Tomb Raider: Legend (PC) Review

Emo, frown-eyed detective no more, Lara Croft is back the way she was always supposed to be. Skilled acrobat, flawless sharpshooter, badass attitude, the most charmingly sarcastic smirk ever, and a gorgeous pair of silicon breasts, buttocks, legs, eyes, and juicy, juicy lips… not to mention a very good selection of clothing attire.

The starting level is even better: forget the boring French streets and apartments of the previous… "game," and get ready to visit uncharted territory once again. Jungles and temples, caverns and trap-filled tombs—oh, it feels good to be back! Something feels different, though - it's as if Lara has become a Batman-like heroine, dead parents, mansion-plus-Batcave, big fat bank account and all.

More specifically, although there is a welcome scarcity of urban areas, the wonderful feeling of isolation and danger gets squashed under the constant chatter between Lara and her two intercom baddies, generic "cool" side-kick what's-his-name, and bland pansy/timid/dorky "archaeologist" who-was-that-again. Additionally, there are too many cut-scenes, making it hard for players to simply take things for themselves, like in the past. On the bright side, when NPCs keep their traps shut, the atmosphere is great, and the unobtrusive ambient music is, at times, better than the original's complete silence.

Needless to say, the existence of the much larger cast also means that more bits of story are involved here than before. Is the plot good, though? While it did have potential, it's… meh - all right and all, but nothing special. This begins with a very young Lara and her oh-so-cute mommy plane-crashing near a deserted Himalayan temple, where something goes wrong and the latter disappears inside a weird portal. After a lot of time, our athletic and oh-so-cute-AND-sexy heroine is trying to find what happened back then, something that involves searching for the scattered pieces of a bizarre, alien-like blade in all corners of the globe.

Which means - what else? - entering some hostile locations to do a little bit of acrobatic work, along with the occasional puzzle or shootout. Starting with the acrobatic section, it's surely the best part of the game along with the puzzles (more on them later), with the controls being very good, although some cheap deaths due to Lara jumping in the wrong direction for no apparent reason will surely annoy… and lead to a hilarious rag-doll downfall afterwards. Furthermore, unlike the PlayStation era pentalogy, grabbing onto ledges is a semi-automatic job, and although it still requires some skill to do the various jumps required, there's usually only one path to follow, and therefore, it all feels (and is) a bit too linear.

As mentioned before, the puzzles are pretty awesome, too, with most of them requiring far more than just pushing a rock on a certain spot. Unfortunately, while they are great and all, the fun factor decreases due to two little facts. First of all, there aren't many of them. In fact, while all levels are, unlike past instalments, pleasantly small (and thus, perfect for the new Time Trial mode), most of them have the same boring and unexciting structure: five-to-ten minutes of acrobatics, a single nice puzzle inside a large area, and a shootout between Lara and some mercenary goons afterwards.

This leads to Legend's biggest flaw: the heavy focus on action. Shooting bad guys is simply the most redundant and unfulfilling thing offered throughout this adventure, mainly because, apart from the bosses (which are more like puzzles than battles), no enemy really poses a threat to Lara, since, unlike the animals and monsters available in most of her past quests, she'll just have to pull the trigger and avoid the occasional grenade once or twice. Even worse? There are two parts where Lara is riding a bike and shooting bad guys, which turn out to be even more repetitive, unchallenging, and, for some reason, quite long.

The boring fights, the small number of puzzles, the linearity, the lack of challenge and the zero differences between the few difficulty settings: they all lead to a very low replay value. Sure, there are plenty of secrets to find, which in turn unlock various things ranging from cheats and character models, to more outfits for Lara to wear, but there's little reason to go through this otherwise short journey more than once. Tomb Raider: Legend has a lot of great things going for it, but, although a pleasant ride, it turned out to be nothing more than just a breath of fresh air after the terrible The Angel of Darkness.