I have very little contact with this franchise. Outside seeing the first movie in theaters back in the day, I really had not done anything with it since playing the demo of the first game on my old 486. And while I enjoyed myself playing that demo, I had other games I wanted to play more so my interest never went any further then that. Then came the summer sales this year when I got this little title for about $1, curious what I had missed. I wanted to like it, I really did, but the big warning came up. When I have a hard time deciding whether to play with a controller or my mouse, it's usually a bad sign. It was here, and I'm glad it was so cheap, cause much more and I would have felt cheated.
Story: It's not often in life you get to right a wrong from your past, and even less so when you blame yourself for it as a child. And yet this is where Lara Croft finds herself. Having heard of a mythical stone dais in the ruins of Tiwanaku, she embarks on a journey believing she just might find one like which had taken her mother from her when she foolishly messed with it as a child. And this time, she just may be right. Still the picture is not complete as the sword required to recreate that day and try to get her mother back is still missing, and Lara will stop at nothing to recreate the artifact and use it to try to open the portal that had whisked her mother away so many years ago.
You will follow Lara on this globe-hopping adventure, guided by clues to where she might find the pieces of this legendary sword, but she is not the only one who is hunting for or values the pieces, so she will have a fight or two on her hands... many with people from her past. The story from this point is fairly simplistic, reaching back into her history as a child to inspire it in the first place, and different points in her life where she made/lost friends and enemies who now desire the same device she seeks. The only real wrinkle in the story is one of those points, however, as a friend thought dead has more to do with this chapter in her life. It's well written and every character seems perfectly in place, but there is really nothing in the way of character or even plot development. Lara just moves from place to place, interacts with a few characters, and moves on to the next objective on her quest.... basically enough to give you a reason Lara is going where she is and little else.
6/10
Graphics: Honestly I am of two minds for the graphical prowess this game offers, and that is due to the game having two different modes... and requiring you to use the lower one if you want to finish it, but we can talk about that in the bugs section of this review. When at it's best, this game is effectively an early 360 game ported to the PC, and took full advantage of the then newest hardware to produce some truly stunning set pieces. You will parkour Lara around cliffs, ancient ruins, and even a Japanese city skyscraper before the game is over, and everything looks absolutely stunning as light is allowed to set the tone of ancient and untouched ruins or the neon skyscrapers under construction and everything in between. Be ready for some breathtaking views.
The people in these places, however, are not so brilliant. Starting with Lara herself, she bridges the gap of the uncanny valley, taking a more stylized approach to her looks, but with an animation that attempts to feel realistic. The result is pleasant to see when in game as you focus as much on what you want to make her do to proceed as much as her responses so you can play accordingly. Add to this a variety to her outfit based on what level you are playing and what the environment expects of her and she will never quite fade into the background.
When you get to cutscenes, however, things can get a lot more erratic. This game came out in an era when Half Life 2 was the pinnacle of facial expression work for characters with little progress in the 2 years following before it came out. So despite the world looking a lot better, the moment the cutscenes begin you can be treated to some relatively simple looking closeups of Lara's face that just stands against the gameplay. And she's one of the better treated characters. Others have some seriously odd choices from a guy in Japan who's dimensions are more like the rectangle of his hitbox then anything else and feels exceedingly cartoony to one of Lara's allies who I swear they left the paint-strokes in his skin details, making him stand out against the style the rest of the characters are done about as blatantly and unignorable as possible.
Now admittedly, that does not mean these characters look bad. In fact when you consider the tech when the game came out, they actually look pretty good. But when you compare the level of work on the world against the people (which make up the majority of who you interact with) it's jarring from time to time, and frankly a little distracting.
But this is all when you are allowed to use the "next generation" mode. Things get cut back when you are forced to turn this off, and you will be to avoid crashes noted in the bug sections. When you have to do this, you will find a lot of the advanced shading that gave the world it's extra punch is missing, making the world just look worse for it. It still looks ok, but anything that made it stand out as an example of the better looking stuff from early in the Xbox 360's life goes out the window. Ironically, the people start to fit in better when you do this though.
7/10
Sound: As usual for the era in gaming, time was much kinder to the sound-scape. Not that sound effects will show it, though. You will get everything you need to with guns firing, grenades (and other things) exploding, creatures roaring and even the splash of water from waterfalls. But nothing stands out as exceptional so much as serviceable.
Voice acting fairs better, but for the most part it is banter between Lara and whoever she's talking to at the moment. These are scripted to happen at specific points and sound good enough, but Lara is clearly the star here, getting most of the great lines (besides her crew making fun of each other for either losing their shit about what she is seeing or their lunch for the heights she is playing in and the playful banter between them). She is the star and there is little in this game's voice work that doesn't involve her talking back to someone. It sounds great, but surprisingly, is not what you should be focused on. That makes itself obvious from the opening title video as you start the game up.
The music in this game goes anywhere from mythical flutes and chanting to high energy rock and roll to go with combat (on foot or otherwise). It blends perfectly with the game and honestly is the kind of ambiance one might expect in a high end action film. Simply put, this is a treat for the ears and people who got the soundtrack with their game back in the day definitely got something special here.
8/10
Gameplay: Sadly, this is where the game has it's biggest failings and time has not been kind to it. At it's core, Tomb Raider Legends is a 3rd person game about platforming, puzzles and gunplay... and it really only does one of these right most of the time.
The puzzles this game offers are all basically environmental and while they work they are often very simple to solve with incredibly obvious answers of where you are supposed to go and what you are supposed to do to open the next door and proceed. There is very little to stimulate the brain here.
And for the most part, that platforming you will have to do for these puzzles work not only work well, but upstage this brainwork. You will have Lara jumping and swinging and climbing as effortlessly as you press the buttons... most of the time. However most of the time is not always, and there are times the camera will absolutely destroy your ability to complete the sequence you are working on by simply changing the direction your next leap is going to go even as Lara looks like she's ready to go in the direction you expect her to. It's frankly infuriating when it happens, never mind when the game has to decide what you actually meant and as such Lara does nothing. This may not sound like a big deal, but there are times you have to move quickly because the platform or hand grip you are on is about to collapse so you don't have time for the game to decide what to do.
And this camera is going to be the biggest issue you will run into as you play, not just in puzzles, but in more unique situations. For example there is a puzzle late in the game which has you driving a forklift to move boxes both out of the way and to build stairs to a grate you can open up to get some extra item. I can not tell you what that item is because I lost patience with the camera zooming in so close to the forklift and NOT letting me adjust it that I just finally moved just enough boxes out of the way of the staircase you DO have to clear and driving it down the hall (which admittedly was a lot of fun to crash through traps and walls at that point). Since it didn't require me to get into that little duct, I'm guessing it just had a collectable.
But while on this point, I have to zero in on these "unique" moments when the game decides you need a vehicle... particularly when Lara is riding a bike through a chase sequence. There are a few of these and they are long, awkward to control, and redundant as you move from group of bikers to group of bikers, shooting them off their bike in a high speed combat scenario that is far more boring then that sounds. You basically just keep firing while dodging rocks and trees in the road, taking damage from bullets and looking for medkits to replace any you use in the "battle" which you can not speed past, by the way. The road you are on is infinite and looping so even if you rush by those bikers, you will catch up to them "again and again" until you take them out. And then each one has a unique way to end, which the camera can again, fuck you over with way too easily. These two sequences are the lowest points in the game, which is saying something as when NOT on that bike, combat is basically lifeless to begin with.
You will literally let Lara aim at whatever enemy she deems worth it while you dance around the battlefield, jumping and dodging to prevent them from landing gunfire on her. The only thing you actually have to watch for is when they start throwing grenades (which you can do too). The game does try to spice things up with destructing environments you can shoot up to take out a few enemies at once, but these become rarer and less important as the game goes on.
Still lifeless combat is better then bad combat, which sadly this game ALSO has in the form of it's handful of bosses. Almost all of them involve a round room with 4 objects and a gimmick around them along side a boss you have to "kill." I put this in quotations because normally the gimmick is required to complete the battle or the boss just regenerates their health. For example the second fight you are in is against a guy who will run at you with a spear that does descent damage if he can reach you, but Lara can jump around enough to prevent it very easily, if not well enough to get more then a couple bullets fired back and doing slivers of damage before he's back in her face, making this fight not so much difficult, but incredibly obnoxious, especially as he will just before death jump onto one of his four platforms and heal up completely! Rather, what you have to do is pull off the protective plates under each of the platforms and then shoot out the weak point to bring them down so he CANT regenerate and prolong this otherwise pointless fight. It's easy, but it's such a slog it will still make you miserable... and it's probably the best boss fight in the game.
4/10
Bugs: While this game overall ran well, it did have some serious problems that need to be talked about.
- The camera will kill you. I mean this exactly as it sounds. The camera in this game is absolutely atrocious, and will on several occasions become more your enemy then anyone firing weapons at you or any puzzle you might have to figure out. It will decide to zoom in at inopportune moments, limiting your view of what you are doing dramatically or even just angle wrong for some platforming from time to time. This last part becomes the worst of it as Lara's movement when jumping from things like ledges is sensitive to your perspective from the camera, so you could be good to go and jump to your death because the camera just refused to move those last few degrees. It frankly sucks, especially when the camera decides for you where to aim and still fails at this.
- Do the thing, dammit! This issue isn't common, but when it does rear it's ugly head, you are in for a bad time. There are times where the more clunky nature of the controls will fail to execute whatever button you are hitting. Most of the time, thankfully this turns into just an inconvenience and makes you redo some action you were trying to do, but on occasion this will cost Lara her life as she refuses to do something like move off a ledge that is about to fall or the like. It's infuriating when it happens.
- Crashes when it looks good. And this might be the worst issue of them all. When you play this game, there is a graphical mode called "next gen" which adds a lot of shading to the game, giving it a more gritty look that frankly improves the image of the game dramatically... until it breaks. This port is a port from the early days of the 360 when a lot of them were notoriously bad. And while this game doesn't have the telltale sign of a "CookedPC" directory in it's files, it is still no exception, and there are sections of the game that if you have this mode on will reliably crash to the desktop despite it being one of the biggest features of the port.
Digital Rights Management: Sadly this is not a game without DRM attached. If you have a disc copy, there is a CD check via secuROM and the Steam copy needs Steam to run. However if you got this game through Gog, that copy is DRM free.
Source: PC Gaming Wiki
Score: I honestly wanted to like this game, but right from the start, I had vibes it was gonna get rough, from the button layout on the keyboard despite the game never showing you what controller buttons correspond if you use one instead, to the immediately obvious lackluster button mashing of the combat, the signs were all there from the beginning. It never got better, and in fact as the devs decide to try to get clever in the later levels actually gets worse... from the bad port territory to just plain a bad game. I can not recommend getting your hands on it. This might well be one of those games that, unless you are a die-hard Tomb Raider fan who needs to have them all, you would be best to avoid.
4/10
System Requirements:
- Pentium III or Athalon XP running at 1.0 Ghz
- 256 MB RAM
- Nvidia Geforce 3Ti or AMD Radeon 9 series cards with 64 MB VRAM
- Windows 2000 or XP
- 10 GB Hard Drive space (SSD required)
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (5700X) 3.4 Ghz
- 32 GB RAM
- AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT (8 GB VRAM)
- Windows 11 (64 Bit)
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