Platform: Xbox 360
Rating: T for blood, language, suggestive themes, violence

To start with, as you probably know, the last few Tomb Raiders have been horrible. Terrible story, terrible controls, terrible everything. They just couldn’t get back what the first Tomb Raider had which was a great story, great controls, great everything. So, this series has been in a ditch for a long time. That is, until Legend. Legend takes Lara Croft, the star of the game, back to her roots: The raiding of tombs. Legend is mainly about recovering sword pieces which takes Lara all across the world, from places like Japan to Africa. I don’t want to go into what the sword has to do with, because I might give away too much of the story.

Gameplay

Tomb Raider games have always been third person action adventure games, with a good bit of platforming. Legend is the same in this respect. A few new additions to Lara’s inventory are some cool gadgets which are, the PLS (Personal Light System) and a grappling hook. The latter of the two is extremely fun to use. I found the controls quite easy to grasp, the exception of which were the motorcycle riding segments. Those take a little getting used to. Players of the Prince of Persia series should be familiar with the on foot controls, because they aren’t much different (the grappling hook is a lot like the dark princes dagger tail weapon). The gunplay system in this game is one of the best I’ve yet to find in a third person action game. You hold the left trigger and your gun automatically locks on to the easiest to hit target. Speaking of guns, Lara’s two pistols are, of course, her main weapons. Some other weapons in the game are: a shotgun, assault rifle and an SMG. Excluding the pistols, my personal favorite gun is the SMG. That is a very cool and accurate gun. The hardest parts of the game are, in my opinion, the puzzles. Some of these can be a bit hard to figure out but, once you get them down, they are as easy as can be. The boss fights in this game are very fun, because you don’t just kill the boss by filling him/her full of led (well, you do a bit of that too), you have to use the environment to kill them. I found this to be a very nice change from other more traditional boss fights.

Multiplayer

As with the other Tomb Raiders, there is no multiplayer what so ever.

Graphics

Extremely nice. I, however, played the 360 version of this game on a high definition TV, so that’s what I’m going on. I didn’t find myself blown away, but the games I was comparing it to were Gears of war and Oblivion which are games that have graphics as good as they can get. This was one of the earlier Xbox 360 games so it isn’t as advanced as some others and it doesn’t have all the features that they might have like HDTV at 1080i(the highest resolution the 360 can produce). I had to play it in 720p (the second highest resolution) which isn’t that bad and you won’t even notice it if you’re playing on a standard definition TV.

Sound

I don’t know if I have ever played a game that has had music that has better fit it’s game. I’m not sure what this music is called (I’m no music expert), but it just went with the game smoothly. Also, the voices of the characters are well done and I especially liked the voice of Lara Croft, which was done by Keeley Hawes, who has a thick English accent.

Appropriateness

Now for the important stuff. Well, I’ll start off with the violence. Throughout the game you kill humans and animals in self-defense, which is the same as kill of be killed. ESRB has Legend rated for blood, but I did not detect any. It is possible I missed it but, I even went as far as to get impaled (don’t worry, it’s not graphic at all), and there was not a drop of blood. A tiger would maul me and there would be no blood. So as usual, ESRB may have put an unnecessary rating on the back of the box. As for the language, there was a bit. I herd d***, h*** and a**, the last of which was only used once. God and ‘Oh my god’ are also used throughout the game. The last bit of objectionable content would be, you guessed it, scantily clad women. Lara and her female friends all have EXTREMELY short pants and revealing tops (around the belly). The worst of Lara’s dresses is the ‘ripped evening’ one, that’s in the Japan level.

Conclusion

I would recommend this game to anyone who is into third person shooters/platformers. It was a relatively short game. You should see the credits rolling after about ten hours of gameplay on the medium difficulty. One note: be prepared for a complete cliffhanger. I am seriously hoping for a Legend two, because this was a game deserving of a sequel. Overall I thoroughly enjoyed Tomb Raider Legend. It was well worth the thirty bucks I spent on it.