Tomb Raider: Legend (2006)
Legend is what movie buffs might nowadays refer to as a "Re-Quel", or "reboot-slash-sequel". With the future of the Tomb Raider franchise now in their hands, U.S. developers Crystal Dynamics set about reimagining Lara for a new generation, drawing upon not only Core Design's original vision, but their own work on action-adventures such as the
Soul Reaver,
Pandemonium and
Gex: Enter the Gecko. Toby Gard was brought back as a consultant, and a more muscular, athletic Lara was given a new background story involving the mysterious disappearance of her mother and Richard Croft's ruinous search for the mythical land of Avalon. The Paramount movies served as further inspiration, though another unusual addition to the character was an entourage of quirky sidekicks in the vein of popular TV series
Relic Hunter. Keeley Hawes took over as Lara's new voice actress, and composer Peter Connelly was replaced by Troels Brun Folmann.
Controls are intuitive and responsive, though the loss of precise grid movement can occasionally lead to some irritating and inexplicable deaths - whereas in earlier games, performing the same action from the same spot would typically lead the same outcome each time, Legend sometimes flubs surface detection when performing leaps or trying to grab ledges. Still, the path through each level tends to be so blatantly signposted that these situations are rare. Speaking of blatant - the two most unwelcome and unnecessary additions to gameplay are quick-time-events (albeit more forgiving than in the 2013 reboot) and huge, ugly target markers on hostile foes. The latter are particularly pointless since I can't recall a single instance in previous titles where I didn't know what I was aiming at, and in Legend every shot is accompanied by a plethora of audio-visual feedback anyway. Puzzles return, though none on the same level of relative complexity as anything from The Last Revelation. The maps themselves are relatively short - the whole game totalling around eight hours playtime - and totally linear, leaning even more towards the Uncharted series than the 2013 game, with Lara blowing away hordes of mercenaries and the odd mammal between each platforming section.
The whole concept of "The Adventures of Lara-and-Friends" fits a little awkwardly into previous depictions of Lara's solitary nature, and these characters really exist for the sole purpose of blabbering in your ear every thirty seconds, just to remind you that there is a NARRATIVE and A DIVERSE CAST OF COLOURFUL CHARACTERS WITH WITTY DIALOGUE. I suppose it's preferable to the sullen theatrics of the cast in the 2013 game, however. Indeed, though the attempt to forge a deeper, more personal motivation for Lara's adventures comes across as somewhat rote, I'd take the bombastic comic book-esque antagonists over Father Mathias and the cultists any day. Visually, the game is reasonably attractive - if suffering from the smeared picture and muted colours that characterized the era - and Lara's breasts have clearly been augmented with the latest advances in physics and collision modelling (ironically, Toby Gard was responsible for the most provocative of Lara's outfits, despite his earlier complaints over Eidos' use of the character as a sex symbol). That said, getting a good Anti-Aliasing solution working is a pain in the ass, so I eventually settled on the awful in-built FXAA. The soundtrack is evocative enough, with some clever blending of different cultures and thematic cues. I'd certainly rate some of the tracks higher than a few of the lesser pieces in The Last Revelation or Chronicles' repetoires.
Left at that, I'd have dismissed Legend as moderately enjoyable but rather empty diversion for Tomb Raider fans. Unfortunately, Legend is absolutely riddled with bugs. Whilst the most serious crashes seemed to be fixed by fan patches, a frequent, repeatable glitch involves the mandatory final weapon in the game. Due to an animation and hit detection bug, Lara can easily kill herself with the Ur-Excalibur she picks up at the end of the penultimate level, and this pushes the already screamingly obnoxious final boss battle into previously unfathomable levels of bullshit. I would seriously play through the entire game a second time than repeat that shitty fight. The experience almost utterly poisoned any pleasant memories I had of earlier sections of Legend, and it's only thanks to several cans of monster and my XBOX One controller I got through it at all.
It seems rather petty now, though. For little did I know what was in store for me in the next fucking game...
