0If only I'd waited longer! Sales have obviously not been great as the stores have quickly stuck Legend into their summer sales at nearly half price, where I paid the full £35 whack.
I was interested in what the game experience was going to be, as I'd read a lot of 'back to form' hype in the mags, and that Toby Gard was back on board with the project. I met Toby when I covered the game for Mean Machines back in 1996. That visit, and the decision to put Tomb Raider on the cover lead to a blazing argument with my managing editor, who didn't want an 'unknown' game on the cover. Can you imagine back when Tomb Raider was unknown?
From my recall Toby was really the genius behind Lara and the way she moved and interacted with the environment which was then a total novelty. Also, of the whole idea of grandeur and antiquity and scale where most games previously had focussed on futuristic settings and had not really explored the idea of space. Tomb Raider was the first game that experimented with huge amounts of inaccesible gaming space just there to provide a sense of enormousness which combines with Lara's physical fragility to create the tension that makes the game so enjoyable.
But when TR went global, others were quick to take the credit, set the bandwagon rolling and focus on the enormousness of Lara's tits rather than her gaming environments. Gard left, probably disillusioned, to set up confounding Factor with a mate, and they struggled to put together an ambitious TR-beater called Galleon which was limped out with a whimper on Xbox a couple of years ago.
In the meantime, Core had flogged the franchise to death, revealed their lack of creative genius and subjected their core asset to derision in the Angel of Darkness game. Eidos transferred the property over to Crystal Dynamics, who had shown creativity and technical process with several PS2/PS games, not least Legacy of Kain.
So what of their joint efforts. The earlier levels didn't bode well.They seemed prosaic, unimaginatively drawn and composed and the weak gunplay element everyone was talking to kept cropping up.
However, get past the Japanese level with its suited guards and annoying boss battle and things seem to turn a corner. The interplay of the new control element - the grappling hook and environmental hazards and objects starts to be used. It becomes more about puzzles and precision, and yes those vaulted ceilings are back.
Some have complained that the analogue control spoils the game. It's tricky, granted, but still manageable. I haven't got anywhere where I am raging with frustration, and I like the fact they've finally moved the game awayt from the fixed grid/set of steps framework and opted for freer movement.
The other noticeable downside is framerate,mostly with lots of quick environmental movement or lots of enemies. These combine with the battle sequences to make locating enemies and targeting an annoying rather than challenging experience.
However, if you compare TR to the complete disaster which was the unbalanced Prince of Persia, it strikes me as a pretty good game - attractive production values, engaging story, nice difficulty curve and some well thought out puzzles. What's not to like?