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				Graphics: 8.5 Gameplay: 8.5 Sound: 9.0 Control: 7.5 Replay Value: 7.0 Rating: 8.0 Publisher:  Edios Developer:  Crystal Dynamics Number Of Players:  1 Cheats Screenshots
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  Few video game characters become cultural icons outside the world of gaming. Pac-Man, Mario and curvy, impractically dressed archeologist Lara Croft occupy that rare air, and ten years after her video game debut, Lara’s back in Tomb Raider: Legend.

  In Tomb Raider: Legend, the seventh game of the Tomb Raider series, Lara is on a quest to find shards of an enchanted sword that may have belonged to King Arthur’s knights. Like its predecessors, TRL is a third-person platformer/shooter/puzzler and, according to many longtime fans, a return to form. Eidos Interactive fired longtime studio Core and brought in Crystal Dynamics to breathe new life into the aging series.

  Gameplay

  TRL is a well-balanced blend of platformer and puzzler. You will rely on Lara’s agile, almost monkey-like abilities (and upper-body strength seen in few women) to shimmy along ledges, flip over protruding poles and swing from ropes to get past perils below. But the game is not all about hand-eye coordination; at many points you’ll be figuring out how to use the objects around you to activate machines, open doors or otherwise allow Lara’s quest to continue. These puzzles are well-designed and deftly walk a fine line between challenging and frustrating.

  Lara occasionally has to whip out her guns to take down the bad guys, and it’s here the game stumbles a bit. Enemies appear with a large red bullseye, and auto-aim makes killing enemies laughably easy. Explosives appear with a “Y” over them, signaling that you can use your “Y” button to fire at them and cause a blast that takes out several enemies at once.

  TRL also has a couple of tedious motorcycle levels (complete with a Ducati product placement) in which Lara has to race along a strictly linear track, avoiding obstacles while shooting enemies off their bikes. Because of the auto-aim, the most effective way to get past these enemies is to simply concentrate on keeping the bike from crashing and pump the left trigger, letting the aiming do its thing. These levels seem to last 10 minutes or more, because you see the same scenery over and over.

  But for the most part, TRL brings the elements that have made the series popular – harrowing jumps, acrobatic maneuvers and puzzles. To keep frustration to a minimum, checkpoints are plentiful and strategically placed right after particularly tricky sections, and Lara has infinite lives. I should know – I’ve killed the poor woman multiple times (often with errant grenade tosses).

  Throughout the game, items in the environment shimmer and glow to signal that they are interactive. One of Lara’s best toys is her grapple, and Lara can use the grapple to pull or swing from those shimmery items. Glowing doors can usually be kicked open, and glowing boxes often contain treasures, which earn achievements.

  Some of the cutscenes are interactive, like the old Dragon’s Lair game. Prompts pop up on the screen, and if you react quickly enough, the cutscene continues. If you don’t, Lara dies and the game returns to the last in-engine checkpoint. Speaking of cutscenes, they do a good job of providing exposition, but some go on a long time. Luckily, you can skip most of them after viewing them the first time.

  The game is forgiving and flexible. Gone are the days when Lara had to be positioned just right to grab a rope or a handhold. In TRL, if she is facing in the general direction of her target, she will compensate in mid-air to grab it. Again, this keeps the game interesting but not unduly frustrating.

  One quarrel with the game is its linearity. The best adventure games today give the player multiple paths to success in a mission, but TRL insists pretty much on one right way. Spots where there appear to be multiple paths are deceptive; one branch is usually either a dead end or a hiding place for a collectible artifact, or “reward.”

  The difficulty level of the game is fairly static throughout. Puzzles don’t get more difficult to figure out; in fact, once you’ve played long enough, you begin to get a feel for what’s expected of you. Likewise, maneuvers don’t get trickier, but there are spots where you may need to use more of them in quick succession.

  For example, in one of the Kazakhstan levels, there is a series of ramps. After sliding down the first, you must jump to avoid hot wires. At the next one, you must jump to avoid the first set and roll under the second set. On your way down the third ramp, though, you must quickly shoot out a running fan as you are sliding to the bottom, then you must avoid the hot wires. The game is ingeniously paced to force you to use your old skills in new ways.

  Graphics

  Perhaps because it is on multiple platforms, TRL does not look truly next-gen. But it looks like Tomb Raider, which is to say that it’s a bit cartoony, especially in its rendering of human characters. Lara’s face isn’t detailed, but it is somehow expressive in the cutscenes sprinkled throughout. Of course, for most of the game, you view Lara from behind, which is perfectly fine with the average TR fanboy. Lara looks realistic when she walks, and using the left analog stick, you can control her speed, from a tiptoeing creep to a sashay to a casual jog (and boy, there are times when you want her to pick up the pace a bit).

  The environments are beautifully rendered and varied. Lara’s quest takes you to such far-flung locales as Ghana, Japan, England, Peru and Kazakhstan. In some locations, she’s truly in tombs, but others put her in more urban settings. For example, the Japan levels take place inside (and along outside ledges of) elegant office buildings, as Lara tries to get a shard of the sword from members of the Yakuza.

  Water looks good, and Lara spends some time in it, solving puzzles and struggling through small underwater crawl spaces before her air runs out. (The water levels are not for the claustrophobic.)

  As in past versions of TR, the camera can be infuriating. Because you’re in third person, the camera can sometimes have a mind of its own, especially in tight places. There were many occasions when I had to contend with the camera zoomed in on Lara’s ponytail because she was backed into a corner. Gun battles are especially annoying when you can’t see the enemy because Lara’s head is in the way. Thanks to the no-brainer auto-aim, though, as long as you can see the red bullseye and keep firing, you don’t need to actually see the enemy you’re trying to kill.

  Sound

  TR makes good use of surround, especially the subwoofer. It won’t take long for you to learn that a deep, ominous rumble is a signal that you will be squashed like a bug by a large round stone, lose the ground below you or be eaten by a monster if you don’t get a move on. Surround also comes in handy when you pull switches or press buttons on the floor, because it’s not always obvious what effect your actions have or where you need to go next to investigate.

  Sound effects often drown out dialogue, which is not necessarily critical to figuring out the game but does provide exposition for the plot.

  The voice acting is excellent, especially that of British actress Keeley Hawes as Lara, and the dialog is zippy. Lara’s banter with her good-natured assistants back in England provides chuckles throughout. For instance, in one level, one of Lara’s tasks is to start a water wheel that will reactivate a booby-trapped hallway armed with spears. When she succeeds, one of her colleagues remarks, “Just the way you like it – a death trap.” “It just needed a woman’s touch,” Lara shoots back.

  Controls

  TRL’s controls are not the most intuitive. The left stick moves Lara, and the right controls the camera. The “A” button is for jumping, and “B” button crouches and rolls, and the “X” button is used mostly to activate the grapple. The “Y” button is sort of an all-purpose action button, used to open doors, move boxes and enter vehicles.

  Among Lara’s maneuvers are a few melee attacks that you learn and practice in an early level, but I never had occasion to use them; there’s no reason for hand-to-hand combat with bad guys when a pistol will do.

  The D-pad gives you access to your gadgets and health packs. One of the cooler gadgets are the binoculars which, when toggled into “RAD mode,” analyze the object you’re point at to give you some idea about why that particular box is glowing or what a wheel might do.

  Limited replay

  TRL is so linear it doesn’t really bear repeat playing. Crystal Dynamics has incorporated achievements into the game as well as can be expected, and that means entering every little nook and cranny and busting every box in order to find hidden gold and silver artifacts. They have no apparent bearing on your success in the game, but completists will feel compelled to find every single one of them for bragging rights on the ol’ gamercard.

  There’s also a time trial mode where the goal is to get through the level as quickly as possible. That has to be the worst possible way to play this game, because you’re cheated out of enjoying the lush environments and the cleverness of the puzzles.

  The bottom line

  Even though it’s widely considered Tomb Raider’s return to form, its linearity and lack of replay value make it an iffy purchase. But it’s a great rental for those rainy afternoons when none of your friends are online; it’s easy to pick up for an hour or two of solitary gaming.

5/5/2006  Tracey 'Jerri Blank' McCartney