Tomb Raider: Legend's action and gameplay elements refresh a series that was doomed to certain death.
The story follows Lara Croft around the world as she gets embroiled in the hard task of locating sword fragments of a powerful artifact. Somehow, this story is related to her past, and she soon finds out it may be a way to understand her mother's death years ago. The story isn't that fleshed out and seems a bit incoherent at times, but it serves its purpose well and has quite a few twists that will keep players on their toes. The characters of Legend, on the other hand, seem a bit odd at times. Their attitude, even that of the heroine, does not match their role that much, and you'll soon find yourself wondering why they are acting like that. Additionally, their talking involves a lot of catchy phrases and hardly any justified reasoning, so most of the times you'll be taking what they say with a pinch of salt.
During her excursions in Tomb Raider: Legend, Lara will visit Bolivia, Peru, Japan, West Africa and a couple of other locations, and she will find herself into a lot of different locales, such as mountain ruins, lush temples, construction scaffolds and abandoned theme parks. The variety of the levels is amazing and you definitely won't be disappointed by the areas the developers chose to include in the game.
Parting ways with the gameplay of previous Tomb Raiders, Legend renovates the way Lara roams around the environments. The all-new control scheme gets rid of grid-based moves and gives a newly sense of freedom to the player, allowing her to jump across chasms, roll under spiky wheels and grab cliff edges much more easily than ever before. Lara's running, climbing and swimming are seamlessly chained together, and hardly again will you find yourself trying to time a particular move. Lara's acrobatics especially come in handy when she encounters traps, during some of which you'll be prompted to press specific buttons that appear on screen to get Lara to safety.
Aiding Lara in her acrobatics is a bunch of gadgets that she's been given this time around. She now has a magnetic grappling hook that attaches to metallic, easy-to-spot surfaces and which she often uses to pull objects towards her or swing across chasms full of spikes. Lara's new model also sports a small PLS (Personal Light Source) attached on her outfit that illuminates dark pathways, and a set of binoculars, which can render specific objects as "fragile" or "movable", thus helping the player to solve a particular puzzle.
Another big change comes in the shape of combat, which has been completely overhauled for Lara's recent outing. Lara naturally comes equipped with her dual pistols - which come with infinite ammo - which she can use to quickly get rid of mercenaries and animals she will encounter in the duration of the game. Lara's new combat abilities involve a slow-motion jump over her enemies - which is the easiest way to get rid of them, and becomes fairly boring after a while -, a tackling kick that will send them in the air, allowing you to blast them with series of bullets, and a melee kick to push them away from you when they get dangerously close. If you want some variety, you can even use the magnetic grapple to pull them towards the edge of a cliff. The animal AI seems too weak and animals are easily disposed of, so the biggest challenge in combat comes from the squads of mercenaries you will be facing. Human enemies will drop their weapons - be it shotguns, rifles or grenade launchers- and Lara can pick up only one at any single time.
Puzzles in Tomb Raider Legend are not what you would be expecting from a Tomb Raider game, both in terms of difficulty and in terms of concept. Most of them involve Lara using her grappling hook to lower platforms, pressing on pads, blowing up objects obviously placed there to open up a path, or simply following the instructions on-screen and not having the foggiest of what you are doing. Indeed, you will find yourself skipping through levels and solving puzzles without knowing it at times, and that's mainly due to Legend's linearity. There's just one way to solve a puzzle, and this path becomes way too obvious by Lara herself, who tends to look towards objects you have to pull or areas you have to get to. Some of the puzzles are quite creative, but this creativity is replaced by monotony as soon as you find out the simplistic and overly easy solution of each puzzle. However, puzzles in Legend also have an entertaining instance, which is navigating through the environment and trying to reach specific platforms and crevices to solve puzzles that span throughout the whole level.
In order to break up the pace of acrobatics, puzzles and combat through the levels, the developers have included Lara's motorbike in specifically-created levels, during which you have to nonsensically shoot down mercenaries who're hunting you down. You will get to play these levels two times in the game, and in both instances you will find out it's more of a chore trying to shoot down the squad that's chasing you down than a mini-game designed to offer a bit of variety to the title's gameplay.
The PC version of Legend comes packed with two different graphics modes. The default one offers standard lightning effects and shaders that make the environments feel alive and cramming with little details here and there. For example, you will notice Lara's clothes are soaking wet after you emerge out of a body of water and slowly dry as soon as you find yourself in a sunny area. Something similar happens with mud, which slowly gathers on Lara's body as she descends caves and dirty environments, but instantly cleans off as soon as you drop Lara in water. It's those small details that made the game look so impressive back when it was released in 2006.
Not to be mistaken, the game still looks fabulous, but if you happen to have a strong graphics card and a dual-core processor, then you'll want to check out the "Next Generation Content" that Legend comes equipped with. This mode actually consists of the visuals that were used for the 360 version of the game and, as soon as you enable it, you will have the game transformed into something completely different. The Next-Gen Content offers much cooler visuals and breathtaking effects. Lakes and fast-flowing rivers seem like their real-life counterparts, and you'll notice much more detail on Lara's body and in the environments you find yourself into. However good this might sound, the latter mode also comes with some glitches and frame-rate problems here and there, a fact which sometimes renders your play through the title frustrating and will often cause you to switch back to the default graphics mode.
Unfortunately, the game does not offer that much of a replay value. If you are an experienced Tomb Raider player, you will have finished the game in no time, just when you have started to like the new controls and puzzle elements. That's because the main difficulty in Tomb Raiders comes from the puzzles themselves, and these are not as hard to comprehend or as difficult to master as in previous Tomb Raider titles. The game still offers a lot of secrets hidden throughout the levels and collecting these will provide you with unlockables in the form of different outfits, cheat codes and other goodies, but these are not as worthwhile getting as it may seem.
All in all, Tomb Raider: Legend is a good game on its own merit. It offers a lot of those things that made Tomb Raider games entertaining and it offers some action and acrobatic elements that certainly refresh the franchise. However, its short replay value and easy puzzles will make you ask for more. It's a game worth renting for a weekend and something to whet your appetite until its sequel is released.