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Ye olde Guardians of Light? She better keep her robes on.
Lately it’s been hard to drag myself away from watching an infinite number of Netrunner games on Jinteki.net and play the next game on my list, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. Partially this is because I’m developing an unhealthy obsession with Netrunner and partially because beyond the initial “legacy” Lara Croft games, I have trusted mainstream game developers with the Lara Croft franchise so little that I’ve never even bothered to play any of the new games. Plugging in LCGoL and giving it a play gave me a surprise… but not necessarily for the reason you might think. I give you…
…Tomb Raider, Gauntlet style! You didn’t ask for it and you didn’t want it! Yet here it is, in front of us. Top-down, isometric-view-point. Low polygon models because they know you can’t zoom in to look at it. Endless supplies of breakable pots and crates. I have no words. Well, that’s not entirely true. I have quite a few words.
So… there’s actually a lot of good about this game. And it kills me to say that. Like, figuratively kills me. It’s light-weight and fun. Mechanics make sense and make the game feel a lot more dynamic than most top-down games. For starters, Lara can jump. She can JUMP. Ask yourself, how many Gauntletesque, Diabloesque, top-down anythings have you ever played where jumping was ever a thing. I honestly can’t think of any. It actually feels great. Suddenly, travel is no longer obnoxious because your character can’t ascend/descend a 2-foot ledge. That’s just the beginning though; Lara can climb, shimmy, hang off ledges, grapple, swing–just about everything she can do in a normal Tomb Raider game, which again is surprising given the genre we’ve got here. Lara’s character surprisingly has not been stripped of her power either, nor has she been turned into an overly-feminist sexual tool–her lines are about on par with what I would expect from our buxom babe. She commands those around her to get her job done, she loves ruins and relics and she’s got a quick quip for anyone who gives her lip. Some of the traps are interesting (it was simple but the moving wall trap at the end of the first level was fun) combat is light-weight but satisfying and is no less complex than any Gauntlet game.
Unfortunately, this game still might not be worthy anyone’s time. First, it comes with a lot of baggage and pre-context derived from the franchise it represents. This game should have just been a new game with no attachment to Lara or her Tomb Raiding. There’s almost nothing mechanically tying this game to the Tomb Raider franchise and aside from the fact that we’re in a temple of sorts, there’s nothing lore-wise tying this to Tomb Raider either. It feels much less like someone had an idea for a new Tomb Raider game and much more like someone had an idea for a game and got the rights to make it a Tomb Raider game. I mean, really; you could have just made Lara a different character who acts the same and the game would lose nothing. It makes me feel as if the game experience is cheapened because Lara was included in it as a tool to push sales by providing consumers with a familiar character not as a method of advancing the lore of her story or developing her character. Secondly, the game suffers from a lot of artificial “challenges;” a laundry list of unimportant things that you can do. Can you break every pot in the level? Collect the 10 red skulls! Jump on these 7 pots! I’m not even kidding on that last one. At the beginning of each level before you’re even hit with story or cinematic, you’re given a list of random tasks.
On the one hand, this provides something to work for and replayability. However, the way the the game is constantly advertising them within the game makes it feel much less optional and more like a consistent desperate attempt at the developers to distract you so that you feel as if A. You are accomplishing more than you really are and B. So that you feel like there is more in the game than there really is. I mean, we get powerups for doing these things and the game is constantly telling us or showing us where and what they are–as a gamer, not doing these things will just feel wrong (I mean, technically they are skippable). But at the same time it just makes me feel that the actual substance of the game is not nourishing enough. The original Tomb Raider games had tons of secrets–health packs, ammo, new weapons, relics–scattered about every level, but the game never advertised where they were while you were playing and only briefly mentioned how many secrets you’d found at the end of the level; emphasis on end. You were expected to just play the level as is and after you had finished it, if you wanted to go back and get the stuff you missed you could but it felt optional. By putting all these achievements in the beginning and during the level it feels as if it is a prerequisite correctly playing the game.
A few of the traps are fun but the vast majority of them are switch/pressure plate puzzles which more often than not only trick you into thinking that you are accomplishing something. There’s a lot of ball pushing that you do as well and while mercifully the controls for it are smooth, it’s still stuff we’ve been doing since the early days of Zelda. For instance, the fire trap below may seem impressive, but it’s really just a “push-a-ball-on-two-plates-and-pull-two-switches” puzzle.
I struggled (and struggle as I write this) to find the perfect tier for this game. This game makes me feel very similar to how I felt during my Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes review. There’s a lot here that I just can’t complain about. The game is harmless, has enough things to do to keep you entertained and doesn’t have any blaring issues. At the same time, I struggle finding a reason why anyone would want to play this, unless they were really moderately bored or desperate to see more Lara Croft, as it does little to challenge one intellectually or even mechanically. I think I have to place it in Tier 3. I just simply wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone. At least with MM:CoH I could tell you that the art was fun and while the game was a waste of time there were a lot of pieces to learn and play around with. With LCGoL, I can’t really point to any pieces that are inspiring or impressionable, however small.
