Tag Archives: crystal dynamics

Thoughts: Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris

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I have fond memories of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. It was that rarest of beasts: a arcadey spinoff from a AAA series that actually worked, and moreover arguably transcended its source material with its emphasis on pleasingly brain-twisting puzzles that could be solved either solo or as part of a co-op team of two. The multiplayer puzzles worked so well, in fact, that I’d happily put Guardian of Light somewhere in my top five best co-op experiences of all time. Given that the first game was so good it’s a little surprising that it’s taken nearly five years for it to receive a sequel, but now that sequel is finally here. It’s called Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, and..

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Thoughts: Tomb Raider.

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Despite being old enough to remember rolling my eyes at the original media sensation over Lara Croft1 I have a confession to make: I’ve never actually played a Tomb Raider game. Well, except for the excellent Guardian of Light spinoff back in 2011, but that game’s fixed isometric perspective and focus on co-op means that it doesn’t really count. They didn’t make Tomb Raider games for the N64, and when the first reboot rolled around in 2006 the gameplay looked distinctly dated since there were other, fresher games doing the same sort of thing – Prince of Persia, Assassin’s Creed and so on. In a peculiarly ironic twist, the Tomb Raider series itself always seemed to me to be just as much of an archaeological relic as the collection of ancient ruins that Lara explores in every game – and with five games in the original series and three more after the reboot, there were a lot of games. It’s no wonder the franchise looked a bit tired.

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  1. It went roughly along the lines of “It’s A GIRL! In a game!” and led to her being mentioned in the same breath as the Spice Girls, Girl Power and all that other tedious mid-nineties guff when Britain temporarily convinced itself it was young and vibrant and etc. etc.
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