Hey all,
I got my hands on a demo of Tomb Raider: Legend the other day so i’ve been getting reacquainted with the latest incarnation of Lara.
First off, Lara’s changed. She still looks like Lara – probably thanks to the shorts and t-shirt- but she’s definately different. Her face is different, her hair is different (although still the familiar ponytail), her t-shirt is now a more beleiveable olive green rather than the original’s luminous version.
Controlling Lara also has subtle differences. There’s no walk button, instead you just push the analog stick a little to creep along. The harder you push the quicker she moves. One of the purposes of the walk button in previous games was to stop you from sending Lara to an early grave when you accidentally ran off the edge of a high precipous. Now Lara will automatically grab the ledge (if she can) instead of carelessly running into mid-air lemmings style.
Lara will also auto-grab ropes and ledges. However, in a nice touch she won’t always get a perfect grip, causing one hand to slip off. If you do nothing she will surely fall but you’re prompted to press triangle to make her reach up to hold on with two hands.
In the earlier Tomb Raider games, longer jumps were possible but pressing the x button mid-jump. This made Lara stretch that bit further, but also infuriated the hell out of me when Lara missed a ledge because it looked too far yet she could make it without stretching?!
There doesn’t seem to be any grip meter like their was in Angel of Darkness either. I didn’t mind this as it was more realistic – hey she’s strong but not THAT strong. I suppose without is better though as you have more time to plan your next move.
The jumping around feels a bit like Prince of Persia, with Lara springing from ledge to ledge and swinging round poles like a gymnast. It looks cool and allows Lara to reach otherwise inaccessible places.
One thing of note with regard to the pole-swinging: The “poles” are not always poles. In the demo, one section sees Lara pushing a rock (i’ll get to that in a bit) that upends a broken tree which just happens to have a nicely placed branch sticking out horizontally that Lara can swing on. Pretty clever, considering the amount of games that stick stuff in without thinking about whether it would actually be there in real life.
The pushing around of objects has always been a major part of Tomb Raider puzzles. Move that block over there to activate that etc. In Tomb Raider: Legend the crates return but again seem to suit their location. In one instance the “crate” is a cage with a skull inside!
The crates are cleverly used too – as Lara approaches a corridor in a tomb the walls start to repeatedly crush together a la Star Wars garbage machine. They’re too long to run through without getting crushed, but by pushing a crate through first you can create some space for Lara to work her way through. Cool eh?
The crates are more moveable too. The early Tomb Raider games had a “grid-system” where everything Lara did, whether it was jumping or running or moving stuff around, followed a measured distance. If Lara leapt backwards she would always leap the same distance – useful for lining up jumps – and when she moved a crate the would always move forward, back, left or right.
In Legend, you press triangle to grab the crate and then move it as you wish. Pushing forward on the analog stick will make Lara push the crate forward, and pulling back will pull it backwards. But pressing left or right will see Lara turn the crate rather than dragging it in a straight line. This allows you to move a crate almost anywhere. it’a bit awkward at first as pushing left will make Lara go left therefore puting force on the left side of the crate making it turn right – do you follow me? But it works great and in the demo you can manouver a crate onto a see-saw which Lara later jumps onto to flip the crate onto a higher level. It’s nice to see the developers have given the level design a bit of thought.
Now onto combat. Lara still has her duel pistols, but in-keeping with The Angel of Darkness method, these do not have unlimited ammo. However I had no problems during the demo as every villain I killed dropped weapons so Lara was always fully stocked. I wonder how rationed the arms will be in the full game? In The Angel of Darkness ammo is quite limited – Great for causing tension but it stops you really having fun.
The villains also drop a variety of semi-automatic weapons and Lara also carries grenades although I couldn’t figure out how to select these in the demo. Aiming is accomplished by pressing the L1 button and firing by pressing R1 respectively. An interesting feature allows you to shoot at destructible parts of the environment by pressing triangle. By doing so you trigger a set-piece, such as a collapsing wall, that will crush nearby enemies. Switching targets is achieved by tapping the analog stick while aiming.
Health-wise, the life bar still remains, however gone is the previous system of opening the inventory to select med-kits. Instead, a simple press of the up button on the digital pad will see Lara use a med pack if she has one. This helps you stay in the action and you don’t have to find a safe corner to stop to take use a med kit. One brilliant feature about this system is that if Lara hurts herself badly her life guage will flash red and sharply decrease, but you can use a med-kit as this is happening, thereby saving Lara from certain death. Obviously a really high fall is a sure-fire way to terminate Lara instantly.
Also on the digital buttons are a flashlight – this is a small but bright L.E.D attached to Lara’s t-shirt that works for a limited time before switching off to recharge – her guns, and binoculars – equiping these lets you scan the surrounding area and also switch to a night-vision mode. I need to experiment with these more.
Binoculars wouldn’t be any use if you didn’t have a nice big outdoor environment to use them in now would they? I think one of the reasons The Angel of Darkness was badly received was because of the lack of actual tombs and big outdoor enivronments. I am one of the few people who genuinely liked TAoD but even I have to admit I feel more at home with Lara when she’s globe-trotting and exploring exotic locations and actually tomb-raiding.
The demo sees you in Bolivia, starting off outside after we see Lara in a cut-scene climbing a huge cliff face just like the good Mr Hunt in Mission: Impossible 2. There’s a wealth of digital scenery for us to oggle as we get to grips with Lara’s controls. A stream carves the lush greenery in two before plunging off the aforementioned cliff in a suicidal waterfall (yes I jumped). There are ledges to jump for, vines to swing on and little rocks to play football with (literally). The ambiance is the usual foresty stuff you’d expect but I have to say I was suprised at the lact of visible wildlife. I will always remember chasing those cute little monkeys in India in Tomb Raider III (Cute until they rob you that is!).
As we progress in the demo we come to the focus of Lara’s expidition, a ruinined tomb. This is where the indoor environments begin, but it all fits. Lara’s an explorer and is right at home in a dusty old tomb full of traps. Don’t get me wrong, the indoor environments in TAoD were gorgeous, as was the outdoor urban levels, but it’s nice to see Lara doing what she does best.
Ah I mentioned traps there didn’t I? Where would Tomb Raider be without it’s fiendish puzzles and deadly traps? Who wasn’t shocked the first time they impaled Lara on a bony spike in the original Tomb Raider? Apart from the aforementioned crushing blocks, there’s not alot of traps in the demo, but I expect there’ll be more in the full game.
Mentioning the traps leads me onto another of the changes to Lara’s get up. She has a context-sensitive grappling hook. It’s not so much a “hook” as such,
rather it’s a strong magnet that she can use to attach to metal objects – in the demo these are big shiny gold coins placed above doorways etc (hence the context-sensitive application). Why would you want to do that I hear you ask? Watch and learn my young padawan:
So there she is, happily bounding along an ancient corridor through ornate doorways (lined with skulls – such a nice touch) when what should happen? Why the floor caves way to reveal a churning pit of spiky death that’s what. But just before you dive headlong into the grinding wooden stakes below you can fling your grappling hook at the gold coin above the next doorway and swing over the pit to safety. It’s very close, the camera tracks low behind Lara to show off the menacing spinning arrangments just inches from Lara’s head. I’m suprised she still has that ponytail.
Another departure from previous games is the company Lara keeps. She explores the tombs on her own but she’s never really alone thanks to a cool bluetooth headset shes wearing – such a modern girl – which keeps her in contact with her team. From the demo it’s hard to tell much about them, but they provide help and information, a bit like Snake’s codec in Metal Gear Solid. They give this info while Lara is on the move so there’s no need to read paragraphs of text and again it just fits the situation perfectly. Oh and those nice boys and girls at Crystal Dynamics have also included the option to turn subtitles on;-)
What would be the point of these guys chatting to Lara if she didn’t talk back? Well she does. In the earlier games, the most we heard of Lara’s voice was in cutscenes, and in game she just seemed to say “no” alot – normally when you tried to put the wrong old bronze key in the wrong old bronze lock, doh! A previous issue of the magazine revealled that Lara is voiced by one of the actresses from Tipping The Velvet, a period drama about lesbians that was on telly a while back. Needless to say she still sounds a bit posh, remember Lara is the daughter of a Lord and Lady afterall, but her voice is definatley different. I think there’s a bit of a cockney twang in there somewhere..anyway, after the first few sentences it all feels familiar.
For the most part the camera in the demo is okay. You can do the usual pivot around Lara and adjust the view as you see fit. I haven’t as yet found a button to reset the camera behind Lara but perhaps it’s one of the analog stick buttons? Maybe that’s how you use the grenades too now I think about it. One niggle I have with the camera is that Lara tends to jump the way it is facing.
Now that mind sound like a good thing but let me explain. Imagine you’ve just climbed a chain and you need to leap from one to the next. If you’d left the camera alone pressing towards the chain (in this case left/right) would see Lara lean that way and when you press x she would leap across and grab the the other chain. All nice and good but you’ve been fiddling with the camera and even though you can see Lara leaning the right way, when you press jump she jumps at the camera – ie. towards the screen – and faceplants into the concrete floor below. You have to postion the camera behind Lara to make her jump away from the screen (and towards the chain/ledge etc). It’s not a huge grievance but I did kill Lara a few times like this.
The menu system has changed again. In the early games it was always the revolving pile of stuff: ammo, med-kits, items etc. In TAoD it was a standard, but pretty, vertical menu. In Legend Lara has become fully modernised and now carries a waterproof PDA. This gives various facts such as weapons/items, objectives/notes and game info (sadly no note of how far Lara has travelled, which was something I liked in Tomb Raider III).
I didn’t notice the option to save the game but I think possibly you save the game at the end of each level as there is now a checkpoint system throughout the level – usually after a near-death section. I have to say I like this idea as it saves you having to restart from the beginning, and I was always a fan of the fixed blue save crystals in the original. In Tomb Raider III with it’s pick up crystals and TAoD with it’s save anywhere philosophy, it was all too easy to save at a point where you were low on health and couldn’t go back for more or didn’t forsee the enemy just round the corner before you saved.
One thing I will say about the demo is that it’s very linear. There are virtually no nooks and crannies to try to reach and other than health and ammo no items to pick up. Surely they wouldn’t have forgotten to include ancient artefacts for Lara to pick up and use (and the nice wonder jingle that always played when you found something). I don’t mind having a clear path to follow, as Tomb Raider III was a bit too open-ended for the novice, but a little detour here and there wouldn’t go amiss, and you can’t beat the satisfaction of working your way up to that little alcove in the ceiling to get the secret.
So my overall impression of Legend is one of relief. Thankfully Crystal Dynamics didn’t break Tomb Raider (Probably thanks to the input of Toby Gard, Lara’s creator). It’s nice to see Lara getting back to her roots and from what i’ve seen there should be a clever plot in there. I just hope the game isn’t too linear as the whole essence of Tomb Raider is one of exploration. I still have Tomb Raider III and IV to complete, V to actually start, and TAoD to complete before I should even think about buying Tomb Raider: Legend. But the pull is a strong one.
I also want to revisit the original Tomb Raider as I wiped my completion save during a rather hasty exit from The X-Files game a few years back. Oh the fists that flew that night…
I thought i’d add some colour to this blog by posting the leading lady herself from both TAoD and Legend so you can see the changes yourself. The Angel of Darkness Lara looks to me likes Legend’s evil twin…
