Tomb Raider: Legend
Greetings, ‘Tomb Raider: Legend’ is a 2006 video game which was developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Eidos Interactive, a company which is currently known as Square Enix. This is the 7th main entry in the popular Tomb Raider series that started ten years prior to this game in 1996. It serves as a reboot by providing the iconic Lara Croft with a new origin story and is the first instalment of the ‘Legend’ trilogy which also consist of ‘Tomb Raider: Anniversary’, a remake of the original game, and ‘Underworld’ which is as a direct sequel to ‘Legend’. The franchise would be rebooted once again in 2013 with a grittier tone in ‘Tomb Raider’. The cast is fairly small, with only a handful of key characters, and the role of Lara being played by Keeley Hawes is the most notable of the voice talent involved in the game. The music was written by Dutch composer Troels Brun Folmann who also worked on other Tomb Raider games.
The game begins in Bolivia where Lara is searching for an ancient artefact in the ruins of Tiwanaku. She believes the artefact, a stone dais, is a magical item that is linked to an important moment in her past. As a child, Lara had been involved in a deadly plane crash over Nepal alongside her mother who is named Amelia. Once these two sole survivors had emerged from the crash, the Crofts stumbled across a Nepalese monastery in the Himalayan Mountains after days of searching for shelter. The young Lara had found a stone dais inside the holy place. The inquisitive girl accidently activates the magical item and causes her mother to vanish before her eyes through some mystical portal.
The story reverts back to the present day in which Lara finds a similar stone dais in Bolivia with the help of her support team in Zip and Alister. Lara is soon attacked by a troop of mercenaries and discovers that they are acting on orders from one James Rutland, an aristocratic individual who wants the magically infused item for himself. It is stated that there is also a personal vendetta between Croft and Rutland as during a previous expedition in Peru some years prior, Lara was forced to leave Rutland’s lover and Croft’s old friend, Amanda Everett, to die in a cave in. After a short confrontation with the mercenaries, James, who came to Bolivia in person, reveals to a shocked Lara that Amanda had survived her ordeal in Peru with the assistance of a supernatural guardian.
This video game was an enjoyable one to play with some challenging puzzles that required a bit of thought to work out and a fun if repetitive combat system during the action phases. I am not overly familiar with the Tomb Raider series, outside of watching the films starring Angelina Jolie from the 2000s and having a basic understanding through cultural osmosis, but it is a property that I have been interested in exploring for some time due to its well-earned reputation. While ‘Legend’ was a good way to pass the time, I did find the story a bit confusing which attempted to tie in Arthurian legend and thought the antagonists were kind of non-descript and generic. Despite this, I still have a positive opinion of this title and would argue that it is worth your time if you are looking to immerse yourself in an action-adventure and puzzle game.
Plot=6/10
Characters=6/10
Graphics=8/10
Overall=7/10
Quote of the Day
For most of the guys, killings got to be accepted. Murder was the only way that everybody stayed in line. You got out of line, you got whacked. Everybody knew the rules. But sometimes, even if people didn't get out of line, they got whacked. I mean, hits just became a habit for some of the guys. Guys would get into arguments over nothing and before you knew it, one of them was dead. And they were shooting each other all the time. Shooting people was a normal thing. It was no big deal. We had a serious problem with Billy Batts. This was really a touchy thing. Tommy'd killed a made guy. Batts was part of the Gambino crew and was considered untouchable. Before you could touch a made guy, you had to have a good reason. You had to have a sitdown, and you better get an okay, or you'd be the one who got whacked.
Henry Hill
Goodfellas
