2 minute read
lara croft and the temple of osiris
Many puzzles are recycled from before - prepare for lots of ball rolling. Yay?
publisher SqUAre eNIX / develOper CrYSTAL DYNAMICS FOrMat XbOX ONe / release date OUT NOW
reviewer
Matthew castle live OXM Pesto @mrbasil_pesto
the knOwledge what is it? Tomb Raider hit by a shrink ray and turned into a run-and-gun arcade rampage. what’s it like? The posh, animalslaying Croft of old, as performed by a cast of fleas. whO’s it FOr? Lone wolves (despite what it says on the packaging).
Watch your friends turn into canopic jars
Featuring puzzles designed to scale for multiple players, this isometric action romp begs to be played in co-op. The catch? It’s best when your friends are dead. Play alone and chums that could pad out a party appear as canopic jars, organ-filled urns that mark where they died in their own game. Finding a spike pit littered with jars lends the room a frisson of risk and a cheap chuckle.
Crystal Dynamics muddles the co-op formula that worked so well in 2010’s Guardian of Light. The magic staff given to a second player, used to seal enemyspawning portals and raise platforms, isn’t as versatile as Guardian’s spear, so the interplay between character skill sets never ignites. Upping the player count to four spreads the differences even thinner. Now two people have the one of a kind magic staff.
Co-op clicks when four miniaturised arsenals fire in unison, though the ensuing chaos causes the game to slow to a mummy-like lurch. Play online and you get bonus bugs, such as Lara’s habit of flying off through walls into the coding abyss. We know she likes to explore, but this is ridiculous. It’s also easily solved: slip back into single-player and the game smoothes out into something quite pretty. One of the treats of isometric levels is eyeing tombs in their full raider-dwarfing glory, lit up with gorgeous lighting effects.
Alone, Lara wields all the equipment herself and puzzles are more engaging for it. You’re also better placed to tackle fun challenges woven into each dungeon; neat games-within-games that ask you to off enemies in creative ways or sniff out trinkets. Dubious grapple-hook physics throw a spanner in the works, but no more so than the spanners you call friends. There’s also a weird focus on loot, as if the game didn’t realise it’s four hours long and easy. Where’s the amulet that fixes Lara’s sticky jumping, eh? The canopic jars paint a generally damning picture of her platforming prowess.
Like an archaeologist picking over a dig site, you have to remove lots of debris to get to the fun in Temple of Osiris. A shame, because there’s pulpy, daft fun to be had, well removed from the dour reboot. Its heart is in the right place - in a jar with my name on it where I was eaten by a crocodile. OXM
The OXM verdict
The besT biT The wOrsT biT whaT haPPeNs NeXT?
?Xbox owners
