I can’t remember the last time playing as Lara felt this fun or challenging. Usually, a Tomb Raider game in a 3D environment will throw two or three enemies a time at you but GoL ramps it up to four or five, in constant waves. The environmental puzzles later in the game are real brain-teasers, too. Just because it’s a 2D game doesn’t mean that it’s a walk in the park.
And Guardian of Light marks the first time that multiplayer’s ever been in a Lara Croft game. A second player can control Totec for co-op play and the two characters have abilities that complement each other. Totec can throw spears that lodge into the wall to help Lara jump to areas she can’t reach, while Lara can use her grapple line to do the same for him. There’s a nice old-school Ikari Warriors (yeah, I went there) feeling generated by mowing down hordes of beasts, like “Yeah, we’re ripping shit up, dude!” But each level’s peppered with scoring and exploration challenges, too, so the camaraderie can quickly turn to competition as you see who can score more or collect more items. My biggest criticism is that the RPG stuff doesn’t mesh well. The added effect of equipping the artifacts and relics doesn’t always come through in the gameplay and swapping them out feels like too much trial-and-error nonsense a lot of the time. Also, the lack of online co-op sucks but it’s reportedly rolling out soon.
Overall, Guardian of Light‘s biggest achievement is how multifaceted it feels. You can play it a number of different ways–for speed, for combat, for exploration–and it succeeds in each of those elements. And while the story”s not spectacular, the change in format leaves Lara feeling like less of a bad-ass video-game Barbie and more like a character who can support multiple game approaches. The same way Mario can have sports titles, RPG games and kart racers, I could totally see separate tracks of 3D Tomb Raider games and 2D Lara Croft titles. Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is currently an Xbox 360 exclusive but will coming to Playstation Network and Steam in late September.
Official Techland Score: 9.0 out of 10