It delivers great action, awesome exploration and overall an unforgetable experience for newcomers to Tomb Raider.
The story is about Lara starts to remember things about her past, her mother's disappearance and has she progress through the adventure she believes her mother is still alive. Yet on the other side she has to deal of finding a legendary artifact with immense power that could destroy humanity. She will need to travel through different worlds to find each piece but she will also have to deal with the mercenaries that also want this important artifact. She will go to: Japan, Bolivia, Peru and many other places that each of them is simply interesting to explore.
Tomb Raider Legend offers quite a lot of variety when it comes to gameplay. From doing acrobatic moves like: climb on poles, ladders, ropes, cliff sides there is simply nothing she can't do. She can also do other surprising tricks like jump from a clip side backward and land safely, do high jumps to hold on to a cliff side, make her go faster when climbing to pick up more pace in the game, she can also swim on the water or dive in it to reach certain areas and she can use her grappling hook to reach an area or move an object on the way. Doing all this crazy cool stunts is not hard at all thanks to good controls and great control of the camera, is pretty similar to Prince of Persia with all of this stunts that the prince can do. Yet what makes things feel so realistic is that everything looks real is not like the game puts in a special color or anything to show you what stunt or acrobatic move you need to do. You have to figure it out all yourself. The combat in the game is quite surprising and the game features quite a lot of it. She can use her 2 pistols to fight the enemies or pick up weapons from the enemies you kill. The only thing is that only her 2 pistols have infinite ammo. She can kick enemies, slide below them to make them fall, bring them to her using her grappling hook or jump on them to enter focus mode where things go on slow motions and you are able to shoot at them at a stylish matrix way. Plus she can shoot special objects like bombs that explode when you shoot them or cars and such and she can pick up grenades from the enemies and blow them up; only thing is that they are not good aiming the grenades but you will not really need them.
Sadly when it comes to battling animals is pretty annoying, it takes quite a lot of shots to actually kill them and the fact that they will attack you and throw you on the ground and that you cannot jump on them so you can enter the slow motion focus mode to finish them off faster is disappointing. But at least the animals don't appear constantly but feels annoying because they were not on the demo of the first level and on this full version they decide to include them.
Now when it comes to equipment Lara is always ready for anything. She can store health packs that she obtains by beating enemies (up to 3 she can hold), a special light on her chest so you can turn it on when she is on very dark places, her grappling hook has mentioned before that has multi purposes, special binoculars that come in handy for hard puzzles plus the binoculars can tell you they key objects of that puzzle but you still need to do a lot of thinking and of course her 2 pistols that can be use on combat but also to destroy ropes that hold special objects and other kind of stuff..
Lara throughout the game will also use special vehicles to help her on the way in which the most used one is the motorcycle in which will be use twice in which consists of avoiding obstacles on the way plus also shooting down the enemies that appear on the screen. It is pretty cool and fast. They will be a set of ramps in which Lara will fly but also be careful not to get hit with a rock by enjoying too much the flying. The only small problem is that sometimes the checkpoints seem to take too long to appear when doing this motorcycle missions but you will get the hang of it and have not much problem beating the mission easily.
Another interesting idea of the game is the cut scenes. Similar to Resident Evil 4 the cut scenes will make you hit indicated buttons to avoid obstacles and safe Lara from a horrible fall and such. The idea is pulled of pretty nice and in a very intense way however sometimes they don't give you enough time to hit that button so you will have to eventually memorize them next time you try, but is just mostly hitting left, right, up and down. While not a big addition they make the game more interesting and make you pay attention to the cut scenes and not just sit back and relax.
When it comes to puzzles the game offers from moderate to hard thinking puzzles. Most of the time you need to look around your environment and see what could best work. Most of them consist of pushing up balls and blocks to a floor yet you will have to figure out how to bring the block or ball to the area you need to place it. Your binoculars can come in handy because they scan the objects that can help you solve the puzzle you just have to figure out how they will help you. There is a total of 5 bosses in the game that each of them you will need certain strategies to defeat them even some of them consist of defeating a puzzle in order to hurt them rather then just shoot them.
There are eight huge missions that take place in Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Africa, England, and the Himalayas that have a mix between inside and outside environments. All of them are very varied and always bring you new fresh gameplay to do on the game. Another place to visit is the croft mansion that features special collectibles, hidden and secret stuff and also features some nice puzzles. Is a pretty fun mansion to explore and look around is more of a side quest of the game tough because it's outside the story.
Graphically Tomb Raider Legend is simply really good looking with outstanding design and art throughout the entire game. It features a great amount of texture and very good lighting effects too. Not to mention that is simply the best looking model of Lara Croft besides Angelina Jolie of course. Every area you visit on the game it's attractive because it's always different but always looking perfectly beautiful. However the versions that feature an even better experience are the XBOX 360 and PC version. There is simply no denying that this is the best looking Tomb Raider game yet.
Legend also offers a very smooth soundtrack that goes from adventure style when doing puzzles or exploring the areas to fast cool intense soundtrack when it's time to battle enemies around. The sound effects of guns, vehicles and specially the motorcycle are also in great quality. The voices are handled nicely on every character and never being cheesy or dumb. Plus the game let's you choose the language from English, Spanish or French in everything from the menu to the dialogue and voiceovers of the characters which is pretty cool for those that English is not there first language.
Unfortunately the game is about 10 to 15 hours long depending on your skill. However the game lets you replay any level you like but also gives you the option to beat them on a time trial. Plus a lot of special collectable items on the levels and also the Croft Mansion that has also a share amount of puzzles and collectibles to get. There is no multiplayer but is not quite needed. But it still could have been a much longer game still the ending shows that a sequel might be coming.
Overall Tomb Raider Legend is simply one of the best games that have come out this year. It delivers a pretty cool action combat of shooting and motorcycle missions, plus exploring different countries in search for a certain piece of an artifact and solving puzzles that require some thinking. Not to mention it has gorgeous graphics on interesting locations to visit and a great quality on the audio department. This is truly the best Tomb Raider game yet and we can't wait to see more of Crystal Dynamics on the revival of this great franchise.