Tomb Raider: Legend
Uncovering the remains of the set-piece spectacular buried by Uncharted
Back when Nathan Drake shot up his first boat full of pirates in 2007,
Uncharted was described by some as a game of two parts: half action flick about a roguish globetrotter, and half Tomb Raider. Those critics were no doubt referring to the time-honoured pursuits of platforming and grave robbing, but the distinction didn’t make much sense. Over a year and a half before Drake made his fortune, Tomb Raider: Legend had reinvented the series as an action spectacular starring a Croft like a Rule 63 James Bond in short shorts. Legend’s thematic shift was a success on the whole – any direction was preferable to the brooding muddle of 2003’s Angel Of
Darkness – and its platforming was lauded, but Lara’s new handle on running, gunning and banter was soon forgotten.
Core Design had kept Tomb Raider in its display cabinet for nearly ten years before Eidos, confronted with the dismal reception of Angel Of Darkness, stripped it of the privilege and handed the series to Crystal Dynamics. The studio went at Croft’s design doc with the gusto of someone gutting a house. Everything changed: platforming, presentation and Lara herself. Following a ’ 60s-Bond title montage, we find Lara clinging to a cliff face, now more plausibly woman-shaped if still not exactly typical free-climber build. She moves like a spider monkey, the camera shifting to frame every implausible leap and near miss as she natters with aides via satellite link by way of exposition. Asked what she’s doing in Bolivia, with practised nonchalance she quips, “Ascending.” Hands grasp the final precipice, and up come the legs in a vivacious but impractical handstand lift. Later, at the end of a motorbike chase rife with contextual button presses that trigger explosions or clear debris, she mounts the rear of a truck and backflips from the cab, delivering two shots to the driver before touching down in the passenger seat of the Jeep the deceased was pursuing. A ball of flames signals the end of the convoy behind. It’s thrilling, sexed-up and ridiculous. Contrast this with the heritage it denies. Angel Of Darkness attempted to divest Tomb Raider of its kitschy Indiana Jones inspirations, framing Lara for murder and dropping her in ghettos and nightclubs, where she mingled with mobsters and prostitutes before sinking to tomb raiding. Dialogue choices and stat upgrades were unprecedented among action-platformers of the day, but in the state the game shipped led Lara to feel less like a deep but troubled protagonist and more like a teen in a Goth phase. Whatever merit there might have been in exploring new themes was lost amid the incompleteness of it all, like the dig site level in which Lara was prone to plummet through cracks in the world, or the Parisian backstreets that somehow needed a loading screen on each corner despite being clearly composed of basic geometry. Legend is the antithesis of Angel Of Darkness’s gritty slog. Without shame, it embraces B-movie adventuring, a tale of the highest hokum being merely an excuse to rig collapsing floors and race a motorbike along a train. Played now, QTEs date it in brutal fashion, but Legend is clearly experimenting with this twist on cinematic storytelling, splicing a game of steady puzzle-solving with adrenaline and showmanship. This much of the new direction was welcome, but it is Uncharted that gets heaped with glory for its setpieces, not Tomb Raider. Not to slight Naughty Dog’s keen eye for excess and the skill of its animators, but it’s curious that the pioneer of high-octane grave desecration left so little legend of its own.
As a series, Tomb Raider has achieved prominence that few games can hope to match, even in the age of billion-dollar franchises. Everyone knows of Tomb Raider whether they’ve played the series or not, and this fame shackles it to the past. Each new instalment can’t help but be judged against the game that started the cult: the pioneer of early 3D and original PlayStation system-seller, circumstances unrepeatable outside of 1996. In the process of flirting with adrenaline junkies, Crystal Dynamics also had to court the purists who had raided the Lost Valley and the Great Pyramid when Lara was little more than a triangular shelf with a face. This resulted in the peculiar situation of Legend winning praise for overthe-top scripted action while its gunplay was simultaneously panned.