Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Mixed reactions"

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is the first Tomb Raider game Square Enix made when they bought out Eidos and its franchises. It happens to be the only Tomb Raider games not to have Tomb Raider in the title, and it doesn't deserve that degree of merit because while it's a fair enough game, it's by far the worst in the series.

Let's start with the story first. A bunch of idiot explorers (every explorer except Lara is an idiot) get their grubby hands on a Mirror of Smoke and set free the evil being trapped in it, going by the name of Xolotl. Lara, always the heroine, teams up with the Guardian of Light, Totec, who defeated Xolotl once before and sets out to imprison the bad guy once and for all. The story just about hangs together, but by Tomb Raider standards it's disappointing. The story, at least, is a department in which every Tomb Raider game has excelled whereas here it's rushed and very little focus is on the plot. Cutscenes are short, rushed, few and far between. The ending is a bit too sudden, and isn't satisfying compared to the other games.

Square Enix has made some changes to the gameplay here. First of all, the camera is fixed from an isometric viewpoint and while this works most of the time, it really screws up when, for example, the grappling icon appears right at the edge of the screen or under your HUD. Lara has a spear that she can stick into walls to climb up to higher ledges. Grappling along walls is somewhat similar to that of the previous games, except it's a helluva lot more awkward due to the camera. While combat was almost never the focus in the first era Tomb Raider games, and secondary to puzzles and platforming in the second era games, here it is one of the big parts and most of the combat sequences consist of enemies ganging up on you twenty to one while you rush around planting and exploding landmines behind you... yes, Lara has landmines in this game too.

Health is refilled from health packs that enemies drop (you can't carry them around like in previous games) or at Health Shrines. Ammo isn't measured in bullets, it's a blue bar under your health bar and depletes as you use weapons other than the infinite-ammo pistols. All weapons use the same ammo bar; ammo is refilled from ammo packs placed at hard-to-get locations or at Ammo Shrines.

Puzzles are simple, few and far between, but it's not all bad. There is a big focus on platforming and there are some tense sequences where you keep going jumping from platform to falling platform. The controls work well, though sometimes Lara shoots completely away from where you're aiming. The graphics are good for a mobile game, and the music, which usually was non-existent in first era games, is decent as well, though not as good as that of the second era games.

Square Enix have done a decent job with the franchise they finally got their hands on, but Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light cannot be compared favourably to any other Tomb Raider game (yes, that INCLUDES Angel of Darkness). Tomb Raider fans won't be dissatisfied with it, but they won't be as satisfied as they've come to expect from the previous games either.