Written by: Rik
Date posted: May 9, 2024

While we may be a bit too long in the tooth now to bother with the notion that we ‘should’ cover, or have covered, a particular gaming series, the absence of Lara Croft from this site has niggled periodically over the years, particularly when considered alongside completed reviews of two Indiana Jones action adventures very much ‘inspired’ by the success of Tomb Raider. However, in revisiting my long-held and frankly wrong opinion that Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine was a different sort of game entirely, I also found it a lot more difficult to play than I remembered, and realised that any small chance of me heading back to experience its late-90s contemporaries from the Tomb Raider series had likely just evaporated.

While the recent re-release/re-mastering of the first three games may have spawned plenty of fond reminiscences about their merits, it’s generally acknowledged that the level of precision required when moving and jumping, as well as the lack of assistance on offer as to what to do next, is probably now out of step with modern expectations. This is largely my memory of trying to play Tomb Raider at the time: for some, working this stuff out was clearly part of the point and appeal of the whole enterprise, but I always was a fairly lazy and impatient gamer and it just wasn’t for me.

So there was really nothing else to be done other than commence our trademark blundering right into the middle of a long-running franchise, by which point a combination of Tomb Raider oversaturation and a less-than successful transition to a new generation of console technology in the form of sixth instalment Angel of Darkness had necessitated a reset under a new development team. Don’t know what happened in Tomb Raiders 1-6? It doesn’t matter, we’re starting again! Need a bit more help working out what to do? We agree, and we’re right here with you! [Who are you here? And who are you talking to? – Ed.]

Legend is the first of two (soon to become three) Tomb Raider reboots (and not to be confused with 2010’s unfinished and unreleased Tomb Raider: Absolute Legend, in which the economic downturn forced Lara to take a job as an area sales manager tasked with maintaining the morale of her team by getting the beers in at TGI Fridays) during which development duties were passed to Crystal Dynamics (responsible for the Legacy of Kain games – which, naturally, I haven’t played either). While it’s easy to be cynical about the need to press the big red button on these things, from the outside looking in, it seems to have been a sensible and necessary step after the commitment to produce a game a year during the series’ heyday was followed by the troubled development and underwhelming performance of Angel of Darkness.

To the layperson, Legend is still recognisably Tomb Raider as it once was, with its animated heroine largely unchanged (if now voiced by the quite-famous actress Keeley Hawes) and indulging in a familiar mixture of underground capering, crate-and-lever-based puzzling and improbable leaps across precipices in a variety of rural and urban environments. The supporting tale involves flashbacks to the loss of loved ones both in childhood and as an adult and follows Lara as she charges headfirst into each phase of her round the world challenge while largely ignoring the cautionary treatises of her two male assistants (an English researcher called Alister and an American ‘tech expert’, Zip) who are in almost constant contact via Lara’s (very 00s) headset.

The action involves a solid mix of precision jumping, puzzle solving and occasional combat. The murder of wild animals, while still present, is kept to a minimum, with most skirmishes involving the faceless henchmen working for antagonist James Rutland, a wealthy tycoon vaguely reminiscent of Jeff Goldblum. Combat isn’t the strongest element of Legend, and on medium difficulty at least, a guileless and direct approach works rather too well, with charging towards enemies while hammering the fire button often bringing reasonable results. Grenades, exploding barrels and collapsing scenery also contribute to some pleasing set pieces, but otherwise these moments act as interludes between the main segments of the game.

Instead, your time is mostly spent plotting a route through each level while pausing occasionally to puzzle out a way past a more significant obstacle. Legend introduces the various manoeuvres required at a fairly leisurely pace, with the emphasis initially being on choosing the right one to make the next move. In this regard it’s altogether more forgiving than earlier titles, which operated on a rigid system wherein each of Lara’s movements were precisely measured and an understanding of this principle was key to success. Here, for example, if you slightly miss a jump, Lara might grab onto a ledge with only one hand, requiring a quick press of a button to hang on, rather than you simply falling to your death because you didn’t line it all up properly in the first place.

It can still be pretty exhilarating stuff, with the heights involved adding to the sense of danger, which later becomes more urgent as bits of the scenery start to break off when Lara holds onto them, no longer allowing you the luxury of time to plan out your next move, instead requiring you to think on the fly and string together sequences of jumps and climbs under pressure. A change of pace in the other direction comes when you need to work out how to get through a locked door, to a higher ledge, or operate some ancient machinery. Visual clues are provided in these sections by the camera lingering on the key areas prior to control being returned to the player, while objects that can be interacted with via Lara’s guns or grappling hook are coated in a shimmer effect that makes them stand out. And if you still need help, then Lara also has access to some goggles that tell you if an object can be of use and give a vague hint as to how.

It may sound like a slightly ridiculous amount of hand holding, and certainly those raised on the earlier games might, as previously noted, consider it a watering down of what Tomb Raider is meant to be. However, for anyone who considers wandering around barren levels confused about exactly what they’re meant to be doing next as the stuff of gaming nightmares, this assistance will be a welcome development. And the particularly hopeless, such as yours truly, might still find themselves stuck in places.

On a similar note, each level ends with a boss battle, which is also not necessarily something that will please everyone, particularly on those occasions where the specific method of wearing down an individual boss isn’t readily apparent. It doesn’t help matters that in these moments the camera, the misbehaviour of which is otherwise well within manageable limits, often starts to act up, and you’re forced to grapple with that as well as the matter at hand. Still, when compared with the bog standard combat elsewhere, you do at least have to master some kind of strategy, and make active use of evasive manoeuvres, to avoid a premature end.

Other oddities include the use of quick-time events, although they’re a brief and largely unchallenging presence, which may beg the question of why anyone would bother to include them in the first place. Personally, I don’t really mind them in cases like this, where they’re used to add a base level of interaction to climactic scenes which might otherwise not involve the player at all, rather than as a substitute for the main action.

There are also a few motorbike-based levels, which make for a reasonable change-up: while the handling of Lara’s bike (a Ducati, according to the logos displayed prominently on our heroine’s leathers, as well as the machine itself) is some way short of satisfying, these sections are just precarious enough to communicate a sense of peril without descending into the territory of rock hard frustration. Although some repetition is required, the checkpointing is – as it is throughout the game, with a few exceptions – on the generous side, keeping any possible teeth-gnashing at bay.

Presentation-wise, it all looks and sounds pretty good, although I did find that the so-called ‘Next Generation Graphics’ feature (presumably to provide an upgrade from late PS2-era graphics to early Xbox 360 standard, this being a game from 2006) was apparently the source of repeated crashing throughout the game, and needed to be turned off in certain circumstances for any progress to be made. I must admit that the story washed over me slightly, and I couldn’t really comment on how this incarnation of Lara Croft differed from previous interpretations, although her characterisation here as a determined and confident sort who doesn’t easily let things go is at least communicated effectively. (Also her disdain for the advice of the two berks who are constantly offering advice over the radio is likely to be shared by the player).

In the end, what I was hoping for from Legend, I got: Tomb Raider as I might have liked it, in a breezy and accessible format, offering a reasonable amount of challenge across 10 hours of solid action adventure fun. My only real reference point is Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb, with which it shares plenty in common (I won’t get into ‘who did it first’ debates from such a position of ignorance, but I was struck by the way that Lara’s grappling hook here is used in a similar manner to Indy’s whip in Emperor’s Tomb, to traverse larger gaps in some moments, and avoid falling to your death in others).

While Legend is definitely a better-looking game with more moments of excitement, particularly in the field of ‘jumping from one high point to another’, Indy’s fist-fighting mechanic arguably makes for slightly more interesting combat than what’s offered up here. Regardless, Legend stands up pretty well as a good example of its type. Although fans of the earlier games may consider it a compromised version of what they offered, if you always wanted to try a Tomb Raider but couldn’t quite face journeying all the way back to the series’ origins, this works as a solid alternative point of entry, or as a decent stand-alone action adventure.