Tomb Raider Legend is the newest entry in the storied series and its one of the few worthy sequels to the original.
Tomb Raider Legend follows Lara across the world, as she explores the mysteries of the ancient sword Excalibur and the myths surrounding it. During this trek, her tech guy, Zip, and her bookworm research assistant, Allister, accompany her via headset. This story will take her from the streets of London to a military base in Kazakhstan and all the way back again. During the course of this you will mountain climb and explore tombs aplenty as you attempt to piece together just what is going on. Lara’s movement abilities have been enhanced to meet the challenges that the myriad locales will represent to her, letting her do more than the usual running, jumping, tumbling and climbing. She can also use her magnetic grappling cable to move objects, swing across gaps and to maneuver around the maps. A mixture of guns and this cable will enable her to get anywhere on any of the levels. There are also a few areas where Lara will get on a motorcycle and you will find yourself racing through the terrain, shooting enemies and dodging obstacles aplenty. These levels do a lot to break up the usual running and gunning adventure game and will be a breath of fresh air to most veterans of the series and newbies alike.
Lara will use her trademark dual pistols, shotguns, assault rifles and grenades as she cuts her way through those enemies in her path and you will definitely fight a lot. This Tomb Raider game is far more action oriented than the previous entries in the game. Much more running and gunning will be required in this game than any of the others and Lara has been given some new moves to make this much more possible. Rather than simply standing your ground or jumping around as you shoot the enemies ad nauseum, you can use grenades to dispose of groups of enemies, you can kick them in the head or knock them over and or you can flip off of enemies and initiate an almost matrix-esque slowdown effect that enables you to gun down a group of enemies. It is also possible to use the environment against the enemies, knocking boulders over onto them for example or explosive barrels that litter stages. You can also use the magnetic grapple against the enemies to knock them around or to pull them towards you.
The enemies in this entry in the series lean more towards the human side of things, rather than the animal enemies of yore. While you will fight the occasional mountain lion or tiger, your biggest threat this time around is going to be the variety of humans that will cross your path. Armed with same weapons you can use, you will be able to fight them and take their weapons for your own. However, you will likely find the enemies a serious challenge on many of the difficulty levels due to the variety of weapons they use. When racing through a hail of gunfire, grenades and mounted machine guns you will likely find it hard to get through unscathed, much less alive. The same does ring true for boss encounters, which are almost universally other humans, with one exception. All it takes is sustained gunfire to get you through all but one boss fight, making these enemies not all that challenging, but still enough to keep you interested. Overall, Tomb Raider Legends is a new spin on Lara, a much more combat oriented one, but it still manages to be a good one. You will find yourself retrying many areas due to the platforming still being as big of a killer as ever and the difficulty level is just right, never being too hard or too easy. With a multitude of costumes to unlock and secret codes to be activated by completing time trials and finding artifacts, there is plenty of reason to replay the levels. The only major criticism that can be levied against Legends, is that it is too short. Even with all of the unlockables, the game will only take you, at best, 12 hours to get through.
For myself though, I found that I still wanted to play the game and fight the enemies, more than willing to play through the game on new difficulty levels. Whether you’re a longtime fan of the series or not, you won’t be disappointed by this game and it feels really good to finally be saying that about a Tomb Raider game after this long.
Score: 8/10