Tomb Raider Legend

[PZ]

??? You're full of surprises Art, I'm impressed! Thanks :) :-X

I think I recall someone once saying that Art was really a computer that was pretending to be a plain ol' human.  :-()

[fragger]

 

Of course, "Art Blade" is just his online username. His real name is HAL 9000.

[PZ]

  :-X

[Art Blade]

 :-D

There is a simple story behind it. In Western Germany, before the Fall of the Wall, we had one song on the radio by a West German artist who was one of the few accepted to play in East Germany, on the other side of the wall (kind of "the iron curtain"). In one of his then popular songs he had one line in Russian that I found intriguing because here no one spoke Russian (there they did) and so I wanted to know what exactly he sung. That's why I started to learn Russian and that required me to read Cyrillic  :-D End of the story: Once I knew what the line meant I lost interest in studying Russian (erm, seriously, no use for that language over here in my life) but I can still read "Russian"   :-D

And, please rest assured, I am just a regular guy, no computer (JRD came up with that idea first, if my memory serves me right) :)

[PZ]

...JRD came up with that idea first, if my memory serves me right...

I have no more reason to doubt your memory than I do to doubt the RAM in my PC.

[Art Blade]

 

[Fiach]

Once I knew what the line meant I lost interest in studying Russian (erm, seriously, no use for that language over here in my life) but I can still read "Russian"   :-D

And, please rest assured, I am just a regular guy,

Yeah, we believe ya Art  >:D

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[PZ]

 

[JRD]

Maybe some of you guys doesn't know but I actually met the real Art Blade in London in 2010... my first thought was WOW - living tissue over metal endoskeleton coming from the future!!!!  ???
...
...
...
... he'll be back!!  ;D

[PZ]

Yes, but how do you know that the person you met was really Art, and not some phony that the real Art carefully coached.  ????

I'd be willing to bet $1000 that you'd not find the name "Art Blade" on his passport.

[Fiach]

Maybe some of you guys doesn't know but I actually met the real Art Blade in London in 2010...

WOW, I never knew that, I hope you locked up your women and small live stock   :o >:D  8-X

[Art Blade]

JRD and I had a splendid time together in London and I still have that 2nd-hand vinyl record I bought in a shop called Intoxica on Portobello Road :-()

[fragger]

I've finished, after brawling with yet another boss/monster, of which there are a couple too many IMO. I must say I enjoyed the first half of the game more than the second. There were some good clever puzzles in the first half, but very few in the last few levels  - and too many monster fights occurring too soon after one another. It felt as though the designers ran out of puzzle ideas and instead focussed on creating difficult precision-timing climb-and-jump moves and finicky boss fights to make up the last parts of the game. It was also overall a very linear affair – TR games were never exactly open world but some of the old ones had strong exploratory elements to their designs. With Legend there is only one way through everything with almost no deviations (like to search for bonuses and prizes, for instance) and gets somewhat dull and repetitive in the last few levels – same baddies, same stuff to push/pull around, same run/swing/jump/climb routines.

Anyway, here's a brief review of it all. I'll start with the pros:

Fairly good story that fills in a few blanks about Lara's past. Nice feel to the game overall, recaptures much of the old Tomb Raider character and atmosphere. Quite immersive, and as with old TR titles I found myself becoming so attached to Lara that it was quite a jolt whenever I caused her to get snuffed in some horrible way (no doubt my male "protect-the-female-of-the-species" gene was being urgently pinged at such times).

Lovely graphics (for a TR title) with rich ambience and excellent sound. Some very nice flame, water, lighting and atmospheric effects. Lara looks great, nicely animated with a number of outfit changes and some cool new moves and equipment. I love the effect when she climbs out of water – it keeps dripping off her for a few moments, then she stays looking wet for a little while, gradually drying off over time. There are some nice weather effects, such as snow and blowing dust. Lara's breath condenses in cold air, which is a nice touch.

Some imaginative puzzles (in the first four or five levels anyway) requiring some lateral thought and observation. Good level design overall and quite challenging in places, with very good physics modelling. The designers did their homework regarding textures and structures with culturally accurate architectural styles, idols, art, sculptures and stonework.

Flexible skill setting system which allows you to select any of the three difficulty settings at the start of any level within the same game, so you could play level 1 on difficult, level 2 on easy, and so on. Makes for a bit of variety. There is a "Save Rewards" option that lets you save whatever bronze, silver and gold rewards you have accumulated thus far, and there is a corresponding "Replay Mission" option where you can redo any completed mission in the current game and collect any rewards you may have missed. All the bad guys will be back in whichever mission you choose to replay, however – it's not a cakewalk.

Very fast loading time, about 2 seconds on my aging PC, and that's at 1920x1080 widescreen res and with all graphic options except anti-aliasing and "Next Generation Content" set to on. NGC applies advanced shadowing, texturing and transparency, and having this on made a HUGE difference to my frame rate, bringing it down considerably. If you have a whizbang machine you should be able to have this option on. Personally I don't think NGC made enough of an improvement to the graphics to warrant using it, unless you really want just that extra bit of pizzazz. Without it the game ran silky-smooth with no frame dropouts, pauses or judders on my old rig and still looked terrific.

No online activation or registration required - in fact there was none of any sort whatsoever. Just install it and immediately play.

Now the cons:

No screenshot function.

Cheat codes must be earned, i.e. you must complete a particular level at least once, then complete a time trial of that same level, to unlock a particular cheat. Each cheat is associated with a particular level, so that is the level you must complete in order to get that cheat. If you haven't yet reached it, too bad – you can't get access to that cheat. It's a kind of silly and pedantic approach for a single player-only game.

The game uses a checkpoint saving system, which can be exasperating when you're within a gnat's whisker of winning a boss fight but get killed and have to start all over again, and some of those fights ain't easy (not on PC anyway - see below). A "save anywhere" method, as in the old TR games, would have been very welcome.

Not very well suited to keyboard and mouse control. The console-oriented design is painfully apparent in terms of controls. On a PC it can sometimes be a juggle-fest, although remapping can help things a bit. Occasionally, especially in confined spaces, it can be difficult to get a useful view of one's surroundings, and this got me killed a couple of times.

Dull second half of the game, degenerating to a same ol' same ol' with boss fights occurring too frequently. Tricky-to-pull-off moves become a cheap substitute for the clever puzzles of the first half. Anticlimactic ending which felt kind of rushed.

A measly health-kit allowance of just three, each of which will restore half your health, and about the only ones you can ever find are those dropped by dead enemies, and not always then. If you're in a level where there are no bad guys and your health goes down for some non-combat related reason, e.g. by getting pounced on by a leopard or by having a painful but non-lethal fall, and you don't have any health kits on you, tough luck – there are none to be found anywhere.

Combat is kind of lacklustre and can be both dull and frustrating, with a somewhat hit-and-miss targeting system. Often Lara would switch targets when I didn't want her to and would switch to the wrong ones when I did. Weapon sounds are good though.

Summary:

Would I play it again? Possibly, once more, sometime in the future, maybe. As it stands, the latter levels of the game somewhat turned me off wanting to play it again, at least for the time being. I think my favourite part of the game was actually discovering all the secrets in Lara's mansion – if only they'd employed that kind of creativity in conceiving the puzzles for the game proper. For instance there was a nice sequence of four riddles uncovered in the mansion, each one leading to the next riddle DaVinci Code-style which ultimately revealed a gold reward. Why couldn't they have incorporated this sort of thing into the actual game? Who knows.

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It's worth playing once at least if you're a Lara fan, and probably best played on console if you have one. At least I managed to buy it cheap so I'm not complaining too much - $13.80 isn't bad for about 40 hours' worth of gaming. All things considered, it's a fun game and I'm glad I picked it up.

[Fiach]

Nice review mate, glad you (sort of ) enjoyed it :)

[fragger]

Thanks mate :) Overall I did enjoy it, and I'm having some fun going back and finding the rewards that I'd missed. I had to consult some walkthroughs online to find some of them, they were really well tucked away. I'm resorting to walkthroughs only because I don't intend playing the game again anytime soon (though I'm pretty sure I will sometime down the track) and I wanted to unlock all the content just so I could have a look at it.

I got the walkthroughs from here, it's quite a good little TR site. It's also where I found the TR 2012 clips which I linked to in the TR 2012 topic:

http://tombraiders.net/

There are walkthroughs and tips and so forth for all the TR titles, not just Legend. The walkthroughs are very good, with links to screenshots and videos illustrating where to go and what needs to be done.

[Fiach]

Hope you get to play Underworld, I really liked that one, great gfx and a great sense of scale.

I think having a controller to play Legend somewhat enhanced the experience for me :)

[PZ]

That's too bad about the cheat codes - same in the Assassin's Creed series.  I personally don't entirely appreciate games with "bosses" in them because they are too unrealistic for my gaming preferences.  The games I play, like FC2, the AC series all have reasonable characters that are at least human-like and predictable.

Good mini review, fragger!  :-X

[fragger]

Thank you PZ :) I'm the same, was never crazy about bosses, but they've always been part and parcel of the TR games. Traditionally though there would be one big boss fight at the end and maybe a less tough one-off creature of some sort along the way. For instance about a third of the way through TR1 there was a "Lost World" type level that came with a tyrannosaur that Lara had to deal with, and a big monstrous thing that's hard to describe at the game's climax. In Legend there were no less than five bosses and the last three appeared fairly close together, so it was like, "Aw geez, not another @#$%& monster fight, I just did one..."

@Fiach, I've actually ordered Anniversary which is the next one in the series, from what I've read about it there are far fewer boss battles and more puzzle solving, which I what I enjoy the most in TR. I'll probably get Underworld after that, I've been reading good things about that one too.

I hope I didn't give the impression that I was disappointed with Legend because I wasn't - my niggles aside I enjoyed it a lot. It's just something I wouldn't play over and over - but then I only ever replayed the old TR games once or twice too. They are a lot of fun, but once you've solved the puzzles there's not a huge incentive to replay unless it's to look for missed secrets.

[Fiach]

My understanding was that Anniversary was set before legend, but its been a few years since I played them, I know that UW does tie up that story arc though.

[fragger]

You are correct, Anniversary is set before Legend. Its story ties in somehow with that of the original game. I think it was so named because it was released to mark the tenth anniversary of TR1.

I picked it up at ebay Aus for $14.95 + free postage, should be here in a few days.

Btw, did you ever play Guardian of Light? I believe it's a Diablo-style isometric take on Lara and TR.

[Fiach]

TR:A is a remake of the original TR, its made with the legend engine, so it should bring back lots of memories, personally I thought it was tougher than Legend.

As regards TR GotL, Yes mate, its very good too :)

[fragger]

Thanks for the info Fiach :) I'm looking forward to raiding some more tombs! I've seen some screenies of GotL and it looks like fun. Apparently it can played as a two-player co-op with Lara and some Mayan warrior guy. I quite enjoy those isometric view things - not that I've played any lately. I think the last one was Commandos, which was only about ten years ago...

[Fiach]

Yes the Commando games were good, pretty tough too :(

You should try Desperados, you can get it on gog.com pretty cheaply.

GotL has LOTS of puzzles, I think you will enjoy it, its on sale on some d/l sites, try gamersgate for example, or green man gaming, , it usually comes up periodically.

[fragger]

Commandos was fun but tough all right. There was one level I could never get through as the timing required was insanely tight - if you were a fraction of a second out the jig was up :D Can't remember the details at this remove but I seem to think it had something to do with that Aussie diver with the dreadful accent - typical ::) He used to say things like "Oi'll be roight owver - sir!" Cringe...

I'll have a look at Desperados, cheers :)

[fragger]

TR Anniversary came today, I've been playing it for the last few hours. Fiach was right, it does indeed bring back fond memories :-X It's a few years old now (2007) but it's a great-looking game. It is tougher than Legend but I think in good ways. At least this time there's no lousy three health kit limit. Like the classic TRs there are large ones and small ones, to restore all or half of your health respectively, and you can have as many as you can find. Lara can carry more weapons too, like she did in the old game.

It's been a long time since I played TR1 but as this is a remake I'm remembering some of the level layouts as I come across them. This new incarnation has much better graphics of course (and nicer than Legend it seems, even though it uses the same engine) and incorporates all of Lara's newer moves, like climbing/swinging on ropes, climbing ladders and grappling, as well as her full repertoire of gymnastic moves. She can also use her grapple to run horizontally along walls where allowable, which looks really cool. No Ducatis in this one, in fact no vehicles at all - just as there wasn't in TR1.

Like Legend, Anniversary uses a checkpoint system. But I can probably live with it this time around as the emphasis is more on puzzles and less on combat and boss fights. There should only be a couple of those, but I'll probably have to deal with a few velociraptors and a T-rex when I get to the "Lost World" part of the game :-\\ Most of the "enemies" in the original game were wild animals and it appears to be the same here - so far I've had to deal with vampire bats, wolves and the odd bear. Lara certainly wreaks havoc on the natural world - David Attenborough would probably give her a very stern lecture if he caught her at it.

Good fun so far, and even more of a nostalgia trip than Legend was 8)