Xbox Review CornerTomb Raider: LegendBy ACompleteMuppet Fans of the Tomb Raider series all have the same things to say about the series. The original Tomb Raider game was by far and away the best. Often described, in the day, as Prince of Persia in 3D. With each sequel loosing some of the appeal of the proceeding game all the way from Tomb Raider 2 to the last, and in my opinion the worst, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. After Lara’s last outing on the PlayStation 2, Edios seemed to have taken note to the fans comments regarding Angel of Darkness’ darker style of gameplay. They have returned to Lara’s roots, she now once again seems to be her happy, jovial self. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend starts in familiar territory. The opening movie has Lara climbing up a cliff in Bolivia, so that she can find the entrance to a rumoured cave with an artifact she desires. Soon after, when she has taught you how to use your basic game controls, Lara stumbles upon a menacing baddie with a big gun. You soon find more baddies that seem to have 007’s license to kill. Gone are the super easy days of old when the auto targeting was brainless. Now you need to think about who is shooting you, and from where (surround sound helps). So you can now choose to target the person providing you with newly formed shotgun holes, or the person who is at a distance, using a laser sight rifle.
Other improvements are the inclusion of new interactive cinematics. In these you might start to cross a bridge which crumbles away from you. On-screen prompts then tell you which buttons on the controller need to be pushed to get Lara through the event safely. Previously these would have happened with the computer taking control of Lara and incorporating it into a cutscene. For the first time, Edios have given us gamers a range of difficulty settings, Easy, Medium, and Hard. To try and stop the game being as short lived as previous titles. Edios have also given the game a time trail mode, to give the game yet more life. For her 7th outing Lara has some new tools at her disposal, most of which are guns, from her infinite ammo pistols (which get upgraded as the game progresses) to machine guns, shotguns and grenades. But the Magnetic Grappling hook is totally new. Certain objects can be pulled with the grapple hook, whilst others can be used to swing off. Like in previous games there are secrets that are hidden anywhere throughout the game. Some of these may be in hard to reach places so you can use the grapple hook to pick them up. The rewards are numerous in the game, and come in three colours, Gold, Silver and Bronze. By finding rewards you will unlock different achievements in the game.
Because Edios have tweaked her controls from the first game with each sequel, I found that getting used to Tomb Raider on the 360 controller to be less difficult than I thought it might be. Lara can still swan dive off cliffs, and do handstands climbing up ledges. Although Edios have given us extra difficulty settings to make the game more difficult, I still finished the game in record time (barring Time Trial mode) on the hardest setting. It took about 13-hrs gameplay time to complete. That is including about 4 hrs running about Croft Manor trying to complete the mini adventure (which ironically got me the most stumped in the whole game). In real terms, it took a little over a weekend to play through. As I’m a huge fan of the series I have been looking forward to this game for some time, hoping that Edios have truly brought Lara back from the dead after her dismal last outing. In my opinion they have succeeded. Unfortunately the game was just too short for me. But the inclusion of the Time Trial mode and the extra rewards placed throughout the game will add life to it in a couple of weeks when I dust it off again.
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