Review: 'Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light'

The tomb raider is back, but she might not be entirely what you were expecting...

Released On: Xbox LIVE, PS3 Network, PC Developer: Crystal Dynamics

Due to a rather generous physique it’s incredibly easy to forget how Ms. Croft and Tomb Raider used to be bywords for puzzle-platforming greatness; sadly, Lara’s adventures have long since fallen in quality. Not so with Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, however - this Arcade title more than makes up for any past transgressions with a vengeance before promptly and thoroughly setting the bar even higher on what we can now expect from downloadable games.

First off, let’s make something very clear - this isn’t your average Lara adventure despite the name and character. You’ll immediately notice that the action is ‘top-down’ instead of the more traditional third person, of course (robbing us somewhat of the gorgeous panoramic scenes that we’ve become used to over previous instalments), and you’ll also probably clock that the combat is a fairly simple, arcade-y affair organised via the two analogue sticks pretty quickly too; what you may not see right away, though, is how these actually work out in The Guardian of Light’s favour as soon as you get down to the actual business of playing.

While the different viewpoint may initially seem a bit inexplicable, for instance, it in fact serves the new focus of play perfectly; boiling down to what you could comfortably call an ‘old-school’ adventure, Lara's latest is all about brain teasers, quick reactions, obscene waves of enemies that require a fast trigger finger instead of tactics and a lot of collectibles, all garnering one nice fat score at the end of every level to slap on the available leaderboards and compare with your mates. What’s more, the fighting in Guardian of Light (a previous weak link in the series) is inarguably slicker than any other Tomb Raider title regardless of the trimmed approach, making for a far more enjoyable experience as well. Naturally you’ll have access to a wide variety of guns and extras during your shootouts that all boast specific uses (from shotguns and your traditional dual pistols to flamethrowers or spears and remotely detonated bombs that can be used to aid platforming), but unlike previous titles the real joy comes from superbly smooth and accessible controls, lovingly vintage touches such as myriad upgrades and items that will give you extra strengths, weaknesses or advantages, and a huge range of foes that’ll keep you on your toes as you struggle to adapt on the fly.

Nevertheless, the best and biggest new feature that the team have added would have to be the near faultless co-operative mode, vastly changing the puzzles and gameplay from the single player experience to better serve two treasure hunters, not only providing a great laugh for both of you as you risk life and limb against ancient traps or PO’d demons while attempting to outdo each other via high score, but also adding a lot of reason to go back to try both the solo and multiplayer modes for the full experience. Though the single-player requires nothing but your own brawn and intellect, co-op puts a real focus on teamwork; the traps and challenges ahead require co-operation as well as quick reactions, and the platforming will also require work in tandem as both have items the other needs to succeed (newcomer Aztec warrior Totec has a spear he can throw to create footholds up steep cliffs while Lara has a grapple to scale walls, for example). This level of co-op play is thus refreshing and engaging especially because it‘s so much more interactive than the average two-player experience (usually confined to by the book shooters), and things rarely get dull because each of the many levels available are bite-sized enough to keep proceedings fresh.

Still, there are some elements that will remain immensely familiar to veterans regardless; achingly beautiful, superbly detailed environments that range from deep, gloomy temples to fiery pits and lush jungles, great - if hardly taxing - puzzles seemingly pulled directly from the Uncharted series or Indiana Jones, a fantastically epic score that would put most other titles to shame and epically over-the-top platforming that is exhilarating, memorable, rewarding and terrifying all in equal measure as you’re forced to think fast and react faster before you’re squashed/drowned/bashed/burnt/pushed to your doom in moments that would make Nathan Drake green with envy.

In all honesty, this leads me to admit that there’s very little that is wrong with this downloadable title; the story is an exceptionally shallow and predictable excuse to get Lara to the action (an ancient, spooky demon is released by unassuming scavengers after treasure, forcing the Guardian of Light to return and stop him from conquering the world, etc etc), and the art style - an attractive toon look - may put off some die-hards, sure, but due to a newer, light-hearted tone and an old-fashioned sentimentality that ignores script in favour of score crunching and teamwork, these small issues are fairly easy to gloss over. Even better, the top down focus erases a lot of the camera-angle problems that have famously plagued the genre in the past. All in all this is a great title and well worth the 1200 Microsoft Points (around £8-£10 for the PSN once it’s released on the PS3 at the end of the month, I’d imagine) you pay at the online checkout. Regardless of whether you’re a fan of Lara or just of co-op and puzzle-platformers in general, don’t hesitate in picking up The Guardian of Light.

The Bottom Line

With a great setting, great score, great clutch of puzzle-platforming and superbly old school ideals complete with a fantastically enthralling co-op mode, Lara’s latest adventure is absolutely to die for.

Rating: 90%
(Fantastic)

Weekly Thought: Your Trash, My Treasure

Foxes VS videogames incorporated.

It was recently announced that the government would be re-considering their decision to ban fox-hunting over the coming months, so it’s hardly surprising that the hills are once again alive with the sound of a good, old-fashioned argument. Should our well-to dos be able to gun around the countryside frivolously mowing down the troublesome brush-tails once again, or should we be trying to protect our harrowed wild-life from the over-eager barrel of their shotgun? As terribly sensitive and outrageous as this moral conundrum would happen to be, however, I’ve found that my frustrations lie largely elsewhere this week.

Sickening

Frankly, isn't it a bit hard to stomach when the government is actually considering the vote-loss of re-instating this rather cruel affair instead of ‘risking’ a lead in the polls by going through with the UK games tax-relief that they previously promised? Intended to give the local industry - responsible for such world-wide block-busters as Grand Theft Auto 4 and Batman: Arkham Asylum - a boost, the matter of it not going through after all will be a massive blow considering how this downturn the matter of it not going through after all will be a massive blow considering how this downturn could apparently draw investment away from local developers. What’s more, it could encourage young talent to go abroad in search of a better deal. Which, if they pop over to the likes of Canada, they’re probably going to find.

Now, while I’m well aware that there’s a fairly nasty recession on at the moment and that we should all be tightening our belts, the UK games industry has already fallen from third to fifth place as the largest global games developer. What’s more, if developers are being tempted overseas then we could begin to find a dearth of new, up-and-coming talent in the future, meaning a crash in man-power and providing a subsequent spanner in the works for eventual product quality, not to mention the resulting returns.

Respect

This whole mess would rather suggest that the government doesn't have quite enough respect for the game industry, and the fact that they’re willing to consider re-igniting the pastime of reducing foxes to a fine red mist over helping a positive gold-mine at all is definitely worrying. It doesn't make sense - game sales have boomed over this past generation with the likes of the Wii bringing play to far greater audiences, while yet more players are taking up a controller due to services such as Xbox LIVE and the Playstation Network. Old habits die hard I suppose, and even now there are still those who would have use believe that these titles provide a negative effect for our well-being, despite this fact being disputed and disproven at almost every turn (recent research has actually shown that gaming can improve social and visual skills with the only tangible negative effects hitting individuals harbouring personality or mental issues, for example). Regardless of how far they've come over the past decade, games are still an easy scapegoat in a battle for the affections of those who don't know any better.

With any luck newer efforts such as motion camera Kinect, the prevelance of online play and the increasingly impressive credentials of said online services (aimed at all the family, gamer or not) will begin to turn the tide. Anyway, who knows what will happen when the successor to the Wii hits or the 3DS arrives? Going by the stunning precedent already set by Nintendo, the eventual acceptance of videogames as a respected medium might not be quite as far as was once feared.

Special Feature: Medal of Honor Beta Impressions

What to expect from EA’s big-budget re-launch…

It doesn’t take much thought to realise what bandwagon EA have jumped upon with their modern-warfare styled remake of Medal of Honor, but the question of whether it gives us anything different is quite another matter; some claim that it merely stuffs a liberal amount of Call of Duty and Battlefield into the mixing pot, while others fervently insist that it’ll be stealing COD’s throne come the holiday season. Regardless, it certainly doesn’t lack ambition - with the single-player campaign looking every inch as pulse-racing as it’s muse and boasting a real eye for fine detail, explosive set-pieces and phenomenal visuals, MOH is definitely set to impress on it’s October 15th release date. After playing through the recent multiplayer beta, however, I’m not so sure that the online team from DICE have done quite such a good job.

Best of Both

Not that it’s a bad system, of course; it plays out exactly as you’d expect the unholy love-child of both franchises to, and as Medal of Honor has inherited Call of Duty’s frenetic, lightning-fast twitch gameplay - while retaining a good dose of Bad Company’s scope and scale - you’re left with the perfect middle-ground for COD players who fancy a bit of a change but are intimidated by Battlefield’s system, or for Battlefield veterans who want a change of pace only with more depth than Modern Warfare or World at War can currently offer. Thrilling, explosive, positively soaked in tension and gorgeously exhilarating, Medal of Honor has all the makings of an online classic. What it doesn’t have, on the other hand, is a satisfying balance between both of the worlds from which it borrows.

In fact, it could easily be argued that EA have missed a lot of what made the originals so special by forcing these two uneasy bed-fellows together in the first place: to begin with, MOH doesn’t really manage to translate COD’s sheer accessibility despite the thrill-a-minute pace due to a broader focus, and a lack of the highly sophisticated kill-streak scheme or in-depth kit bashing means that it’s somewhat too shallow elsewhere. Next, although it may feel, play and even sound like Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on the surface, Medal of Honor leaves us with a visibly disabled system instead, crippled in an attempt to shoe-horn in faster pace. The maps are linear, claustrophobic and restrictive, the only vehicles of any interest you’ll be seeing are light tanks, the gorgeously destructible environments from Battlefield are jarringly absent beyond the most basic equivalents, tactics aren’t such a huge deal anymore - you can’t ‘squad up’ or spawn upon each other in this title, leaving you with a slightly more disorganised jumble of a team - and although the upgradeable classes are distinct enough (Special Ops serve as anti-vehicle and short range specialists, the Snipers obviously handle long range - well, what there is of it - and Riflemen act as the go-between), they don’t offer nearly as much variety or depth as Bad Company 2’s roster. In short, Medal of Honor is currently stuck in this awful middle-ground between COD’s arcade style and Battlefield’s hardcore ethics, attempting to emulate both but achieving neither.

Gripping

Luckily, once you’ve gotten over this then Medal of Honor still has a lot to give; unlike Bad Company 2, for example, there’s no waiting around or lengthy slogging to get to the heart of the action, and you’re right in the thick of it from the moment you spawn, making for one hell of a more gripping and exciting title. Furthermore, is it as brutal and as quick as Call of Duty? Easily, and this keeps you on your toes in a battle that is more about wits and skill than blind luck or the fastest trigger-finger. What’s more, those who are able to think on their feet and do attempt to ‘buddy up’ on the more ambitious, objective-based game modes will find that - despite the initial, apparent lack of camaraderie - Medal of Honor does offer an opportunity for some whip-crack strategy and exhilarating, soft-core team-play after all if you actually go looking for it (and suffice to say, those who work together will benefit drastically more than those who lone-wolf in a search for easy kills and points), meaning that this is a title that you can enjoy with your mates, as well.

Unfortunately and nonetheless, though, issues begin to niggle once again after you take a closer look at the game modes themselves. Sure, the COD style team-deathmatch is as gripping as you would imagine with tight, multi-storied warrens to fight amongst and gameplay faster and more brutal than Bruce Willis on crack-cocaine, but the ‘Missions’ mode (basically an unashamed riff of Bad Company’s ‘Rush’ where one team must take a set of objectives while the other is tasked with defending them) has the disadvantage of feeling a tiny bit unrefined. I mean, Americans and tanks on one side and the foot-slogging Taliban on the other? Seriously, tanks VS insurgents? I don’t know about you but that appears to be just a tad unbalanced, and the fact that this mode can also be somewhat confusing and massively unforgiving (spawn, die, spawn, die, rinse and repeat) only helps to frustrate matters.

Epic

Once you’ve gotten your head around this then the Missions can be great fun, however; the back and forth of the action, the desperate last-stands, the manic, fraught orders being thrown about by your team-mates, the explosions erupting around you, the bullets tearing through cover an inch from your head, the beach-heads, the assaults… it’s all sure to get the adrenaline pumping in the biggest sense possible. Like Bad Company 2, it’s also the sort of game where every match throws up it’s own little set-pieces and stories, giving you some very memorable gaming to walk away with. During one Mission, for example, a team-mate was wounded in the retreat and trapped behind enemy lines, leaving me and a number of others to go in after them and desperately fight our way through a scene just like Hollywood war-flick Green Zone, only to then engage in a pell-mell chase amongst the rocky tundra with tanks and snipers and the entire enemy force baying upon our heels.

It was, in a word, absolutely epic.

What’s more, the sheer sophistication of the mode itself can only help matters - as you’re treated to a realistic mission brief with full VO and realistic maps torn straight from Afghanistan itself, you’ll start to realise something: you’ll start realise this isn’t a simple online punch-up. That this isn’t just a firefight between friends. No, what you’ll come to realise is that this is like an incredible blockbuster extract from an action movie, or the most grippingly intense battle-scene from the main campaign every time. And by God, is it good.

Sadly, you’ll also come to realise something else in your time with MOH; and for that reason the holiday launch could still be all too soon.

To be blunt, isn’t it a bit crass to place the action of a major, international release slap-bang in the middle of a current conflict where parents, sons, sisters and siblings are fighting and dying? It's a matter that's almost certainly going to ruffle as many feathers, especially when you consider the fact that you can play as and against the organisation largely responsible for sending so many of our troops back in wooden boxes. Sure, this game's campaign throws you squarely into the boots of various Americans marines instead of a British unit, but is that the point? Personally I'm just as uneasy facing off against them as a US gunman ‘for a laugh’ when I know that real people are doing the exact same thing in Afghanistan right at that same moment, terrified out of their wits and fighting in a very real struggle for their lives. Here’s hoping that EA treat the topic with the respect that it duly deserves, and - much like the WW2 based Call of Duty 2 - send us a message that speaks in more than giggles and high scores.

The Bottom Line

Medal of Honor is the sort of title that shows a lot of promise, is superbly enjoyable and has bundles of potential but is tragically held back by it’s own ambition. Instead of trying to fill out the blank corners of the map, we’re seeing yet another re-tread; atop that, it’s a re-tread that may unfortunately ruffle too many feathers with it’s setting and with it’s protagonists too. A COD killer this may turn out to be, but is it ready for the crown yet? Not quite.

A Gaming Holiday

Who needs airport queues and cancelled flights anyway?

If you haven’t managed to get away this summer or have fallen foul of the traditionally awful British weather, then never fear - here are ten, game-sized reasons to feel good about staying inside this August.

Super Mario Galaxy 2
Released On: Wii

Desperate for a package holiday but tied up at work? Everyone’s favourite plumber has the answer with sackfuls of exotic locations to enjoy, gorgeously hilarious gameplay to match and enough ‘fun-factor’ to put most theme parks and sun-soaked beach resorts to shame. Completely unmissable.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Released On: PS3

If you can’t get enough of Inception or are desperate for more flicks like the explosive A-Team then don’t let the lack of summer block-buster alternatives get you down; Uncharted 2 is easily - without a shadow of a doubt - the next best thing. With a great cast, superb set-pieces, a brilliant cast and stellar action, it’s no wonder that this title walked away with four BAFTAs at this year’s awards ceremony.

Alan Wake
Released On: Xbox 360

It may not be able to bring you the sand and shores you want, but I’ll be damned if this psychological thriller wouldn’t do nicely as a sweet equivalent to a great beach read. Shakespeare it’s certainly not, but Alan Wake’s engrossing, sketchy pseudo horror adventure would fit quite snugly on your bookshelf beside all those Stephen King novels and Dan Brown yarns.


Wii Sports Resort
Released On: Wii

If in doubt, pretend. This happy-go-lucky party title has more than enough spray and sun to go around, and although it gives all of the same fun of playing at the beach with your mates, there’s none of the downside of actually having to put up with their annoying habits day-to-day on holiday. Plus, you’re not quite as likely to bring half the beach home in your shoes either.

Eyepet
Released On: PS3

Long summer days mean long, dull walks with the pets, so no self-respecting animal-lover should pass up on this little critter. Every bit as loving (and as cute) as any dog or cat, the Eyepet doesn’t require nearly as much attention or cleaning as a real animal and provides almost as much fun to boot. What’s more, it’s probably the closest thing you can get to the Playstation Move right now so early adopters should definitely take a look if they want to know how the Playstation’s wonder-accessory will play out come the September release date.

LittleBig Planet
Released On: PS3, PSP

If you’re after the perfect summer break than why not make it yourself? In LittleBig Planet you can create just about any level, environment or stage you can think of and then share it online with your mates. A potentially endless game? Now that’s value for money.

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Released On: DS

In this nifty little DS adventure, our hero Link laughs in the face of cruise getaways with his own ship to charter the open sea, monsters to slay at every port, new lands to explore and a whole world of treasure to claim. And hey, does the QE2 have cannons?

Red Dead Redemption
Released On: PS3, Xbox 360

Who needs to watch the sun rise on Everest if you have scenery this breath-taking from the comfort of your own living room? Red Dead Redemption is simply the most astounding vision is depth, detail and evocative atmosphere, and there’s nothing better than to get away from the bustle and stress of everyday gaming life for something quite so special as this.

Viva Piñata: Trouble In Paradise
Released On: Xbox 360

If you can’t make it out on Safari then this is surely the next best thing; enjoy watching the fascinating wild-life live, hunt and breed as you travel around the paralyzingly beautiful Piñata island, only to then watch them be promptly torn apart by a savage - if sugar coated - eco-system once you’re bored. Great fun for all the family.

Pikmin
Released On: Wii (New Play Control re-release)

It’s inevitable that something will always go wrong on holiday, so why not avoid the shame and laugh at someone else’s misfortune instead? Ship-wrecked Captain Olimar brings a whole new meaning to the word ‘buggered’ as he struggles to rebuild his wrecked craft in time to escape and attempts to survive in a wilderness full of predators who would rather chow down on him and his Pikmin helpers for a spot of light lunch.

Regardless of where you are, have a great summer!