Customer Reviews:
 Back to the Basics - a good thing! December 7, 2006
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Tomb Raider! What a blast that game was, when it came out I played it till my thumb just about fell off. After TR1 the franchise just started going downhill and after TR3 it got plain terrible.
Lara Croft was dead and we all shed a silent tear for one of our favorite games.
But wait!
Here comes Crystal Dynamics! Apparently someone at Crystal Dynamics knew what Tomb raider was all about, cool puzzles, places to explore, secrets to find and jumping into a forward flip while you draw your guns and blow some guy off a cliff. Excellent.
TR Legend hasn't really totally gone back to what the original was, it's very short and while the levels are loads of fun it feels a bit more linear than I would expect. Levels could've been a bit larger. The best one is probably the Mansion and it's a training level.
But dont get me wrong, the game is fun, and it's got plenty of secrets and unlockables for die hards.
The "Next Gen Graphics" (a phrase thats starting to annoy me) aren't really as "next gen" as some other "next gen" games I've played, and with out a relatively beefy graphics card your not gunna get a high frame rate with them turned on. That struck me as odd because other games I have that look A LOT better than Legend run smooth with all settings on high.
But graphics dont make a game, they're just a part of it and I really couldn't complain about the graphics much, they look great, have some style (dont expect realism) and add enough to the game to make it immersive.
The game play is a blast, it's pretty much what you'd expect from Tomb Raider, the motorcycle stages are a bit annoying at first but once you get the hang of em they're actually a lot of fun.
Puzzles are there and they're good, but the new clue system makes solving them kinda easy, which was a bummer. I remember obsessing over some of the originals puzzles for days, you wont have any of that here, maybe 15 minutes max.
Lara's got all of her old moves (swan dive and the handstand are back) and a couple new ones so that she can do some extra butt whoopin.
I'd recommend this one for young and old and especially fans of the Tomb Raider Games, good to see someone getting the Genre back on track.
Lets hope the next one really takes the game to new heights.
 Triumphant return for Lara and Tomb Raider November 12, 2006
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Tomb Raider:Legend returns the Tomb Raider series to its original glory by giving players what originally made the game fun and interesting, namely - absorbing gameplay involving a blend of exploration, acrobatic movements, puzzle solving and combat. The game takes adavantage of modern processors and graphics cards, Lara herself looks absolutely amazing and the game levels are beautifully rendered and look better than any other Tomb Raider game to date, actually as good as the more recent Myst games.
The controls are different now, and take some getting used to. Basically, the mouse is used to move the camera in relation to Lara, while the keyboard controls how Lara moves with respect to where the camera is aimed i.e. left, right, towards the camera or away from it. It sounds confusing, but turns out to be actually useful, as the player can put the camera exactly where needed to insure proper alignment before attempting a difficult jump.
The game can be played at several levels of difficulty, and will sometimes offer hints for which keys to press in order to make a particular move or accomplish some other task.
The levels themselves are very large, and involve a mix of various ancient ruins in tropical and desert settings, and modern cityscapes. Some of the vistas are simply breathtaking. Great attention to detail has been given, with lots of small things like rocks crumbling, plant stems waving in the breeze, insects crawling or flying around, etc, which add to the immersive atmosphere.
Speaking of breathtaking, Lara herself looks absolutely stunning. I have no idea how many polygons she is composed of, but the number must be in the thousands. She isn't quite photorealistic, but primarily because real women in photographs don't look quite so good. Details are amazing, if you look at her eyes, they appear to be moist. After she swims, her clothing looks wet for a while, then merely damp, then dry. Her skin similarly has a sheen of moisture which slowly evaporates. Her abilities have always been a bit above those of most humans, in that even in the first game she could push or pull a cubic stone block taller than herself, which must have weighed tons. She still does such things, now sometimes jumping vertically along a sheer cliff face or wall to the next handhold a distance of three or four feet, or diving off a cliff to catch a handhold on a precipice across a chasm. Because Lara executes her moves with the grace of an Olympic gymnast, it is astonishing to watch as these events unfold in front of your eyes, and thrilling to be a part of them.
I liked the game very much, and will be looking forward to more like this!
 Sigh... October 29, 2006
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
Here's the good news: "Legend" is definitely a step above the dreadful, atrocious, horrible "Angel Of Darkness". It looks awesome. The controls are much better. The story is... well, typical TR story, nothing to compain about.
Here's the bad news: it's painfully short, dizzying because of poor camera work, and consistently frustrating due to the above, and a stupid checkpoint system. Can someone tell me what the point is of offering an in-mission save-game option when it DOESN'T SAVE where you want it to??? No matter where you save, if you load your saved game you will begin at the start of your last checkpoint. Which makes the entire save-game system completely pointless and even a tad insulting. Sounds like a (not so) clever way to make a short game seem longer.
The camera, which should have been perfected through all these years, has only gotten worse. At least in the TR games before "Angel" we had an option to enter the "look" mode and look around. Much like in "Angel", such option is unavailable in "Legend". As a result, many times you find yourself stuck on the edge of a cliff, desperate to look around so you can see where poor Lara should jump next so as to avoid her untimely death, but all you can see is the back of her head. Which, of course, results in death after death after death, which in turn brings you all the way back to the beginning of the checkpoint. After 10 times, it becomes either dull or infuriating as heck. And did I mention that you have no choice but to listen to the characters repeat their lines over... and over... and over again, for as many times as it takes you to complete a checkpoint? Well, yeah. That's exactly what happens. I'm not talking about the cutscenes - those you can skip. Not so with the built-in conversations, which occur while you're controling Lara. After one particularly tough jump-slide-jump-slide sequence I got so tired of them yapping the same thing over and over than I turned off the sound until I was able to get to the next checkpoint.
The controls, while being better than the clumsy "Angel" system, are still quite frustrating. I don't know what genius came up with this, but in this game, "up" is not always "up", "down" is not always down", and so on. Imagine you're hanging off a ledge, needing to jump to the left. If the camera is right behind Lara, she will jump left when you press your "left" button. But rotate the camera just a tad so it looks at her from upper-side, and her left suddenly becomes a "forward". You get the picture. In situations when quick decisions are needed, this can become incredibly annoying.
When the game ends (in a shockingly abrupt manner), you get your "bonus" - you can now explore Croft Manor! You can see where Lara sleeps, bathes and works out, and collect some shiny shields scattered all over. I mean, WOW. Thanks so much. Not only is it monumentaly boring, but it's completely pointless.
"Legend" is sure to give you a few hours of fun, but ultimately it's quite disappointing. It's more like an expansion pack than a full game. Definitely not worth your hard-earned thirty bucks. Eidos should really start thinking about making a good game as opposed to making mucho dinero off a popular character by putting out unfinished and/or unpolished products.
 Tomb Raider Legend Legendary Bust October 15, 2006
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is by far the worst in the Tomb Raider series. The controls are impossible and the action lame. The 'auto sight' for targeting never seems to work even if you're right on top of an assailant. It seems the designers tried to make the game more 'Movie' like and forgot that it's just a game. It's supposed to be fun not laborious. The controls for fighting are more frustrating than fun. The designers should go back to what works and modify the character and action from Tomb Raider Revelation.
Tomb Raider Legend-playability August 31, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The game,so far, is fun. I play at the easy level. The problem I experience on my Dell Dimension PC is the perspective will change when I'm least expecting it. All of a sudden instead of viewing say,from behind Lara, the view will just change to the top of her head. When your trying to kill something critical this perspective change is a major drawback to the game. I can't believe this wasn't picked up in the Beta testing. I bought the game as a "used" item so I'm very happy not to have paid full retail. It probably wouldn't have been worth the price.
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