Tomb Raider: Legend

The classic Tomb Raider games made by Core Design between 1996 and 2003 are too old for me to play now. They look terribly blocky and are no doubt extremely clunky to play: unapproachable for someone who didn't experience them back in the day. But I was interested to play the subsequent Legend trilogy (2006 -- 2008) which was developed the same Crystal Dynamics as most of the newest reboot ones.

By now old, previous revitalization of the series

I was debating the order I should play the Legend trilogy because its second game, Tomb Raider: Anniversary, is a remake of the very first Tomb Raider and chronologically set before Tomb Raider: Legend. With games I would rarely consider anything but release order if possible. However, in this case there was only a year between the titles' releases. That's not enough time to make huge technological advancements. In the end, I decided release order would be the best one again. The developers no doubt learned tricks with Legend and having the engine set up and familiar would have probably allowed them to build upon old features.

In Tomb Raider: Legend, our titular heroine Lara Croft is chasing after an Excalibur monomyth all around the world. Her underlying motivation is finding the reason why her mother died when interacting with a strange artifact -- an event Lara witnessed as a child. The story setup is thus somewhat similar to the new games, her parents' deaths pushing her forward.

Lara has two sidekicks in Legend: tech expert Zip and research assistant Alistair. They provide constant support all the way from the Croft Manor via a satellite connection. Their unnecessary commentary got irritating at times although not quite as annoying as Jonah can be in the newer games.

Passable traversal

I didn't expect platforming to be as modern as I've gotten used to -- and it wasn't. But it wasn't unworkable either. Legend definitely requires you to be more precise and meticulous with your button presses. Negotiating from wall to wall isn't as simple; it is far easier to actually fall. Sometimes I would recognize a familiar traversing animation which was cool. The one big platforming feature missing are the climbing axes introduced in Tomb Raider (2013).

Simplistic gunplay

Combat is where that later game improved the series the most, making it a very enjoyable third person shooter experience. But in Legend, you hold target lock button, which chooses some nearby enemy, and hold down fire button to have Lara shoot with her dual pistols that have infinite ammo reserves. And the pistols do need that endless supply because Lara isn't very accurate and enemies take long to kill. The most efficient shooting method seemed to be to jump onto your target and bounce off of them which makes Lara go into slow motion and seemingly be more accurate until hitting ground again. You can also pick up one enemy gun (with finite ammo) to carry with you. The picked up guns kill slightly quicker and in the case of the assault rifle at least, also have longer range.

In addition to the aerial attack, Lara has a number of other different acrobatic moves at her disposal. I didn't find them adding much to the combat since shooting is so incredibly basic. Rolling and somersaulting everywhere was pretty entertaining though (and quicker than jogging). I ended up playing with keyboard and mouse -- mostly because of the ease of mouselook. I probably shouldn't have rebound the dodge key though. With the default keys, performing a swan dive turned out to be easier, as I learned in the next game. It's amusing that I had trouble with the swan dive in this one because that was the case in Rise of the Tomb Raider for me as well.

Plenty of game for a completionist

I 100%'d Tomb Raider: Legend -- at least in terms of unlocks since it has no achievements on PC. I wanted to get all the outfits and for that you have to find all collectibles and complete every level's time trial. Picking up the collectibles also slightly improves Lara's pistols over the game.

I played every level normally first and then replayed them if necessary for the secrets I had missed. And then I did them on the time trial mode which differs just by having a time limit. I would say that the mode is fairly lenient: you can die multiple times and still make it.

In Ghana, I used a speedrun trick I had read about earlier to skip most of the level for the time trial. The same for Kazakhstan although the shortcut I used felt almost intended by the developers because it was so simple and required no weird stuff. I also wouldn't have succeeded on the first Kazakhstan trial attempt without the skip. The second of Legend's two motorcycle sections is on that level and I died multiple times on it even on the time trial replay. The driving isn't too hard; it's the enemies that cause trouble. Especially the shotgun wielders tend to take out half your health each before Lara with her poor aim manages to kill them. And you have to kill everyone for the level to continue.

It thought it unnecessary that you can't use the lastly unlocked swimsuit outfits (which turned out to be bikinis) on level replays, only on the extra Croft Manor level accessible from the main menu. Like, what does it matter in which outfit you're replaying? As if Lara in an evening dress in snowy mountains was any more immersive. Yet that is allowed. Of course, on PC there are mods to have bikini-Lara on any level you want.

The Croft Manor was a cool adventure level and fun to revisit. At least the main hall looked similar to the one in Rise's Blood Ties DLC. On that level I ended up testing the game's "next generation content" graphical setting. I had had it on initially but it started causing stability issues, not allowing me to even load into the Japan level. I'm not sure if the game looked better or worse with the setting in the manor. While the next gen lighting looked better, it made the game darker, more difficult to see things.

I noticed that Nixxes Software had helped porting this game onto various platforms, meaning they and Crystal Dynamics go back many years. With Sony having acquired Nixxes in 2021, it is less likely they will be porting the games of Crystal Dynamics any time soon though.