Completed Tomb Raider Legend, the first game of the first reboot series. Felt like playing something short and light and figured to revisit this one. The good? Music isn't bad at all, I have some foggy memory of the composer winning some award for it back then. But everything else.. this has to be the most aggressively mediocre game I've played in a good while.
The story is dumb, the levels are incredibly simple and the combat is just boring and kinda bad, and there's way too much of it. There are no puzzles besides pushing a box of some sort onto a pressure plate or something now and then, otherwise it's entirely acrobatics and combat. Acrobatics isn't terrible but it's not great either, the game tends to go for cinematic camera angles which coupled with camera relative controls causes annoying deaths. And combat is simplistic and boring, there are a few wild animals but not many so 99% of the time you'll be shooting bullet spongy human soldiers. There are also boss battles and they just straight up suck.
The game also has a wonderful habit of shoving tutorial messages down your throat nearly the entire game. I think it decided to remind me what the goddamn jump button is in the second to last level for crying out loud. And no, they cannot be disabled.
Back in the day I had this for XBox 360 and remember liking the Croft Manor and the last actual level the most, that hasn't changed. The Croft Manor is a separate level like in the classic games, no combat whatsoever, just exploring the manor and finding all the secrets. Easily my favorite level.
I remember liking the next game Tomb Raider Anniversary much more which is a remake of the original TR1, even though it of course can't compete with it. But whenever remakes can. But I think I'll skip over it and go straight to Tomb Raider: Underworld which is direct sequel to Legend and one I've never played. I'm not expecting to find some hidden gem here but it would be nice if it was at least a bit better than Legend.
