Legend

This review is for Tomb Raider: Legend, published by Eidos Interactive, and developed by Crystal Dynamics. This marks the first time in the Tomb Raider franchise that a game was not maked by Core Design. Legend was released in 2006. It is the 7th game in the series.

I've been a long time Tomb Raider fan. I love the fact that the main character is a chick -- even if she is mainly a sex symbol.

The stories are always a lot of fun. As always,the player takes on the role of Lara Croft, a badass, gorgeous rich woman who spends her time perusing ancient tombs pretending to do archaeology. I say pretending because she tends to break a lot of ancient things which doesn't strike me as proper archaeological study.

The game is a mix between puzzles and combat. Most of the game is spent figuring out the weird mechinisms used to open doors. This has always struck me as odd because it seems to me that it would have taken these ancient peoples just FOREVER to get through a door in their temple! On the other hand, if they didn't want anyone getting in, why build a temple? But I digress..

While I enjoyed the storyline, this game is really about all the crazy things you can make Lara do. She jumps, she runs, she climbs walls, she swims, she does really cool acrobatics and she fights bad guys. What more could you want in an action game? True the combat is horrible. You don't really have a whole lot of control other than jumping around to dodge bullets, but it's fun anyway.

Something else that bugs me is the control. Pressing back doesn't always make you jump backwards, for example. Your movement direction is not relative to Lara, it's relative to the player. So even though Lara is jumping backwards, if it's to your left, you still have to press left. Confused? Me too. The camera movements are obnoxious and you frequently need to make blind jumps to some random obstacle you can't see.

The graphics, however, are pretty spiffy - considering this is a 2006 game. The environments were really amazing, ranging from Peru to Africa, to Japan and even Kazakhstan. And on a side note, in-house composer Troels Folmann spent over nine months composing the score for this game and it shows. The music was phenomenal.

Another cool part of this game is the Croft Manor, Lara's humble abode. In the original games it was a place to practice your moves and that was about it. This time, however, the developers have created pretty much another level of puzzles just having to do with the Manor.

Tomb Raider, in my opinion is in a category all of its own. It's not an RPG, not quite a first person shooter, but more than a puzzle game. I've always enjoyed these games and look forward to the next installment coming out in Fall of 2012, called simply Tomb Raider. Thanks for watching my review!

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Gaming

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• Legend