her physical form, we don't know much about her, really), but I understand why others might not have.

The graphics are all very good, sometimes bordering on gorgeous. The PC version may look either the best or the worst, depending on your system. For me, it looked great, but on lower-end systems, it might look like a first generation PS2 game. There were slowdowns at times, but nothing that broke up the gameplay.

Thankfully, gameplay can really be a lot of fun. Thanks to the new physics engine, what might have been a typical "insert key in slot A, after backtracking through three levels, then move X number of boxes onto switches" kind of game, the environmental puzzles are much more interesting. The game borrows very heavily from the Prince of Persia games in terms of control and platforming, which is a great thing. Controlling Lara no longer feels like driving a tank, and the mouse-and-keyboard combination is standard. It's not all that original, and Lara isn't as capable a gymnast as the Prince, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.

The downside to gameplay are the now legendary god-awful motorcycle levels. There are only two of them, thank god, but they are absolutely terrible. The graphics get a major downgrade, control is wonky, and they are much too long for their own good. They aren't enough to make you stop playing, but they should have been omitted. Clearly Crystal Dynamics were sold on their "hot chick on a bike" stereotype. The gunplay needs work, too. While it's certainly an improvement on the original's, it's very easy. There is a nifty bullet-time effect you can activate, but it gets old after the 80th enemy you kill using it.

The game is also over far too soon. If it were about ten hours longer than it is, I would have given the fun factor a five, but as is, it simply isn't long enough. It only took me five and a half hours to complete the first time through, although other reviewers have quoted even double that time. Perhaps it's because I'm a Tomb Raider veteran (as well as Prince of Persia veteran), but I simply couldn't imagine it taking anybody, even on the hardest difficulty level, ten hours to complete. The Croft Mansion makes a return, too (with the design of the movie's mansion, rather than the original one we're all so used to), and it is a lot of fun to search through. It might not take too terribly long, either, to discover all the secrets, but it's a nice distraction.

I also get the feeling that this is a test for Eidos to see whether or not to greenlight development on a sequel. The story ends on a cliffhanger, and as a whole it feels episodic. I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel, though, as long as those darned bike levels were removed. At last a Lara Croft game worth its wait in cardboard!

Pros:
Great graphics
Fun gameplay
Better storyline than in the past
Great return to form

Cons:
Terrible motorcycle levels
Far too short
No incentive to replay
Gunplay is weak

Hopefully the next Lara game (we all know there will be one) will utilize the great things this game does, and improve on its weaknesses.

An awesome game, supported by an talented voice cast!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 29 / 36
Date: April 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I was lucky to experience this game a few days early, and I have to say I have not had this much fun in a long time.

Tomb Raider is back, with a vengeance. Forget the used Tomb Raider Chronicles, forget the botched Angel of Darkness. What Crystal Dynamics is giving us here is a completely rethought franchise.

Depending on the quality of your hardware, you'll either be amazed by the graphics, or completely bedazzled. Tomb Raider now actually looks good, and not just the lush curves (and expressive face) of its archaeologist heroine. The environments are masterfully crafted, and (thanks to an game engine completely rewritten since the past episodes) manage to successfully break from the cube-geometry we've all been used to.

But, but, but-Tomb Raider doesn't only *look* good, it also sounds wicked!! I would never have imagined how big a difference the audio voice-over makes. Indeed, Keeley Hawes is excellent (*excellent*!! "I haven't the foggiest."), and gives Lara some added depth and class. I promise you'll come to love the witty banter exchanged by Lara and her faithful geek team.

The obvious aim of the designers was to make this feel as much as a movie as possible-hence the "action sequences", sort of interactive cinematics. While I have to confess they do not always succeed (and, having to play through the same, at the beginning of a checkpoint "interactive cinematic" over and over, is maddening!!), they are none-the-less a commendable attempt to diversify the action. On the other hand, the vehicle sequences were always fun (if sometimes a bit long), and the race behind the Russian built train in Kazakhstan was a memorable one.

Now, as for the controls, they are exceptionally fluid-think Prince of Persia-, and make controlling Lara one of the most exhilarating experiences. Even though sometimes I cursed the complexity of them (in one boss, you have to shoot, then put your gun away, then throw the hook, then the pull-this is not particularly easy, and I was swore quite distinctly under my breath before I finally got a hang of it). While frustratingly, the camera on occasion has a mind of its own, I think you'll find this to be, at the worst of times, not much more than a nuisance (it does a great job the rest of the time). The grapple hook is reminiscent of Indy's whip, and adds an extra element that was much needed to make the puzzles interesting.

The weapons though, are a bit disappointing. Well not disappointing, because I was completely happy using Lara's trademark dual guns. They have unlimited ammo, and are so efficient that there is never really a need to use anything else. The grenades, I found, were particularly useless. (But to be honest, I *never* have any luck with grenades, ever.)

The plot and locations. Well, as I said above, this game is like a movie. Never a dull moment, and the plot motivates you to go along (you'll play the game as much to see what happens, than to shoot down bad guys). Supernatural is very efficiently mixed with real-life myths, ? la Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (in which the designers blended several versions of the myth of the Lost City to produce their own interpretation), to create a believable (well, at the very least, not so far-fetched as most) story.

You begin your journey in Bolivia. This is the tutorial level, that eases you into the game. Then you go to Peru. Peru is good old fashioned tomb-a real tomb, in which you do some digging to discover a friend you thought was dead, actually isn't either (isn't a friend, and isn't dead). You then discover elements that point you to a mafia boss in Japan. Japan in one of the most fun levels, I found, because how often to you get to swing (and occasionally motoride) through the skyscrapers of Tokyo?! (That, and Lara's outfit is pretty smooth!)

Then you go to Ghana in West Africa, in a tomb that is mostly a big giant puzzle (well, it's much more fun than that). The puzzles in this game, by the way, is not the old trademark "Push a bunch of cubes around until you feel like jumping out the window." The puzzles here are actually interesting, never illogical, and never impossible to figure out. In doubt, you can always use the R.A.D. mode of your binoculars to discern what you'll have to move, what you'll to shoot, etc. After Ghana, there's that Kazakhstan level that I *really* enjoyed (I'm a sucker for Soviet experiments awry) ... and then England (in an odd King Arthur museum), Nepal and Bolivia again for the final confrontation. The ending practically announces the next installment! (and yes, perhaps the game is a bit on the short side.)

I have to confess I've never been as much a Tomb Raider fan as I am now. This is one of the most enjoyable and gripping games I've played in the past two years, and I highly recommend to all action game fans (regardless of whether they've enjoyed the previous instalments).

[PS: the disk space requirements for this PC version are unheard of, but well worth it--I promise.]

Worth waiting for (not what you think)

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: December 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

It was worth waiting until I could get this game for $10, new. After pre-ordering AOD and being monumentally disappointed, I figured I'd wait on this one, and it was worth it... if you know what I mean. At the original price this game would have been a ripoff. At $10 (and shipping, as always, bumped that up considerably), it's just about worth it.

Price aside, I feel like someone who actually PLAYED the original TRs worked on the design for this new installment. There are still numerous, inexplicable problems with the way the camera shifts or locks. And I'd love to know what genius decided that 'left' and 'right' should suddenly become 'forward' or 'back' depending on the orientation. But even with those idiosyncrasies this game is way more playable than AOD, which I never could muster the patience to finish. The AOD designers lost touch with the fact that games, by definition, should be more fun than frustrating. Legend is actually fun in a lot of places, and some of the puzzles do require a bit of out-of-the-box thinking, as it were. That was refreshing. And as a former high school gymnast whose apparatus was horizontal bar, I really enjoy the new 'kip-to-giant-swing' move they've added to Lara's repertoire.

All in all, Legend is definitely a step back in the right direction. If Eidos continues the franchise, hopefully they'll take into account the generally more positive reaction to this getting-back-to-basics approach, and the next one will actually be worth the full price. Stranger things have happened!

Sigh...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 14
Date: October 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Here's the good news: "Legend" is definitely a step above the dreadful, atrocious, horrible "Angel Of Darkness". It looks awesome. The controls are much better. The story is... well, typical TR story, nothing to compain about.

Here's the bad news: it's painfully short, dizzying because of poor camera work, and consistently frustrating due to the above, and a stupid checkpoint system. Can someone tell me what the point is of offering an in-mission save-game option when it DOESN'T SAVE where you want it to??? No matter where you save, if you load your saved game you will begin at the start of your last checkpoint. Which makes the entire save-game system completely pointless and even a tad insulting. Sounds like a (not so) clever way to make a short game seem longer.

The camera, which should have been perfected through all these years, has only gotten worse. At least in the TR games before "Angel" we had an option to enter the "look" mode and look around. Much like in "Angel", such option is unavailable in "Legend". As a result, many times you find yourself stuck on the edge of a cliff, desperate to look around so you can see where poor Lara should jump next so as to avoid her untimely death, but all you can see is the back of her head. Which, of course, results in death after death after death, which in turn brings you all the way back to the beginning of the checkpoint. After 10 times, it becomes either dull or infuriating as heck. And did I mention that you have no choice but to listen to the characters repeat their lines over... and over... and over again, for as many times as it takes you to complete a checkpoint? Well, yeah. That's exactly what happens. I'm not talking about the cutscenes - those you can skip. Not so with the built-in conversations, which occur while you're controling Lara. After one particularly tough jump-slide-jump-slide sequence I got so tired of them yapping the same thing over and over than I turned off the sound until I was able to get to the next checkpoint.

The controls, while being better than the clumsy "Angel" system, are still quite frustrating. I don't know what genius came up with this, but in this game, "up" is not always "up", "down" is not always down", and so on. Imagine you're hanging off a ledge, needing to jump to the left. If the camera is right behind Lara, she will jump left when you press your "left" button. But rotate the camera just a tad so it looks at her from upper-side, and her left suddenly becomes a "forward". You get the picture. In situations when quick decisions are needed, this can become incredibly annoying.

When the game ends (in a shockingly abrupt manner), you get your "bonus" - you can now explore Croft Manor! You can see where Lara sleeps, bathes and works out, and collect some shiny shields scattered all over. I mean, WOW. Thanks so much. Not only is it monumentaly boring, but it's completely pointless.

"Legend" is sure to give you a few hours of fun, but ultimately it's quite disappointing. It's more like an expansion pack than a full game. Definitely not worth your hard-earned thirty bucks. Eidos should really start thinking about making a good game as opposed to making mucho dinero off a popular character by putting out unfinished and/or unpolished products.

DANG! .....was it that bad for some of you

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: May 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

My problem with it is that its short and she runs too slow and a few littl minor stuff but nothing really to coomplain about...

I like that strategy, puzzles (didn't really find them puzzling) riding the bike and others things...

At the end of the day i enjoy myself, they didn't do a bad job they did an OK job know won't know what you think of they game until you play it

Best of the series, can't wait for next one.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: May 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Tomb Raider Legend is by far the best the the series. The graphics, the story, the music, the action, the puzzles, the cinematics and the extras all are just spectacular while playing the game. It took me 3 days to beat the whole story mode, but then once you beat it, you realize you only have a certain percentage of the whole game completed. Finding the the secrets in the game and earning extra features such as new costumes, codes, weapon upgrades, pictures, and extra videos are a whole extra adventure to completing the game. And earning Lara's bikini costume is worth the trouble :P Lara's mansion is also a playable level but is not in the story, finding the secrets in her house is a challenge, but fun. Overall, this game was excellent and i would recommend it to anyone who liked the other Tomb Raider games, or anyone who is just looking for a great adventure game. I'll be waiting for the next one to come out.

Awesome graphics, but an otherwise letdown

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: May 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

While the graphics are absolutely amazing and the plot's pretty good, the game had quite a few shortcomings.
1. It's WAY too short. Compared to TR 1-3, the levels are very small and enclosed and Lara only spends one level per chapter instead of 3 or 4 per chapter. All the clever tricks and traps only make an appearance maybe once and then disappear.
2. Weapon system was more realistic, but I didn't like having a limit of weapons like that. Also, the pin-point aim system felt very underused.
3. Movement system was a pain. The directional controls were oriented to the camera and not Lara, so the directions would change depending on where the camera was. Also, the camera was much too free and there were times it would confuse where I was jumping if I was moving too quick.
4. When Lara gets hit the right way, it knocks her over. This makes shotguns very very formidable. Annoying, but it was more realistic and challenging.
5. Supporting characters were a little plastic. The banter between Zip and Atler is fun, but they otherwise don't do a whole lot.
6. With the new light, the dark areas of the game could have been a lot bigger. There were only a couple of spots dark enough to make use of the thing.
The grapple and interactive cutscenes were fun. Still, I prefer the CTRL=grab system of the earlier games. The Manor is really neat, being taken almost directly from the movie.

Tomb Raider Legend Legendary Bust

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: October 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This is by far the worst in the Tomb Raider series. The controls are impossible and the action lame. The 'auto sight' for targeting never seems to work even if you're right on top of an assailant. It seems the designers tried to make the game more 'Movie' like and forgot that it's just a game. It's supposed to be fun not laborious. The controls for fighting are more frustrating than fun. The designers should go back to what works and modify the character and action from Tomb Raider Revelation.

Best Tomb Raider since TR II

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: July 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I was pretty impressed with this game. I never thought I'd play another Tomb Raider game after AoD but this game showed that the series could be resurrected. It breathes a much-needed breath of life into the TR series (although it doesn't come without its faults).

The gameplay is a big improvement over the previous games, and is much easier to play. Lara isn't as stiff and clumsy as she was in the previous installments, and the controls are much more fluid and flexible. This is the first Tomb Raider game that has decent controls and it makes the game enjoyable to play. The graphics are also pretty awesome (at least the next-gen look) and level designs are great, returning Lara to the tombs of the original game. The amount of detail that went into the levels is astounding and it's a treat just exploring the levels. With next-gen features turn on the graphics rival those of Far Cry and other next-generation PC games. The sound and music is also top-notch and fits the game very well. Overall it's a big improvement over the past games and is a fine game in its own right.

However, in spite of these good features I had to dock a star, and that's because this game has some very serious flaws. The first is that it is a bad port. Speaking specifically about the PC version, the next-gen rendering is poorly coded and runs slow on even the fastest PCs. The game looks great on next-gen mode but it's virtually unplayable unless you go with the lowest resolution (which pretty much defeats the purpose of next-gen's great graphics). The second is the controls, which are camera-dependent. That is, the directional buttons differ depending on the direction the camera is facing. To me, this is a MAJOR design error as it breaks the consistency of the controls and it is a constant source of frustration. There have been numerous times when I would jump onto a ledge and press left to shimmy left only to have Lara stare behind her because the camera was facing to the right too much. In situations where I need to move quickly this can be a real handicap. This is further compounded by the fact that the camera frequently moves on its own (sometimes in completely unpredictable ways). There are been several times when I jumped onto a ledge and pressed up to move forward, only to end up falling off the ledge I just jumped up on because the camera did a 180 and effectively turned her around. Static controls and a manuel camera would have made this game significantly more playable. A third major problem (mentioned by others) is the length of the game. Although the levels are well-designed the game is far too short. A decent player can finish the game in a couple of days (although unlocking all the secrets will take much longer). There are some bonuses such as the time trial (which can unlock some costumes) that can extend the game a bit but the fact is that the game is awfully short and the replay value just isn't there. Although these problems aren't enough to ruin the game, they detract significantly from the game to merit docking a point.

However, overall the game is pretty enjoyable and if you're a TR fan then this is definitely the game you've been waiting for. It's what the past four Tomb Raider games should have been and hopefully what future Tomb Raider games will be.

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