Tombraider: Legend

[metadigital]

Lara is released today ... anyone bought / played it yet?

[Bokishi]

You jerk, we don't get it until the 11th

[karka]

I never played a Tomb Raider game...Are they any good?

[Bokishi]

Every game since Tomb Rader 2 has sucked. But this one is different I believe

Edited April 7, 2006 by Bokishi

[Gabrielle]

You jerk, we don't get it until the 11th

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why are Euro's getting it before Americans?

[Surreptishus]

eidos is english

[Bokishi]

So is Lara :D

[Gabrielle]

Of course that explains it.

[metadigital]

You jerk, we don't get it until the 11th

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Haw haw, it was released today in the UK!

 

But I'm not going to buy it until I read a review, after the tragedy that was Angel of Darkness...

[Bokishi]

You jerk, we don't get it until the 11th

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Haw haw, it was released today in the UK!

 

But I'm not going to buy it until I read a review, after the tragedy that was Angel of Darkness...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

IGN has some reviews, if you trust them.

[Lyric Suite]

Are they any good?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

No...

[karka]

And Eurogamer has a review too..

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=63793&page=2

[Gabrielle]

You haven't bought it yet Meta? Come now go get it.

[metadigital]

This all makes the game feel a whole lot easier than Tomb Raider veterans might remember. It's certainly more forgiving in many respects, although there are occasions where not having a grid system means you can't just take the required number of steps back and do a run-up like before, but we can't say we missed that approach.

But ... I liked that!

The combat controls ... a simple system that tasks the player with little more than holding down the left trigger to lock-on and fire with the right trigger. Thanks to a combination of generous controls, infinite pistol ammo and some pretty dim enemy AI, the occasions when you're heavily outnumbered pass off without incident at every stage of the game. Enemies obligingly stand around waiting to be killed (sometimes, gasp, moving behind cover), and even the ones that wield riot shields can be dispatched with a single well-placed grenade ... and the bosses - almost without exception - are unimaginative in the extreme and incredibly easy to dispatch, and only tend to hold you up via some illogical puzzle element.

That's okay: same as the earlier ones.

But with several 'second chance'-type mechanics, and an unprecedented degree of hints and prompts flashing up to remind you which button to press, most experienced players will romp through the seven main levels in no more than 11-12 hours.

Very short.

But the various other unlockables (like costumes, art, pistol upgrades, cheats and the like) are pretty underwhelming compared to, for example, games like Resident Evil 4, and at the end of it, you'll wonder exactly why you spent so much time scooping up all those hard-to-reach artefacts.

Can you spell G I M M I C K ?

But as much as we've laboured the point at how straightforward and easy Tomb Raider Legend is, there are a few memorable moments (towards the end) where it feels like the team completely neglected to adopt the same 'always make it fun' mentality. Inconsistencies creep in. Levels suddenly seem chock full of red herrings. Control prompts fail to appear. Suddenly you'll be running around wondering what the hell you're meant to do. You'll try everything. Shoot everything. Leap off everything 29 times. Grapple everything 134 times. You'll swear 97 times. And then, almost by accident, you'll do something that works. Something you swear you tried the very first time you arrived in the room. Something so simple that you feel shame-faced with stupidity. And then the same thing happens in the next room, and then the easy-as-pie boss stumps you for the same reason. It's crushing. The fact that the exact same things happened to a colleague made us feel slightly less idiotic, but even so, it highlights the fact that there's a fine line between forgiving game design and being frustrated to death by the lack of signposting (that appears in every other instance in the entire game) and presence of numerous red herrings (which haven't appeared anywhere else).

Sounds like the ghost of Angel of Darkness.

Overall, there's this lingering sense that the game has been primarily designed with the PS2 in mind, and as such the limitations that places on the game design is really transparent. 360 owners should be advised that they're only getting a shinier version - and one that doesn't even run as smoothly as it should.

If they haven't bothered to port it properly from P2 to Xbox 360, then they probably won't bother to port it properly to the PC.

But let's be realistic: Legend is not all that it could have been. It's justifiably irksome that the combat is so utterly lame from start to finish, and that there are some truly awful driving sections and pointless slo-mo action sequences that boggle the mind with their spellbinding rubbishness - and were it not for their fleeting appearances, the game could have easily been a disaster. There's no doubt, too, that the game could and should have been much more impressive on a technical level. ... the Welcome mat may be out for Lara this time, but there's only so long Eidos can trade on past glories.

Hmm ... no wonder they didn't release it for preview to the mags ...

 

I think I'll pass on Lara, until it appears in the bargain bin.

[Bokishi]

[metadigital]

You haven't bought it yet Meta? Come now go get it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If I had known that it was exclusive until timorrow, I would have bought and played it, just to do so first. :D

 

Reading the review (for the Xbox 360 version) I am glad I didn't.

[Bokishi]

I usually don't let just one review sway my opinion, I usually read multiple reviews and decide from there.

[Darque]

I played the first one, but got bored near the end... so I doubt I'll get this one.

[Gorth]

If they haven't bothered to port it properly from P2 to Xbox 360, then they probably won't bother to port it properly to the PC.

There is a downloadable PC demo from Eidos website (500+ mb). Looks nice enough I guess and pretty fun to play too (the single demo level you get that is). Reminds me of a twenty first century Tombraider II.

[metadigital]

I played the first one, but got bored near the end... so I doubt I'll get this one.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The only bit I didn't like in the first one was the silly lava-creatire-thingies ... I really liked the HUGE Egyptian themed rooms; like the one full of water that looked like the Luxor statues:

[Gorth]

The only bit I didn't like in the first one was the silly lava-creatire-thingies ... I really liked the HUGE Egyptian themed rooms; like the one full of water that looked like the Luxor statues:

*Sigh*

 

A remake of the original Tombraider game (same game on a new engine) is very high on my wishlish

[metadigital]

I usually don't let just one review sway my opinion, I usually read multiple reviews and decide from there.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I won't make a final decision until I read next issue of PC Format, but that isn't due for a couple of weeks.

 

If they haven't bothered to port it properly from P2 to Xbox 360, then they probably won't bother to port it properly to the PC.

There is a downloadable PC demo from Eidos website (500+ mb). Looks nice enough I guess and pretty fun to play too (the single demo level you get that is). Reminds me of a twenty first century Tombraider II.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If there is a demo for download, then it will probably be included with one of the mainstream PC mags, on the DVD. Rather than download half a GB, I'll just wait ...

[Pope]

Every game since Tomb Rader 2 has sucked. But this one is different I believe

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

They're always different...

[Kaftan Barlast]

I played the first one, but got bored near the end... so I doubt I'll get this one.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

I played the first game, went "Uh, so my task is to hop through these ruins and shoot random animals? Whats the point of that?!" and Ive never touched the franchise since then

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

I played the first game, went "Uh, so my task is to hop through these ruins and shoot random animals? Whats the point of that?!" and Ive never touched the franchise since then

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The title kind of gives it away