The life of Lara Croft has been one of many ups and downs. When the well endowed grave robber first appeared on the scene so many years ago, she was the top of her game and Tomb Raider was a fresh and different game style that hadn’t been seen. After its second outing, which arguably was just as successful as the first, the third release began its slippery slide down the slope of mediocrity; all the way down to the bug ridden Angel of Darkness was thought to be the nail in the coffin that would bury the series. As iconic as Lara Croft is in gaming circles, she wasn’t about to go down with out a fight and three years after her last horrible appearance, she has come back with a vengeance, the way she should have continued so many years ago.

With the Tomb Raider movies and previous games, there have been many glimpses into Lara’s past. Legend is no different as players will learn about her mother as well as her early days of raiding tombs. In both missions and cut scenes, you will get a deeper look into her past relationships, friends and family all the while searching for parts of a mysterious stone sword. The throw back missions are a nice nostalgic look back to the first game as you get to play with Lara in her original outfit. The classic game play style that made Tomb Raider so great returns in full force along with some spiffy new additions to herald her return. The original brain tickling puzzles are back in which you will be required to push, pull and even kick objects to help solve them. While none of them are over taxing on your melon, they will take a bit of tinkering to get through. You will have in your inventory, a set of binoculars that you can use to look at interactive, shiny objects. When you pass the cross hair over them, there will be one of 4 icons at the bottom that will tell you how to approach them and how they are operated. In addition to your groovy new binoculars, you also have a magnetic rope that you can use to attach to metallic objects. Such things as scaffolds and railings can be pulled and you can attach it to overhead objects to swing across gaps and chasms that would otherwise spell your untimely demise.

Lara isn’t alone in her adventures as she is always in contact over her ear piece with Zip, a computer hacker who helps her with information and leads her to the next missions. As well, Lara will deal with many old friends during the course of the game, some friendly and some not so much, but interesting to say the least. These travels will take you to many places around the globe, from bustling cities, military bases and of course the lovely tombs that you feel so much at home in. In addition to the many scenery changes, Lara will have a different wardrobe choice for each mission as well. Any fan of the series will know of Lara’s two best friends (no, not those two best friends) and in keeping with the original, they make their return. Lara sports her dual pistols and any other type of weapon you happen to come across. Although you can only carry one extra weapon at a time, the extra firepower comes in handy for the intermittent times you need to dispatch some foes. Enemies in the game, ranging from both human and animal seem to be made of stone. Having to fire 15 bullets into a jaguar to drop it seem a little excessive, as does how many rounds it takes to take out a human enemy. The targeting system used in Legend is a new one and gives you off screen arrows and a large crosshair to surround your enemies making finding and hitting an enemy quite idiot proof.

The improved graphics make all of the environments you visit look lively and beautiful, both in and out of the jungle and in and out of water. Lighting and shadows are done quite well and provide a very noticeable visual improvement over the last few games as is the audio. The music, the sounds and the many voiceovers found throughout are all believable and not over done at all. If you had already figured that Lara and her raiding days were done for, it’s nice to see that Crystal Dynamics has brought Lara back to the forefront. Legend has sparked up some life and brought new vitality to the series when it was so close to being over with. Fans of the original games and new comers to the series alike will all take to this new outing and know why Lara was and always will be gaming goddess she is.