Lara Croft is back again, ready to kick some ass! A consistent game, worth your hard-earned money, for sure!
Tomb Raider Legend was amazing, I thought they couldn't make any Tomb Raider game to match Legend anytime soon, and then the guys show up with this!
This game is truly a masterpiece!
The graphics are beautiful, great visual efects, and very nice textures. The movements of Lara are perfect. There were times I simply performed some moves over and over, watching the perfection of 'em.
The controls are jolly nice, "the shackles of the old grid controls are gone", borrowing the words of gametrailers.com reviewer's. The movement mechanics are now just like prince of persia's and games alike. You have full control of the camera as well.
Until now, almost everything was indeed pulled of Legend.
But this is a remake, in part, so the parts we liked before in her first game, had to have their place in this new one. You will be fighting those dinos from before, you'll be visiting egypt, but things are much cooler now. There's a improvement to the combat, where the beasts go mad, and come rushing at you, and if you dodge the attack properly, you can counter it with a headshot, with precise timing. The rest of the combat is still the same: just dodging and unloading your guns, but the combat is used in the right amount to give a break to puzzles and platform sequences, and never feels bad or unwelcome.
The scenery is stunningly amazing, recreating some of the old game's stages, and adding a lot as well.
It is full of complicated puzzles, inteligent ones, you will sure get stuck at least for half an hour trying to find your way out. And I think that, in this kind of game, taking time to solve puzzles, trying to picture a way out, is half the fun. That's a little bad since once you finish the game, the next time through won't be as enjoyable as the first time, but still, there are some cheats that can only be activated after a successful playthrough. The new outfits you unlock also help a lot. But the greatest motivation is sure to realize a way to get all the relics (which unlock things), since you can be sure that you won't be getting all of them the first time through.
The story is just nice, just that, wait till you see it!
The really bad thing is that the game is pretty short, I finished it within 15 hours (without getting all the relics). It took me about 5 or 6 hours to collect'em all after finishing the game, so you can say I played about 20 hours. But that doesn't matter at all, I will be missing this game in a few months without playing it, and that will make me play it again. Since some months will have been passed, there will be time enough for me to forget some parts of the game.
In the end of it all, I can only say that Lara Croft is hotter than never, full throtle, and that this is the best TR game so far. I thought the game would die when I saw Angel of Darkness, but this one is sure worth your hard earned cash, even if you are not a TR fan, cause if you are, this one is a must have.
Now I just wait to get my hands on the under-development newest Tomb Raider title.