Tomb Raider Legends

After 1.5 hours of downloading the demo I've finally installed it!

Looks great, plays well... Not sure I like the controls... They're good but I find it weird that they're reletive to the camera rather than the player. ie, if I press right I expect the character to move to it's right rather than the cameras right.

There are some cool moves you can do, you've still got the dive, the roll and all that lot, but there's horizonal polls you can swing over like you get in the gymnastics... that's cool. And the hangover off a ledge with one hand looks cool too!

Something that is slightly disturbing though is there is a lot of killing in it... ok... not as much as a FPS but I've only got a tiny way though the demo and I've shot and killed 3 guys and I have no idea why I'm killing them :/

Oh, and for all the 14 year old boys out there Lara gets wet and glistening after being in water and slowly drys out after you're out!

So far looks cool though... I think I need to play it at night though, lots of very dark stuff going on so I'm running into a lot of walls!

It's a really great game. Not sure which level the demo is, but presumably the first one. It's a really slick piece of work from Crystal Dynamics, considering their track record ( Project Snowblind? Meh! )

The action really gears up in later levels with a lot of big shootouts and some great vehicle action sequences too, but there are still plenty of classic Tomb-Raider climby-jumpy-puzzly sections too.

The grappler really brings a new dimension to things with it's ability to pull things as well as some really slick Indy-style "rope" swinging moments. I particularly like the way everything is very smooth and fluid, which is necessary as in later levels, you don't always have as much time as you want to climb/jump/etc ( trying not to give anything away too soon.. you'll love/hate it when it happens. )

And the presentation is much improved too. There are characters, they talk, there's a plot, it all makes for a much more immersive experience than "ok, I'm in a tomb, suppose I should find some artifacts and treasures".

The anoying thing with the demo (unless there's more than one) is the fact you cant turn on next gen graphics mode so there's no normal mapping or super cool shader water etc, which makes it look miles better than without it. Dont get me wrong it looks pretty good anyway but really good with it on. As far as the game play, apart from the shooting it has a smooth feel to the movements that make sense and reminds me a little of the movement in the POP:Sands of time. It's certainly a big improvement on the last game and feels like a true successor to the original game :)

Hmmm, I had a quick go on the 360 version in a game store. The camera seems to go a bit mental at times, and the controls seemed a bit twitchy, to me. Also, the dynamic shadows looked a bit blocky. They looked like they are done by dynamically updating the lightmap? Anyway, I was standing right in front of a roaring fire which didn't affect my shadow one bit. Instead of casting a shadow directly behind me, the shadow fell at 90 degrees, apparently caused by some other lightsource. :/

Apart from that, the game seemed pretty good. Didn't really have enough time to give it a fair go.

I remember the first one on PS1 with the warped graphics, the PS1 graphics really were poop for displaying walls etc cos they warped as you walked along them and turned etc. Then at a trade show I saw Tomb Raider on PC on a prototype Voodoo card, it was ace, no warp, I was amazed.

Is there a demo with the next gen content?
Does it make the game look a LOT better?
Is it only sm3.0 stuff?

I was just surprised from the reviews I read that Crystal Dynamics was able to pull the Tomb Raider series out of the stinking sinkhole, what, after the horrid game Tomb Raid:AoD was...

Will be giving this a rental when I see it, loved the Tomb Raider series up to 4, but after that it just went straight downhill imo.

Well just completed the demo and I think I'm going to buy the game.

The puzzle at the end of the level was cool, it involved moving crates onto the end of a seesaw and jumping on the other end of it to fire it onto a platform! Cool!

The ONLY thing that pisses me off with this game is the move relative to the camera rather than the player... I just can't get me head round that... Maybe I will!?

Take a trip through her mansion in the full version, you'll get your head around everything after finding all the secrets in there. The gym was the coolest part of the game yet for me :D

I hate the motorcycle chases though, it doesn't feel responsive enough and I end up getting killed because of crappy camera angles or slow controls.

Just got the DVD in the post today... went to install it... it needs 9.9gb free on your hdd!

So I'm currently trying to make room on my hard drive to fit the game on! I think I need to buy a bigger hard drive!!

ouch, must be all the "Easter Egg" shower scenes I've heard about ;-)

I bought he ful versionand hated it at first, but am growing to like it. the controls take some getting used to and I still prefer the first 3 tombraiders, but this is a major improvement over AOD

Rob, me too. only got a 20 gig hard drive he he

I have the 360 demo and it's pretty darn good. Lots of cool physics puzzles, acrobatics, and nice graphics. Everything seems good again in Tomb Raider land.

It's a shame they couldnt keep the controls like the first few Raiders, it made it a breeze to move around a level, and once you you were in full swing, it felt... well, natural! :)

And yep, AoD was a massive pile of bile, I was a little miffed how they managed to completely ruin a great series!

Dabz

I didthink the first tomb raiders were a bit slow at climbing ladders, shimmying along ledges, and pushing blocks. The 3D indy game was REALLY good, faster too.

Is the xbox version have some of the fancy shader effects? I'm def gonna buy this for the xbox. I'm not sure how my gf4 ti 4600 will handle this tbh...

Aren't characters supposed to move relative to the cam... I mean... If I push left on my pad I want my character to go left based on how I see them... I don't want em going right cause they are facing me...

TR was always about big boobs on a hot girl. Not one of the prior games was even remotely fun or playable. If they changed that, I'll be happy.

if you didnt like the other TR games, you won't like this one. Simple enough.

New Lara:

http://www.break.com/index/bb7412.html

Don't play many third-person games then? They've all done that for years now :-)

Just Another Tomb raider game.
I preferred TR3.

The only TR game I really enjoyed was the first one on the PSX - back when all this stuff was new. :)

big10p. Yeah it was cool. But no.2 was good (on PC). I was getting a bit bored by no. 3 (on PC).

I got no.2 on that budget PSX label that was about at the time. I think I got about half-way through and just lost interest. I figured I'd seen all this before, somewhere. :P