Tomb Raider Legend E3 2005 Preshow Report (May 17)

Lara Croft is back, and hopes are high for Tomb Raider Legend. We take a first look at the new trailer for the game.

Eidos and Crystal Dynamics today released another trailer for their upcoming title Tomb Raider: Legend, showing off more of the redesigned and hopefully repentant Lara Croft. Players of recent Tomb Raider games will likely remember a string of underwhelming titles, but Crystal Dynamics seems intent on correcting the mistakes made in recent games and getting Legend right. While only hands-on impressions will reveal whether or not Crystal Dynamics is on the right track, we're going to take a look at the most recent trailer and see what new revelations it has in store for faithful Lara Croft fans.

The beginning scenes of the video feature Lara going through the acrobatic routines that she's so famous for: wall jumping, rope climbing, stick whirling, and so on. Over the last couple of years, though, series like Prince of Persia have really taken the wind out of Tomb Raider's action platforming sails. Again, we're not convinced after seeing the few seconds of acrobatics here that Legend will reclaim the crown for Tomb Raider.

Most of the latter half of the trailer focuses on Tomb Raider: Legend's action sequences, which see Lara Croft going up against numerous snowsuit-clad foes inside a cave environment. Her impressive "jump-roll-kick enemies into air and shoot them before they come back down" move is in full effect here, and we have to admit that it looks like a fun way to take down single enemies. Elsewhere in the trailer, we see Lara at a stationary machine gun position. We also see her wielding her trademark dual pistols and what appears to be a heat-seeking missile launcher.

The tagline in the trailer is "From Tomb Raider - To Hero - To Legend." It'll be interesting to see if the game actually incorporates any kind of skill progression to match this tagline. We hope to have some more details on the game soon, so keep your dual handguns trained on GameSpot. Except, you know, only metaphorically speaking.

Source: Gamestop.com, By Matthew Rorie

E3 2005: Tomb Raider Legend First Look (May 18)

More than just a little mascara as Crystal Dynamics takes the helm.

In the Eidos room the floors above the show, we were able to get some tasty tasters of their current lineup, and there was a clump of people gathered around to check out Lara Croft's latest bouncy exploits. Crystal Dynamics is the new developer, and they're running with it by bringing the franchise back to its action roots while bringing the visuals and technology up to par. If that's not enough, it's also coming out on the Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2, PC, and PSP.

Crystal says they're not ignoring Angel of Darkness the previous and rather underwhelming entry in the series that seemed to be gasping for relevance by shoehorning the popular stealth-action genre into the game. There will be no creeping around or hiding bodies in Legend, from what we can tell. In fact, the new installment has some of the heaviest action we've seen in the franchise, what with heavy machine gun emplacements and some big explosions--but it looks like it's used sparingly, because puzzle-solving is also a renewed feature. Lara will be swinging on a lot of ropes, pushing pillars over, swinging on pole, climbing and rapelling, et cetera. You'll also be able to rotate the camera quite a bit to get just the right angle on uh, that next ledge you want to jump to. When you push the analog stick, she'll even position herself to get ready for the move.

In fact, it looks like she has more moves than Sam Fisher or the Prince of Persia. She can leap from ledge to ledge horizontally and vertically, leap from a ledge to a pole and vice versa, grab ledges when you automatically walk off, and do a graceful flip when going from hanging from a ledge to standing on level ground. All of her animation looks fluid, with smooth transitions and a definite femininity. All of her gear also appears on her body, with four grenades, her pistols, a shoulder light, and a rack for two weapons (which was empty during the presentation). All of this is thanks to a beefed up version of the Defiance engine used in Project Snowblind, the most noticeable difference of which was some increased but tasteful bloom in outdoor areas.

The presenters told us that a single person had been responsible for animating Lara, from the very beginning of the project, and the consistency of style and approach shows. While she's not really as physically realistic as she's recently been touted, she looks a lot less like a cartoon now and a lot more like a ballerina. Well, a ballerina who can ventilate you with dual Desert Eagles at a dead run and use any weapon an enemy drops.

Crystal also tells us that they've been able to stream most of the game, and it looks like it will be one continuous experience from the entrance of the tomb to the end. She'll also be quite the globe trotter, bouncing around in west Africa, the Himalayas, Russia, Peru and Bolivia, and three other locations that weren't mentioned. Legend will also incorporate Lara's origin story. We'll get to find out how she came to be a relic hunter in the first place.

Anyways, be sure to check back here for more Lara lovin in the coming months.

Source: IGN.com, by Tom McNamara

E3 2005: Tomb Raider Legend: Eyes-on (May 19)

Crystal Dynamics carefully aims for Lara's origins and gets it right.

While drips and drabs of information has leaked out about the new Tomb Raider series, Eidos and Crystal Dynamics (best known for its Legacy of Kain series), have finally brought out the new girl for everyone to see at E3. Running on an Xbox at the demo, we saw the new-fangled Lara Croft, saw her moving in action, and got a really great sense of what the seventh game in the series will be like.

Lara looks different these days. She's red-haired, and she's still tall and athletic looking. Her proportions aren't as unrealistic, and not surprisingly, she still looks very female and very attractive. With her hair up on a ponytail, a few loose strands wisp across her face. Lara's face is a little less angular than before, and she has returned from the dark, edgy raccoon look (from Angel of Darkness). Crystal has softened her up and there has been an immense amount of detail put into her facial expressions. She still wears tight beige shorts, a tight, blue-ish shirt, and high boots. And she's still got the strapped-on pistols at each side, and a small backpack, but overall she looks better. The new makeover is very welcome.

But enough cosmetic chat-chat! Crystal D's Producer Morgan Gray demonstrated how the series is returning to its roots as an adventure and exploration game based in exotic locations, good mechanics, movement, and fun. That, as opposed to running around in urban environments talking to people in boxing rings, bars, and so forth. Lara's primary weapons are her pistols, and she uses them when she has to, as opposed to using them regularly and not very well. This admittance on Crystal Dynamic's part, clarifies that the game isn't transforming into a pure action game, or a Prince of Persia mixed genre title, or anything in between. When Crystal D said it was going back to its roots, it meant it: This game is based on the exploration of exotic lands, where you're in search of ancient artifacts, and you encounter physical puzzles found in gigantic, beautiful locations.

We watched as Lara performed a slide kick to an unsuspecting enemy, which launched into the air. She immediately flipped out both guns, turning the move into an aerial combo blasting him Devil May Cry style. Very nice indeed. She's less likely to enter in kung fu melee attacks, and break people's bones close up. That's not really the style Crystal D is after. When shooting, a manual lock system drops a little icon above the enemy's head, giving you a clear bead on them. Once locked, she can strafe, jump, summersault, etc, and still stay locked on to her enemy. She can actually shoot through structures, which degrade as she unloads into them. Besides her standard guns, she'll acquire machine guns, rifles, shotguns, and bazookas. You'll even find set turrets for her to use.

So, she's returned in several ways, and that includes the ability to climb physical landscapes, jump from giant cliffs into gorgeous pools of water, swing on ropes, and shimmy around ledges, etc, etc. There are new elements, however. One of Lara's newest gadgets is a magnetic grappling hook. This can be used to pull metal objects on the other side of rivers, spiked pits, and other dangerous chasms. She sends it out, sticks it to a metal object, and pulls. It helps and it works as you traverse through nine gigantic levels that take place in West Africa, Russia, Bolivia, Peru, the Himalayas, and other far away places.

The game's puzzles have taken a different twist, or rather, a twist once again that return her to roots. The puzzles are physics based and physical, not block or switched based. For example, Lara is standing in a pool filled monastery. On the one side is a waterfall, and there are some steps that hint at something. You climb up the blocks, jump off the giant steps, grab a rope, and swing on it to reach a height so that you can knock over a statue-like pillar. Once knocked over, it leads the way out. You'll encounter many more physical puzzles of this nature, requiring lost of jumping, shimmying, swinging, and careful maneuvering.

Visually, Tomb Raider Legends is a good looking game. Crystal uses a new filter that covers the whole screen, softening the hard angles and giving the whole game a better, prettier look. It also takes care of aliasing and shimmering, even though the engine on which this is built, the Legacy of Kain Defiance engine, never had those problems to begin with. The camera works beautifully from what we could see, generally seeing Lara from a third-person perspective, but moving away from tight corners, giant obstacles and other obtrusive areas into a free-roaming mode.

The technical differences between the PS2 and Xbox versions is that the Xbox and PC versions will run at 60 FPS, while the PS2 will run at 30 FPS. The whole game is working from a streaming engine, but unlike the pop-in and problems GTA has had, this looks sharp, clean, and beautiful, much like the gorgeous backgrounds, textures, and architectural backgrounds and locations we've experienced in the Kain series.

In all, Tomb Raider Legends is a solid, smooth, and focused design that gives gamers a friendly, useable set of mechanics that work -- unlike the broken and frustrating mechanics in Angel of Darkness. The exploration is the key, and the environments and gorgeous locations create fantastic atmospheres ripe for the spelunker in all of us. If this one demo level is an indication of the rest of the game, we can safely say that Lara is in great hands. We'll have more soon.

Source: IGN.com, by Douglass C. Perry