Tomb Raiders' Lara: gone sexy or stupid? (with a double p)
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What kind of cheese will I eat today? unfulfilled
TOMB RAIDER: LEGEND
OOOOH! LEGEND!!! It’s pretty and shiny and has an action cam that could piss the Easter Bunny off.
Upon downloading the demo I decided alright, this might just be worth my time. So off I headed to a techie-shop where they were NOT working commission as to guarantee that I would not be sold the very carpet off the ground. My main priority for visiting the shop was originally to buy a new printer. (Which by the way I somehow ended up with an HP and not the carpet…. ? Don’t ask.) After discussing some reg-techie stuff with the sales guy I asked him, “Do you have Tomb Raider Legend in stock?” He gave me the weirdest look and sarcastically commented, “Yes. We also have NeverWinter Nights if you’re interested.” And then he began to laugh. I think he actually thought that I might have been joking. “Well, I’m actually wanting to buy the game.” You should have seen the expression on his face.
He looked as though he had just walked into a room and caught someone licking all the icing off a pink cake. “Oh.” He responded, “It’s over here.” Things for whatever reason were quite awkward after that. Apparently you can only get away with playing PC games up to a certain age. *audible sigh*
I suppose the overall ‘LEGEND’ of Tomb Raider is that sometimes you’re really not sure whether to throw your monitor out the window or let the mercenaries kill Lara instead of constantly saving her ass.
One of the features that enraged me the most was how when Lara arms herself, her beauty guns can only be out for approximately five seconds before she puts them away. So if you’re like myself and enjoy sneaking or ‘lurking’ just before the kill, Lara will automatically disarm herself even if it is the middle of a kill session. So be sure to keep firing if you want the beaut’s to stay out.
Another annoying feature… I like to think the most practical way to target is: Wherever Lara is facing, the guns face and hence the target is. So therefore the camera follows where the target and Lara go. For some reasons Eidos got some crack idea that maybe it would be more entertaining if they made it so: wherever the camera faces, the target is. I spent a whole five seconds firing at a ceiling lamp for no apparent reason. I almost started to search the disc for a self-destruct button. However, if you can manage the camera, the game itself is a lot of fun.
A nice touch is having the hazard shots. In some cases Lara can shoot at the side of a cliff and then part of it will fall off and kill some guys. The game calls this something along the lines of a “hazard” or whatever… Anyways, they place little yellow hazard signs wherever you can do cool things like this. Let’s not forget how in certain scenes the game does not completely cut to cinematic, but will let you kill in slow motion and jump around and do cool flips and stuff for a split two seconds. I really enjoyed this feature.
However, Lara can only be incredibly awesome when she’s got her weapons out. So if I put my gun away, I can’t do a side-summersault. I can only do cool dives and summersault jumps when I’m armed. This sucks because I would have loved to do some cool acrobat things in ‘Croft Manor’.
Croft Manor is somewhere along the lines of a ‘training ground’ for Lara. You can’t die here and there are no bad guys (even if you go after the butler). Lara can lose strength, but simply go for a swim and –ta-da!- Lara’s up to speed. In the manor you run around on a goose chase for some bronze, silver and gold rewards and solve a mystery Kings Quest style. (without other characters though). It’s mildly entertaining, but has a gym and some apparatus that is fun to test some moves for Lara on.
Over all though, I would give this game a +8. (and this is mostly because of the slow-motion and pretty and or shiny objects)
So enjoy it, God knows Eidos is making money off of it.
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