Tomb Raider Legend Review

I played Tomb Raider Legend back in 2017ish and I thought the game was decent but nothing special and I'm only playing it again because of the recent PS5 port and I wanted to test out Sony's new Playstation 2 emulator and I already played Sly 1 and Star Wars Clone Wars much more recently than my TR Legend replay so I went with the latter. Quick thoughts on the port itself, it's "fine" but not good or an ideal way to play the game, it's most certainly playable and there are no crashes that I found while I playing but the fact that it's 480p and not 720p makes the game makes it come off as a very lazy version of the game, and this is even worse for areas with darkness have low lighting, it makes the later parts of the game hard to see even on an HD monitor, if the game was 720p, I wouldn't mind this but since it isn't, the port comes off as all the more lazy. If you do want to experience TR Legend, there are many other ways to, but if you have to play the game on a Playstation modern console, this isn't as bad as some say but it's not "good" either. Just keep that in mind if you choose to play this version of the game. 

Now the game itself, I played a number of TR games recently, one of them being the 1996 original and having not played the classic TR sequels while being familiar with all the TR games Crystal Dynamics made, it's easy to see how jarring Legend can be, in some ways it's easy to tell the game was a success at all was because it had to follow up on the disasterous Angel of Darkness game.

To name some examples, platforming is now automated filled with magnetized ledges, combat is mostly just auto aim and holding the fire button and occasionally dodging out of the way that mostly consist of fighting hitscan human enemies, health packs are now dropped by enemies and there is no need to search the levels for them, levels are mostly very linear with small of amounts of backtracking and there are QTE sequences to top it all of it all. In many ways, this was the cinematic action adventure game that came out post Prince of Persia Sands of Time trilogy, and pre Uncharted. It's easy to see how much Crystal was inspired by the former since the way Lara moves is very similar to the Prince in that said trilogy, all though PoP by Two Thrones definately had far more involving automated platforming by comparison to Legend since that game had you dodge lots of traps, had the speed kill sections, and also the Dark Prince where you are forced to move around quickly and there is more tension where in Legend, it's mainly just magnetized ledge grabing where it's not as polished as it could be.

This is where the original game succeeds where Legend fails, where in TR 1996, it was a slow paced platformer where you had to methodically time your jumps, whether it's be through leaps, lining up on a platform, or reaching platforms above you, position yourself, and then grab and hold the interact button long enough to grab the ledge and make the jump I'll admit this was a learning curve that it took me a while to get down but when it started to click, I loved the game for how much it aged than the automated platforming that came later, and dare I say it, it gave PoP a run for it's money and it certainly curbstomps Uncharted.

In TR Legend? You either activate Lara's lunge animation while jumping and grab the ledge, or she doesn't do the lunge animation and either you miss the jump or barely make it. None of it has the decision making or timing the interact button fast enough to make it, everything all the legwork is done for you. The QTEs only add insult to injury since those are set pieces the designers could make but reduced to button prompts.

After all that complaining, I'm sort of positive on TR Legend, if you look past the fact that it's a much more dummed down Core Design era TR game, the game's brisk campaign does a "good" enough job at emulating action adventure films like Indiana Jones even if the story in Legend itself is nothing to write home about. Lara is charismatic enough even if her buddies can be pretty annoying, and sections like the Peru bike chase with the OST in the background can be pretty exhilarting.

But that's the thing with TR Legend, that's kind of apart it's appeal, combat isn't that amazing and fleshed out but it's over very quickly before it starts to wear thin. The platforming can be fast and quick and while it doesn't require much effort, it does fufil a baseline specticle of watching Lara climb tall things.

England wasn't a particularly great level and it relies a little too much on the physics based puzzles for it's own good but Nepal and the final level are over so fast that before the game starts to wear thin.

Bosses are basic and can be beaten in less than 5 minutes but they are also over very quickly.

Overall, this is pretty much Legend's strength, it's a collection of okay mechanics and ideas with a pace as brisk as an action movie, in a lot of ways, TR Legend's campaign is a CoD story mode of the TR series.