Well, it’s been almost a year since I last posted. One of our cats, my sweet boy, passed away on my husband’s birthday. We moved to a new city for new jobs. I read many books and played a few games. I have gained 5 lbs. trying many delightful new cuisines. All things considered I believe it to be a fair tradeoff.
I have decided that the coming year shall be about self-care and the appreciation of life. Life is full of bountiful and fallow times and I am trying to appreciate the bounties that I have now and are preparing as best I can for the fallow time that is sure to follow. Such is the cycle of life.
Grimalkin: So! Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light! Are you ready to review this vid-ee-oh game?
ScatheZombie: We should probably start with an introduction about the game.
Grimalkin: Fine. Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is a two player cooperative video game that is available via download on your PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. One person plays as Lara and the other plays as Totec, an Aztec warrior. You have to solve puzzle and fight bad dudes together. It’s fun.
Xolotl, an Aztec mummy, gloats at Lara and Totec.
ScatheZombie: The voice acting, the level detail, the atmosphere created by the game was very good but the dialog was kinda campy and the story was just there to give a reason to have more levels. It’s not going to win any awards for dialog or story telling but it didn’t reduce my enjoyment of the game.
Grimalkin: I agree. I liked Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. I felt that the graphics were good and nothing impeded my enjoyment of the game. I thought that some of the levels were very beautiful and I liked that the backgrounds showed either places you had already been or new areas that you hadn’t visited yet. There were a few places where it looked like you could jump over a wall or something but there was an invisible wall there that stopped you and that was a minor annoyance but it didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the game.
Single player gameplay featuring Lara using her grapple hook to rappel down a wall.
ScatheZombie: The puzzles were great. I liked that the puzzles slowly increased in complexity and difficultly. The learning curve scaled very well, at least to my playstyle.
Grimalkin: As someone that plays a lot of puzzle and point-and-click adventure games I felt that there were only a few puzzles that stumped me for more than a few moments but I still loved the cooperative nature of the solutions and there wasn’t a crappy puzzle in the whole game.
ScatheZombie: For the first three-quarters of the game the puzzles are a little on the easy side, but in my opinion that is a good thing because if I hit a puzzle that I can’t solve in a reasonable amount of time I’m just going to go to the strategy guide anyway or stop playing.
Grimalkin: (shakes head) You’re part of the problem.
ScatheZombie: I’m being honest! There are probably a lot of players, even in this genre of action-y puzzle games, that play games like I do. They attempt the puzzle at least a few times and if they can’t get it instead of frustratingly hitting their head against a brick wall they cheat by looking at the strategy guide or not progressing further in the game and going and playing something else.
Grimalkin: I know, but when I get stuck on a puzzle I put the game down and let it percolate in the back of my mind for a little while. And then most of the time I can figure it out when I return to the game. Most gamers don’t have the patience for that, though. Anyway, I loved the game and you loved the game so it gets our highest rating.
ScatheZombie: We haven’t even talked about the other mechanics yet and you’ve already given out the rating? What about the challenge tombs and the reward challenges and the collection aspect?
Grimalkin: It was all excellent. The end.
ScatheZombie: In my opinion, without the collection aspect, the relics and the weapons and power-ups that you could find throughout the levels I wouldn’t have been encouraged enough to explore or replay any of the levels. I think the collections are what really took the game from being just a fun little throwaway game to a really enjoyable experience that I went back to multiple times.
Grimalkin: You can also unlock new outfits for Lara but not for Totec which is kind of crap if you ask me.
ScatheZombie: Especially since I played Totec through most of the game. But the outfits were extra anyway so it doesn’t effect the gameplay at all. It was one of those things that would have been nice if they had added it in but silly outfits wouldn’t have fit him being an Aztec warrior and all.
Grimalkin: It was a fun game which, sadly, appears to be a rarity in today’s market. I enjoyed all of the game mechanics, I didn’t feel that any were lacking and overall we really liked this game.
Totec and Lara in an in-game cutscene.
ScatheZombie: Even though I got it on sale on Steam, I still would have been satisfied had I paid the full MSRP of $15. There have been quite a few games in the past year that I have felt didn’t live up to their cost but Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light far exceeded my expectations.
Grimalkin: To be honest, I’ve always felt that the Tomb Raider games were not for me. They were filled with sexist pandering to men and the puzzles were okay but I didn’t enjoy the combat mechanics of prior Tomb Raider games. So I was really surprised when I downloaded the demo and actually had fun.
ScatheZombie: And then I downloaded the demo…
Grimalkin: …after I nagged you…
ScatheZombie: …and I actually had fun too! So we both purchased the game and played through the entire thing together over a few days’ time. It’s rare for a game to be so fun that we sit down and over the course of a week have multiple play sessions and finish the game in a short amount of time.
ScatheZombie: The one thing I really liked about this game was that it didn’t overstay its welcome. The game wasn’t repetitive because the puzzles became more complex or added new twists fast enough so that you never became bored but slow enough that you could pick them up and not get frustrated. It never felt like a puzzle was just there to increase the length of time that the game took to finish. They weren’t tedious. That’s something that I think a lot of games fail to do properly. They just repeat the same mechanics over and over to artificially lengthen playtime. That’s not fun, that’s boring.
Grimalkin: So we really liked Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light and gave it 5 Stars, our highest rating. We feel that if you like video games you should download the demo and give it a shot. It doesn’t cost you anything to at least try the demo to see if this is the kind of game you’d enjoy. Also! Try and play it cooperatively, it really does make the game that much better.
Cooperative gameplay featuring both Lara and Totec.
