Thankfully, you’ll muster quite an arsenal to put them down - you’ll get access to the aforementioned spears and Lara’s trusty twin pistols, as well as heavier arms like machine guns, flamethrowers and grenade launchers. Adding to this are the dozens of customizable power-ups (complete with goofy Aztec-inspired names) that boost your health, speed, or ammo reserves, resulting in surprising depth for this “little” downloadable title.

The balance between fighting enemies and figuring out the Zelda-style environmental puzzles is spot-on, and the pacing is damn near perfect. Nothing here is exactly revolutionary – most of the brainteasers involve some form of rolling giant boulders or hitting switches in the right order – but it’s put together so well that you won’t care.

I fell into my share of bottomless pits, but the game should be commended for keeping the frustration factor low with generous auto-saving and only a short load screen in between deaths and restarts. In fact, this insistence on keeping the action going is what kept me playing when I started running out of ideas on particularly obtuse puzzles, since it encourages experimentation and leaps of faith.

Even the game’s length is satisfying, with a seriously meaty main quest and plenty of replay value (tons of mini-achievements are displayed at each stage’s loading screen, along with the shiny new weapons or power-ups you’ll get for completing them). Add to this the promise of Live co-op, and we have one of the summer’s best downloadable games. Heck, it’s one of the strongest games of the season, period.

Danielle Riendeau is a regular contributor to GameShark and is the cohost of Jumping the Shark , GameShark.com's official podcast.