Tomb Raider: Legend

Compared to previous games in the franchise, controls for acrobatics are much smoother and things work fine, although some camera angles are quite unhelpful. Combat control is clunky but not terrible, but it makes boss fights quite difficult. Auto-holstering the weapons really sucks during combat, so you have to keep an eye on this.

OK. I played the original Tomb Raider loooong ago and didn't like the perspective much so I skipped next ones in the series. Out of curiosity I bought this one with a healthy discount and decided to give it a go. Of course it looks dated for today's standards but that was expected and I'm not judging the game for that. It's the edge of what I find acceptable in "classic 3d game". So it will do. But there are too many thing that won't do. First and foremost - it's a console game ported to PC. And it shows. From the controls, through those annoying "push the right button" action scenes to the save system. The save system is atrocious and similar to the one in XIII - you can save any time in the game but... it will save the last checkpoint, not your actual progress in the game. And the checkpoints aren't separately saved so while you can do "resume game" at the beginning, if you load any other "save", your original checkpoint is lost forever. It's not saved anywhere. And that was the last straw. But before that was the annoyingly jerky camera motion and relatively annoying riddles. They can be fun sometimes but they seem to be the 3d equivalent of pixel-hunting in good old point-and-click adventure games - you must guess whether the developers wanted you to be able to jump to that rope or not; whether you should jump to that ledge or not. Whether you should drop down here or if you'll die if you do. And so on. Oh, and the model of the main character is over the top - it's the pimpled teenager's wet dream. I understand that Lara is supposed to be relatively attractive sporty type but this one is really made to excess - it's ridiculous. Especially the evening dress version. I'm apparently too old for this.

For Windows 10 builds earlier than 20H2 I needed this one whitelisting change to get it run (applies to both retail and GOG version): Start -> Settings -> Update & Security -> Windows Security Virus & threat protection -> App & browser control -> Exploit protection Program settings -> Add "trl.exe" (or absolute path to it) Override and disable "Data Execution Prevention (DEP)" Bonus tip: If it's crashing mid-game, try disabling Next Generation Content from game settings.

Lara Croft is like my first childhood love or a heroine. It’s a great game. I can see a lot of things that Uncharted later borrowed from it. This patch is useful if the game crashes https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Tomb_Raider:_Legend

And it was pretty entertaining. You follow the globetrotting Lara Croft as she gathers pieces of the Excalibur sword from Arthurian legend while exploring, shooting, platforming, and puzzle solving. For the most part, I had a fantastic time. My favorite levels were probably either Kazakhstan or Tokyo. Both are pretty unique when set against the more traditional ruins you explore. I'd highly recommend not turning on "next generation" mode. It caused me nothing but performance problems with negligible benefits. The levels where you ride a motorbike are pretty bad. There were several points where I'd just stick to one part of the road, hold down the fire button, and wait for enemies to stop spawning. It always worked. I played on the Normal difficulty. It's pretty linear, but I didn't mind that. If you've played previous entries in this series, that might be a turnoff. I don't have much else to say! I got this on sale for a dollar and frankly I felt it was more than worth it.