Pros: Exploration, locations, controls, puzzles make sense.
Cons: Some elements could use some tweaking, fun but could be more so.
The bottom line: Hey, the price is down to thirty bucks in a lot of places, and it's definitely worth that. You'll get your money's worth.
Well, it's been many moons since Lara Croft's glory days on the original Playstation. The first Tomb Raider was groundbreaking, and the second built on that, and made it even better. After that, it all went right down the toilet. A few substandard games later, and Lara Croft was a quickly fading memory, or at least I thought she was. Now she's back, and as good as ever, if not better.

The premise of all the Tomb Raider games is simple: take Indiana Jones, replace him with a hot woman, and explore various temples, shrines, and dungeons in exotic locales, always with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. The problem was that after Tomb Raider 2, the formula became bland, and less effort was put into each release. The fun of exploration was gone, and you found yourself laboring just to get to the next interesting location, just to find it wasn't that interesting.

Here we find a back to basics movement. Just look around the first level once you're dropped into it, and you can't help but see the similarities between it and the first level of Tomb Raider 2. The level differentiates as it goes on, but the similarities in that first few minutes are uncanny.

This time, Lara is racing against time to find an ancient, powerful weapon, and the world is in danger...blah blah blah. The story isn't all that important, nor has it ever been. Granted, we do get some insights into Lara's past, but this isn't the stuff that Oscars are made of, if they made Oscars for games.

What is different is the way the story is told. Lara is no longer limited to a few quips per level, but rather banters back and forth with her partners back at her mansion, so you get a lot of the story on the fly, as well as tips, which keeps the action pretty steady. Sure, time is taken out to tell the story in cinematics (which can thankfully be skipped), but this isn't a game bogged down with endless lines of dialogue.

The beauty of the old Tomb Raider games was the fact that you weren't simply going from point A to point B. You could almost always see your next destination, but you had to be creative about getting there. Take the first level for example. You have to get to the top of a cliff. You can see it, and with all Lara's equipment, you'd think you could just climb up. No, you'll leap, crawl, swim, shimmy up ledges, and swing from vines, just to get to the next set of obstacles. Inside dungeons, you'll have to solve puzzles, but very few are cumbersome, and unlike most games, they actually make a bit of sense.

The problem with games that require a lot of well timed jumps and swinging is that they tend to fall into the trap of making control too complicated. Not the case with Tomb Raider Legend. While some of the moves may seem complex, they're really easy to execute, and soon you'll be pulling off maneuvers that would make Sam Fisher proud, but with greater ease. Granted, the camera is occasionally an issue, as you'll sometimes miss vines, or miss important jumps, but that's the kind of thing we've come to expect from adventure games, and will always plague them.

When it boils down to it, the majority of the game will be spent exploring and solving puzzles. This is an adventure game, not an action game. However, there is combat, and Lara is game. You'll always have your dual pistols on you, with infinite ammo, but there's plenty of other weapons to pick up, like machine guns, shotguns, grenades, and other pretty standard weapons. In Legend, Lara has a new targeting system. Lock on to an enemy, shoot them dead, and lock on to the next one. Lara does have some melee moves, including a pretty cool little jump kick. However, the fights, whether you're fighting man or beast, are pretty simplistic, and oddly enough, I prefer tomb raiding to shooting.

New to Lara's arsenal are the grappling hook and the specialized binoculars, which scan areas, and are basically there to give you a clue as to what to do next. If you're stuck, just pull out your binoculars, and odds are that they'll come across something useful for you. As for the grappling hook, it's functions are to, well, grapple, and also pull enemies towards you in combat, which is pretty cool.

Legend has also included some vehicle use, which is fun, but seems a little gimmicky and out of place in this type of game, and some context sensitive events, which basically consist of pushing the right button at the right time. While these aren't fantastic events, they do show that Lara is evolving, and will hopefully continue to do so.

Now on to graphics. Let me just say it's nice seeing Lara in the next generation. Well, not her specifically, I'm not that sad, but rather the whole package (that still sounded bad, but I'm sticking with it). The environments are beautiful, especially the trickling water in Bolivia, and the tombs are pretty incredible. The swan dive off the waterfall in Africa is particulary breathtaking. The characters are looking better. It also seems that the developers put a lot of effort into, uh, accentuating Lara's features. Remember the nude code rumor in Tomb Raider 2? Well, those who got all hot and bothered about that would kill for one in this game.

The sound is what it should be. The music gets a little too techno at times, but there's also some great tomb music, and each level's orchestration has a bit of local flavor in it, whether in Bolivia, Japan, Africa, or one of the stops in between. The voice acting is what really stands out, especially for Lara. She has truly finally become a fully realized character, with some pretty sharp dialogue.

In spite of all my praise, there are some drawbacks. Though I have enjoyed Tomb Raider Legend, I have to admit that a lot of it has elements that seem watered down from other games, and other Tomb Raider games. When you're scaling the side of a skyscraper in Tokyo, you can't help but think of Splinter Cell, and how much better the whole stealth thing is pulled off in that. And if my memory serves me correctly, previous Tomb Raider titles were pretty difficult. This one seems like a breeze in comparison, complete with plenty of checkpoints to ensure you won't be doing the same thing too many times over. Combat seems a little tacked on, as I mentioned earlier, but still improved from previous titles. This game's got the heart, it just needs a little more soul, and you'd have a five star game here.

Here's the deal: Tomb Raider Legend could be the start of a new life for Lara Croft. The exotic locales are awesome, the controls are (almost) spot on, and the game is fun. If the developers keep improving, Tomb Raider will enjoy the success it once did. There has been a severe shortage of true adventure games, and this one fills that void nicely.

Parent's Note: Legend is rated Teen, for general violence, though not too graphic, some language, and suggestive themes, which basically means that you'll see a lot of Lara in skimpy outfits. In short, a perfect game for thirteen year old boys.