Okay, I’ve a monstrous confession to make. I’ve never played a Tomb Raider game before. I know, it’s such a scandal. In my obviously inadequate defence, I spent most of the 90s grinding uniques in Diablo I and II.
Which brings me rather neatly around to Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, actually, because the game’s pretty much cribbed its entire tileset from Diablo’s resource folders. Well, a hypothetical high definition version of Diablo, anyway, which sounds so awesome I stopped typing for about four minutes there and just wandered off into a slightly sticky daydream of Mephisto’s Durance of Hate in 1080p.
Anyway.
Some two thousand years ago, as these things tend to go, there was this epic battle between Totec, the Guardian of Light, and Xolotl, the Keeper of Darkness. Stuff happened, and Totec somehow managed to imprison Xolotl in, like, a mirror. A recklessly myopic strategy, as it turns out, because fast forward to now, and stupid humans see-shiny-thing-and-onoes!-bad-demon-thing-gets-out. Totec realises moments (millennia) too late that he should perhaps have considered something more subtle or inconspicuous like a rock or a bit of bat poo instead, but pretends none of this is his fault and briskly informs a bystander that she’d better help him recapture Xolotl before dawn or the world’s going to end. OMG ADVENTURE!
That’s mostly a lot of running about, chucking grappling hooks and spears, shooting guns at a bunch of guys, dying on spike traps, reloading, avoiding spike traps, dodging swamp gas, pushing switches, shoving gems in your pockets, blowing stuff up, outpacing toppling bridges, rolling gigantic boulders around, leaping over fiery chasms, and other regular adventure-type activities.
The game features both single player and cooperative multiplayer modes. In the single player mode, only Lara is around onscreen, with Totec appearing occasionally during brief narrative cutscenes. In the cooperative multiplayer mode, one player controls Lara and the other Totec, and both characters have their own weapons and abilities. As such, working out the game’s frequent – and sometimes exceedingly clever – environmental puzzles is a significantly different challenge in each mode.
There’s also loads of collectible junk, including skulls, health and ammo upgrades, and a sizeable arsenal of weapons, as well as passive bonus relics. Getting some of these means beating in-game objective and level time challenges, which not only makes for substantial replay, but also lots of swearing at your TV – two of my favourite things about cheap downloadable games.
For 1200 MSP (around about R100 or so), Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is outrageously good shooty—grapply-bang-bang for your buck. It has all the production values of a triple-A release, for the price of a bin game. And it’s simply fantastic. Just go and buy it already.
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light will be released on the PlayStation Network and PC (Steam) on 28 September. Online co-op will launch as a free update on XBLA the same day, and will be included in the PSN and PC releases.
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