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Tomb Raider: Legend Ten years of Tomb Raider, and only one of them was ever any cop. When the BBC and Design Museum ran a public poll for the greatest icons of British design, Tomb Raider was nominated the eighth greatest British Design icon. One notch ahead of Grand Theft Auto, no less. Which begs the question: has anyone who voted for it actually played a Tomb Raider game?
The first in the series is, on many levels, a classic - not just for introducing the iconic Lara Croft, but also as one of the first great games of the 32-bit era, ushering in a sea of copycat 3D platformers - not to mention a relentless string of expoentially bad sequels, each featuring less and less of the actual raiding of tombs that the series was famed for, and hitting its nadir with Angel of Darkness on PS2.
So it's very pleasing to report that Tomb Raider: Legend is not only surprisingly good, but also a reminder of the promise and quality that that first game showed, ten years ago.
In no small part, that's probably down to the fact that this is the first Tomb Raider developed not in the UK by Core Design, but by the American studio Crystal Dynamics. Toby Gard, Lara's creator, left Core a long while ago, though not before the series began to suck. Following his departure, Core continued to crank out the franchise, and perhaps exhausted themselves in the process. Gamers certainly seemed exhausted of them. Fresh to the series, Crystal Dynamics have taken the Tomb Raider template, examined it as a whole, and Legend amounts to a distillation of the highlights.
The premise, as ever, takes Lara jet setting around the world in search of mystical artefacts. The story is more than token, though - it touches on some interesting angles of Tomb Raider mythology (Lara's childhood, her relationship to her mother) and also a notably cerebral anthropological conceit - the idea that civilisations across the world share the same fundamental myths. The plot largely serves to advance the action, but it's almost always engaging and well presented.
But the star of Tomb Raider isn't Lara, but the environments she exists in. Whilst it’s fair to say the subsequent games coasted a little, the very first Tomb Raider was a wake-up call to the power of 32-bit. In turn, Tomb Raider: Legend is a reminder of the power of the PS2, even at the end of its life. Bolivian jungles welter under the sun; Japanese skyscrapers induce vertigo as Lara leaps across scaffolding; the highlight is perhaps the beautiful waterfall in Ghana, resplendent in the afternoon sun.
Lara herself is beautifully rendered; once again, the legendary bosom has diminished in size, and she feels less like a cartoon and more like a caricature - which suits the game just fine. The most striking effect comes when she leaves the many pools of water throughout the game: if you look closely, you can see a sheen of wetness across her skin that drips and slowly fades. To know that she is still wet on leaving water adds to the tangibility of the world, a tiny touch, but it means so much.
There's a marked move away from cubic-sectioned environments. There are now more curves throughout the architecture, and block-shifting puzzles have been supplemented with more unusual ones involving ball-rolling. The game-world also now has a smattering of physics. One memorable puzzle early on seems tricky until you forget everything you know about the Tomb Raider world, at which point it all becomes very obvious. It's nice to see the classic gameplay extended through modern technology, rather than merely dragged out.
Of course, for a platformer, the tangibility of the environment is what makes it satisfying as a game-world. Whilst the way that world looks counts for something, the quality of the input mechanisms - the way the player really experiences that world, through control - are crucial.
Fortunately, Crystal Dynamics have done a very good job. The controls are responsive, intuitive, and never clumsy. At times, they approach the fluidity of the seminal Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (which is a strong influence throughout Legend). They also build in a degree of context-sensitivity: miss a grab by a few inches and Lara will stretch with one hand - a quick tap of the triangle button will make her grasp the ledge with both hands before she loses her grip. Likewise, there's an automatic grab when you walk off a wall. It's a far cry from the punishing pixel-perfection of the first Tomb Raider.
As ever, though, the combat drags the whole thing down. It's always been a ropey subject in Tomb Raider games. In the first it was present, but definitely second fiddle to adventuring. Later games increased the amount of combat without ever really fixing the dreadful combat mechanics. Legend features a manual-lock-on that goes some way to improving combat over the previous games. But there's still far too much of it, and the violence is incredibly arbitrary. Lara encounters two goons in the first ten minutes of the game, and immediately murders them for no apparent reason. The wholesale slaughter she indulges in - and gets away with - is very out-of-keeping with the game as a whole and never ceases to be jarring. Levels that focus on exploration are a welcome break from the incessant slaughter of others.
Similarly weak are the startlingly boring driving sequences, in which Lara weaves across a landscape on her motorbike, picking bad guys off along the way. They're not very difficult, and slightly haphazard. They most closely resemble the driving sequences in the underrated Metal Arms, although without the wit or finer control.
Still, the ambient orchestral score is excellent - beautifully written and perfectly judged, it enhances the epic feel of the game no end. Keeley Hawes imbues Lara's voice - and indeed, character - with a touch of genuine class. Her delivery reminds the player that Lara is, in her world, a real person, and tempers the game's exaggerated visual presentation. It's a shame the actors voicing her sidekicks are so hammy by comparison.
Finally, the most noticeable flaw with the game - beyond the awkward combat - is its load times. Initial loading is relatively quick, but whilst your position is checkpointed very frequently throughout levels, should you die you have to wait as the whole level loads again. For a game so predicated around death-defying acrobatics and combat, this is very frustrating. Even worse, make a mistake in the Resident Evil 4-like interactive cutscenes, and you'll still have to wait for that reload.
Despite all its flaws, Tomb Raider: Legend is a solid, entertaining title. It exudes quality through its aesthetics, and that quality is more than just skin deep. It's still no design classic, but it's more deserving of that accolade than the previous six titles in the series. Let's hope this return to form continues for Lara.
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