Tomb Raider: Legend

Tomb Raider: Legend
North American cover art
Developer(s)	Crystal Dynamics, Nixxes, Buzz Monkey Software, Human Soft, Fathammer
Publisher(s)	Eidos Interactive
Designer(s)	Doug Church (original design) Riley Cooper (lead designer)
Writer(s)	Toby Gard Eric Lindstrom Aaron Vanian Austin Grossman
Composer(s)	Troels Brun Folmann
Engine	Crystal engine
Version	1.2 (10 May 2006)
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, Mobile phone, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, GameCube, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Xbox, Xbox 360
Release date(s)	7 April 2006 PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360, Windows EU 7 April 2006 NA 11 April 2006 AUS 13 April 2006 PlayStation Portable EU 9 June 2006 NA 21 June 2006 AUS 17 November 2006 Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS EU 10 November 2006 NA 14 November 2006 AUS 17 November 2006 GameCube NA 14 November 2006 PAL 1 December 2006 PlayStation 3 NA 22 March 2011 EU 25 March 2011 AUS 31 March 2011
Genre(s)	Action-adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player
Rating(s)	ESRB: T / E10+GBA OFLC: M / PGGBA, DS PEGI: 16+
Media/distribution	Blu-ray Disc, DVD, GameCube Game Disc, Steam download, Game cartridge
System requirements Windows: Windows 2000/XP Pentium III 1.0Ghz or Athlon XP Equivalent 256 MB of RAM 100% DirectX 9.0c -compatible 64MB 3D Accelerated Card with TnL (GeForce 3Ti / Radeon 9 series) 9.9GB free disk space Microsoft Windows 2000/XP compatible sound card (100% DirectX 9.0c -compatible) Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive 100% Windows 2000/XP compatible mouse and keyboard

Tomb Raider: Legend is the 7th entry in the core Tomb Raider franchise. Published by Eidos Interactive, this is the first game in the series not to be handled by British-based Core Design, developed instead by British-owned U.S. studio Crystal Dynamics.

The PS2, Windows, Xbox, and Xbox 360 versions were released in Europe on 7 April 2006 and in North America on 11 April 2006. The North American PSP version was released on 20 June 2006, the Nintendo GameCube, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS versions were released during November 2006 and the Mobile version was released in December 2006. The Windows version was released in 2006 and it was also made available for download to GameTap subscribers on 31 May 2007. In 2009, Eidos announced Tomb Raider Legend sold 4.5 million copies making the game the most commercially successful game since Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation. A version for the PlayStation 3 is included in The Tomb Raider Trilogy collection released in March 2011.

Story

The plot opens with a flashback sequence showing nine-year-old Lara Croft travelling with her mother, Amelia Croft. The private aircraft carrying them catches fire and crashes into the Himalayas, apparently leaving them as the only two survivors. After taking shelter in the ruins of an ancient Buddhist monastery, Lara discovers an ornate stone dais holding a sword while searching for firewood. She then activates the ancient artefact by touching the giant stones surrounding the artefact. Very soon after, her mother comes into the room as a giant ring rises from the floor. When Amelia hears something in the light emitting from the circle, she suddenly gasps and pulls out the sword. The dais explodes and Lara watches in horror as her mother vanishes before her eyes.

Years after the plane crash, Lara, now an adult, travels to the cliffs of Bolivia after one of her friends, Anaya Imanu, mentions a similar stone dais located in the ruins of Tiwanaku, a pre-Incan civilisation. After climbing the cliffs, following a twisting rocky path, encountering a jaguar, and almost getting run over by a boulder, she runs into a group of mercenaries who are under orders to kill her on sight. After disposing of them, she proceeds to a temple encountering more mercenaries and dangerous native wildlife along the way. On the other side of the temple, she sees the dais mentioned in the call from Anaya and finds James Rutland, a rich American socialite and self-proclaimed adventurer. Rutland, holding an unusual sword fragment, mentions Amanda Evert, a friend of Lara's who supposedly died years before in an excavation that turned into a tragedy. He then orders his mercenaries to kill Lara. She overcomes them and reaches the dais, confirming that it was the same design as the Himalayan one.

Lara then returns to her mansion. She then asks her friend and computer specialist, Zip to find out where Rutland will be going next. She plans to confront him later, and hopefully get a hold of that familiar sword fragment.

Lara meets Anaya in a village in Peru, and after yet another battle with Rutland's mercenaries, and a motorcycle chase, they reach the tomb in Paraíso, where the tragedy befell them years ago. A flashback sequence shows Lara on an archaeological excavation with her university colleagues, where she and Amanda witness an unknown demonic entity kill the rest of the team. Lara and Amanda run from the unknown monstrous being before being trapped in a large room. The monster gets in and is just about to kill Lara when Amanda pulls a glowing stone, later known as the Wraith Stone from the wall, causing the creature to disappear into it. However, the room then starts to flood, causing several gates to close at the same time and when they try to escape, Amanda's shoe becomes trapped under a pile of rubble. Even though Lara tries to keep one of the gates from closing, Amanda is seemingly buried alive by falling rubble. Lara still holds on to the door until she runs out of air, swimming away impotently after her failure to save Amanda from her death.

Back in the present, Lara goes down into the caves of the excavation site, the site that contains the tomb of the Queen of Tiwanaku and discovers the artefact she is seeking may be linked to Excalibur – part of the King Arthur legends – and that Amanda may have survived the cave-in and is looking for the sword, which reportedly had been broken into four fragments that are now spread across the globe. Lara, now realising what she is looking for, recalls that one piece is in the 'care' of Yakuza boss Shogo Takamoto, who had it stolen from Waseda University. Lara escapes the excavation site, and finds that the surface of the site is crawling with mercenaries. she successfully kills them, and then travels back home to plan a trip to Japan.

When Lara arrives in Japan, she meets her friend in the Japanese media, Toru Nishimura at a party he is hosting. Lara plans to meet Takamoto to negotiate for his sword fragment. When Lara comes out of Nishimura's office, she finds the party guests scrambling to the elevator, and Takamoto's heavily tattooed Yakuza henchmen gesturing for them to go upstairs. Lara starts talking to Takamoto. Takamoto refuses to negotiate, claims he has no idea what she is talking about, and orders his goons to kill Lara. Lara disposes of the goons and chases Takamoto across the rooftops of Tokyo all the way to the roof of his penthouse apartment. Takamoto uses the power of the fragment to attack Lara but she kills him and recovers it. Lara is then picked up in a helicopter by Nishimura, who says Zip has found Rutland, deep in the Ghana rain forest.

Lara proceeds to Ghana and follows a path to a temple site her parents worked on before she was born, where she finds Rutland again, who is also in possession of a sword fragment. She follows him into an ancient temple hidden behind a waterfall. Halfway through the temple, Lara finds a locket. She remembers that her father had bought a new one for her mother because of a locket she lost. The inscription on the locket reveals it to be her mother's. When she reaches Rutland, he mentions an artefact called the Ghalali Key, believing that Lara's father found it and it is now in Lara's possession. Lara appears to have no knowledge of the key and this frustrates him. Rutland then attacks her using his sword fragment but Lara subdues him and grabs the second fragment. She then receives news from Zip and Alister that Amanda raided Croft Manor looking for the Ghalali Key only moments ago; that explains why she was unable to reach them during her climb. She offers to return to the Manor to see if they are alright, but they persuade her to try to beat Amanda to an abandoned lab in Kazakhstan, the apparent location of the third fragment.

When Lara parachutes into Kazakhstan, she finds soldiers struggling against Rutland's men. After she helps them, two soldiers tell her that their command centre has maps that might help her get to the lab. When Lara get's there, she finds satellite maps that show a train runs past the lab. Lara hurries to the train station, only to find the train leaving, with Amanda's mercenaries aboard. She jumps on a motorcycle, prepared to follow the train. She succeeds, but the train catches fire and explodes in the lab, making her the only survivor. But Amanda was already safe inside. After she has turned on the power from the lab's generator room, she discovers that Rutland's men have taken over the Soviet Union laboratory where experiments on a sword fragment were conducted by the KGB fifty years ago. But the experiment turned into tragedy with an unknown cause. Lara catches up with Amanda, who is still bitter about being left to die in Paraíso. Lara goes after her and finds her conducting experiments on the third sword fragment. Amanda is also using the glowing stone she pulled out of the wall in Paraíso to control the unknown entity that attacked them. Lara avoids the entity since it cannot be defeated yet, while she recovers the third sword fragment, and an eleventh century knight's shield which will supposedly lead her to the next sword fragment.

Following a map on the back of the shield (supposedly Lancelot's) also found in the Soviet lab, Lara's search brings her home to Great Britain. She discovers the real King Arthur's tomb hidden under a tacky and now-derelict King Arthur tourist attraction in Cornwall, along with the final sword fragment. Inside the tomb, Lara discovers that after Arthur's death, four of his knights – Lancelot, Percival, Galahad and Bors – took fragments of the sword to locations around the world (inspiring the myth of the Grail Quest), while the final fragment was left with Arthur by Bedivere in the hope of resurrecting the Once and Future King. After slaying a sea serpent that lives in the subterranean lake surrounding the tomb, and a group of mercenaries that have followed her, Lara returns to her home to figure out how to put the four sword fragments back together.

Lara realizes that the Ghalali Key was in fact a pendant given by her father to her mother to replace the locket that she had lost in Ghana. And her mother had it with her when their plane crashed in the Himalayas. Lara returns to the crash site in Nepal to find the Ghalali Key. After traversing high ledges to reach the ruins of the plane, she finds the key in the wreckage, then narrowly escapes as the plane topples over the edge of a cliff. Lara then proceeds, emotionally shaken, to the temple she and her mother found after the crash. She runs into Rutland's mercenaries, quickly defeats them and enters the temple, using the Ghalali Key to restore Excalibur back to its complete form. She hesitatingly tries to reactivate the dais but it merely collapses when she places the sword in the stone. Knowing where she must now go, Lara escapes the temple as it begins to collapse and departs.

Lara returns to the stone dais in Bolivia, where Amanda, Rutland and their mercenaries await. Lara uses Excalibur to kill the mercenaries and inadvertently kills Rutland as well. Amanda rushes over to him, and he dies in her arms. Lara apologises and tries to patch up the rift with Amanda, suggesting they use the sword together. Amanda angrily refuses and releases the entity again, this time merging with it to become more powerful. With the power of Excalibur, Lara defeats the Amanda-Hybrid creature, destroys the entity, and separates it from Amanda. Lara uses Excalibur on the dais to reopen the portal and discovers what happened to her mother. Lara realizes that the portal spans time and she is seeing her mother moments before she disappears. Amanda gets up and shouts at Lara to pull out the sword or the dais will explode. Lara's mother hears this through the portal, pulls out the sword, and the dais explodes. Amanda berates Lara for her actions: however, Lara is unconcerned, furious at the realisation that Amanda was responsible for the apparent causality loop that claimed Lara's mother. Lara fires a hail of bullets around Amanda and places her gun to Amanda's head, threatening to kill her if she doesn't explain. Amanda states that Lara's mother isn't dead, but in Avalon, the mythical resting place of King Arthur, where Amanda herself wanted to go. She hisses that she is wasting her breath, that Lara will never understand. Lara spares Amanda's life, but settles for knocking Amanda out with her pistol, snarling that "From this moment, your every breath is a gift from me". The game ends as Lara, determined to find answers, tells Zip and Alister they still have much work ahead of them. See also: Tomb Raider: Underworld or Tomb Raider: Anniversary .

Locations

The locations of Lara's seventh adventure are in order of play:

• Tiwanaku, Bolivia – A pre-Incan civilization, currently in ruins. Lara arrives after her colleague Anaya Imanu mentions a stone dais similar to the one that made her mother disappear. Lara climbs through rocky ledges and ruins to find the dais, then meets James Rutland, who hints at knowing one of Lara's old friends, supposedly dead for years.
• Paraíso, Peru – Lara meets Anaya in the town square of the small town, but they soon find themselves under fire by Rutland's mercenaries. After the attack, she takes a motorbike to the old ruins near Paraíso, where years ago, an unknown creature ambushed Lara's amateur archaeological expedition and killed most of her university colleagues. She returns to find out if the woman Rutland mentioned, Amanda Evert, survived the slaughter.
• Tokyo, Japan – A piece of the sword, stolen from Waseda University, is in the hands of a Yakuza boss and Lara travels to Tokyo to acquire it. She arrives at a corporate party hosted by her friend in the Japanese Media, then traverses the rooftops of Tokyo to get to the Yazuka boss's penthouse. Lara then discovers that the boss, Shogo Takamoto, can use the fragment to obtain supernatural powers, so she kills Takamoto and takes the fragment from him.
• Ghana, Africa – James Rutland is discovered to be on the trail of another sword fragment, in Ghana, near an archaeological site that Lara's father and mother worked on before Lara was born. Lara follows Rutland and discovers a temple hidden behind a large waterfall. She finds a locket that her mother lost on the expedition. She then confronts Rutland, but spares his life, keeping the sword fragment.
• Abandoned Soviet Lab, Kazakhstan – Lara's search brings her to an abandoned secret KGB testing facility where experiments with the sword fragment led to disaster. This level features another motorbike chase sequence, with Lara racing alongside a train, and ultimately jumping on to it. The train stops at the facility, where Lara discovers Amanda to be alive and well, and keeping the unknown entity that attacked the Paraíso expedition as her own pet.
• Cornwall, Great Britain – Lara investigates an abandoned tacky King Arthur tourist attraction and unearths the catacombs beneath it which is home to an enormous sea serpent and the tomb of the real King Arthur.
• Himalayas, Nepal – The artefact that can re-forge Excalibur lies in the plane wreck Lara and her mother survived. Lara scales the snowy Himalayan heights and revisits the crumbling Buddhist monastery where her mother disappeared.
• Bolivia Redux – The final confrontation takes place between Lara and Amanda, and the truth is revealed about Amelia Croft's "death".
• Croft Manor (training level), England – Croft Manor contains a number of puzzles in the form of hidden passageways, lyrical codes and concealed switches. This level can be played at any time for as long as the player wishes – however the first level, Bolivia, must be completed to unlock the doors of the manor.

Clothing

• Legend - her default outfit, featuring a brown crop top and shorts. Used in Bolivia and Bolivia Redux. Also available in black, Union Jack print, blue and pink.
• Biker - Black jacket that is used during England level. Also available in red.
• Biker (without jacket) - features a long-sleeved gray top.
• Evening (also called Evening, ripped) - black formal wear used in Japan. Also available in red.
• Classic - Lara's classic aqua tank top and brown shorts outfit, worn during the flashback in Peru. Also available in gray.
• Winter Clothing (with coat) - Used in cold environments such as Kazakhstan and Nepal. Initially in brown, it is also available in beige and pink.
• Winter clothing (without coat) - comes in blue, orange and pink. The blue one is the default outfit for the Kazakhstan level.
• Snowsuit - an unlockable all-gray outfit that is suitable for cold environments. Similar to the wetsuit in Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life movie.
• Catsuit - an all-black outfit that is similar to the snowsuit. It is also used in Tomb Raider Chronicles in New York and Tomb Raider Anniversary.
• Suit - a long-sleeved suit that comes in dark blue and cream colors.
• Special Forces - army clothing with camouflage print. It comes in green and gray (also referred to as Urban).
• Goth - features Lara in an outfit similar to Biker, except the jacket is all-black and she wears dark, heavy makeup like Amanda's.
• Goth, Lace Shirt - features Lara in a black long-sleeved lace shirt with dark, heavy makeup. The shape of the shirt is similar to the Biker outfit without the jacket.
• Sport - A sporty sleeveless outfit that is available in blue or green.
• Bikini - available in either white or black with white design.
• Amanda - Depicts Amanda as a playable character. She wears heavy Gothic makeup and a gray sleeveless crop top that exposes her several body tattoos.
• Amanda, Winter - Similar to the original Amanda outfit, except she wears a black jacket that covers her body.
• Biker, Brown Jacket (PSP exclusive)
• Camo Shorts (PSP exclusive)
• Camo top (PSP exclusive)
• Special Forces, SWAT (PSP exclusive)
• Suit, Gray (PSP exclusive)
• Winter, Designer (PSP exclusive)

Characters

Main article: Tomb Raider: Legend characters

Versions

Following the success of another third-party game, Lego Star Wars: The Video Game, on the Nintendo GameCube, Eidos announced their decision to port Tomb Raider: Legend to that platform, marking Lara Croft's first appearance on a home Nintendo console. Legend was also the first game in the series available on a Microsoft console: Xbox (and later the Xbox 360).

Differences between versions

The original Xbox version does not include the introduction movie with the opening titles. The manager of the Xbox development team forgot to include the intro video on the final build disc when sending it off for the final game testing with Microsoft's Quality Assurance team. When the mistake was discovered, the QA department told Eidos they would need to resubmit the game for re-testing from scratch. Due to time restrictions, and the expense of a new QA test, Eidos chose to release the Xbox version without the intro movie.

PlayStation Portable players have received some exclusive extras. While the textures and polygon count were significantly reduced to run on the portable, some new gameplay modes were introduced: the Tomb Trials, three multiplayer modes and six additional outfits that were not available in any other version of Legend. The Tomb Trials put the player against a series of traps and acrobatics to be dealt with before the assigned time is over, based on locations of the regular levels. Note: on the last level, "Bolivia Redux", the "Natla Industries" crates are not present, and you cannot destroy the statues scattered around the level.

The Nintendo GameCube version has had a couple of cuts; the rolling demos that would normally play if the game was left inactive while in the title screen have been removed, and the Unfortunate Mishaps video is also missing. The game runs at a slightly smoother framerate than the PlayStation 2 version, and it also loads faster. But at some specific points there are some noticeable frame rate drops (such as in the train chase, in Kazakhstan). The many filters used for explosions and motion blur are also gone, rendering the game with sharper textures but less remarkable explosions.

The Nintendo DS and GBA versions were also released on 14 November 2006. Despite following the same storyline and featuring all the levels and key moments from the bigger counterparts, the game is a sidescroller on the GBA. The levels have been broken down into several smaller segments, and feature a lot more platforming than the original versions. The progression of the storyline is told via comic-strips during key moments. The rewards are also present and they unlock minigames.

The PC and Xbox 360 version includes exclusive "next generation effects", which can be toggled on the PC version. When the next gen effects are off, the game is visually identical to the PlayStation 2 and GameCube versions of the game. In the PC version, players can save their progress anywhere but loading a game will take the player back to the last checkpoint.

The mobile version presents a compressed version of the story, featuring only three levels (Tokyo, Ghana and England) based on the original levels from the console versions, and has a far more limited gameplay style. It features, however, three gameplay modes: Corridor Combat, Room Combat and Platform Exploration.

Demo

The PlayStation 2 demo was made available in some regions in the Official PlayStation Magazine, as well as on Jampack Vol. 14. A PC demo was released on 31 March 2006 and an Xbox 360 demo was released on Xbox Live Marketplace on 5 April 2006. A downloadable demo was available for the Nintendo DS via the DS Download Station for a short time.

Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores
Aggregator	Score
GameRankings	(Xbox) 82.85% (PS2) 82.22% (PC) 81.83% (X360) 80.93% (GC) 79.00% (PSP) 69.40% (GBA) 62.75% (NDS) 59.71%
Metacritic	(Xbox) 82/100 (PS2) 82/100 (PC) 82/100 (X360) 80/100 (GC) 78/100 (PSP) 67/100 (NDS) 58/100
Review scores
Publication	Score
GameSpot	7.8 out of 10
GameSpy
IGN	8.2 out of 10

Tomb Raider: Legend gave the series the strongest critical response it had received since Tomb Raider II in 1997, and it remains one of the highest-rated games in the history of the franchise. IGN declared "It's now safe to return to the game you once loved. Crystal Dynamics successfully resurrects an old franchise from the tomb." GameSpot said that Legend "finally brings the series into the 21st Century while staying true to the adventurous spirit of the early games." They stressed the game should have been longer and therefore referred to it as a "brief but fun adventure that just about anyone can enjoy." GameZone awarded it an 8.5/10, and noted that gameplay had improved, saying "Lara is a dream to control and her moves come off as more natural and more acrobatic." They included that the game could have been longer and the combat system improved, and rounded off their review by saying "It’s good to see Lara back in top form and while her adventure is a bit on the short side and combat could have been handled a lot better, it’s hard to say no to a pretty girl that still has what it takes to show us a really good time. Fans of the series will certainly not want to miss this one."

Upon release, Tomb Raider: Legend topped the UK game charts for 3 straight weeks and it is now part of the PlayStation 2 Platinum Range.

Music

Legend has the longest score of the series. It took nine months for Crystal Dynamics' in-house composer Troels to finalize the composing process. Over three hours of raw material resulted, becoming four and a half hours of in-game music via the microscoring process, including looping cues and individual accompaniments to cinematic scenes. All material is produced using software and Folmann's personal soundbanks.

All levels in the game were scored individually. When Folmann began composing the soundtrack much time was spent investigating the native sounds and instruments of the different locations' environments and cultures. He wanted to have a specific musical timbre for every level, so he had to understand the musical influences of each individual part of the game. During the Tokyo level the player will hear roaring Taiko drums and the Japanese shakuhachi flute, while playing in Bolivia pan flutes are prominent, and Ghana presents a variety of African percussions. Use of Nepalese instruments in the first Tomb Raider film's soundtrack by Graeme Revell also influenced Folmann's music for the Nepal level

All the cinematics are scored with a symphonic orchestra in a more classical fashion; however, instead of recreating the atmosphere of a real orchestra, Troels employs the use of echoes for the orchestral sounds applied to his rendered software instruments.

Legend's' title track starts off with the iconic Tomb Raider motif composed by Nathan McCree in 1996, played on an ancient middle-eastern ethnic flute known as the duduk. McCree's motif is incorporated frequently throughout the soundtrack. Following is a Celtic female voice, full choir and orchestra and a variety of different percussions. The main theme female voice sings a Scottish Gaelic traditional folk song named Ailein duinn, mostly known by Capercaillie's lead singer interpretation for the Rob Roy movie.

In 2006, Troels Folmann was awarded a BAFTA in the category 'Best original Score' as well as the GANG award, 'Music of the Year' for his work on Tomb Raider: Legend.

Soundtrack

Main article: Tomb Raider: Anniversary#Collector's Edition Soundtrack

7 tracks were released officially to the public in the Tomb Raider: Anniversary (Collector's Edition) Soundtrack. Besides this, the soundtrack to Tomb Raider: Legend is yet to have a commercial release due to licensing issues with Eidos over the ownership rights to the music^{[citation needed]}. In 2010, several pieces of Folmann's music for Legend were recycled in the downloadable spin-off title Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

External links

• Tomb Raider: Legend Official website