by Danreb VictorioSince I’ve started attending Summer Game Fest, Amazon has consistently had some of the best activations at Play Days. Two years ago, when they were showing off New World: Aeternum, they had some awesome paella available, along with other swag. I didn’t make it to their King of Meat activation last year, but I was told they had some cool giveaways. Unfortunately, both those games saw their better days before they actually came out, but Lara Croft might ensure that the third time’s the charm. Might.
This was a demo I was anxiously hoping SGF would have. I really enjoyed the most recent Tomb Raider trilogy, as I felt its open-endedness went in ways that Uncharted could only dream of. For the most part, I’m rather pleased to confirm that Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis plays pretty similarly to those last few games, but if there’s anything this demo has to go by, it’s definitely more on the puzzling side.
The first thing I need to mention is just how gorgeous this game is. I’m sure the PCs they had the game running on were top of the line, but as far as the visuals go, Legacy of Atlantis easily rivals Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, which is the best-looking console game period–in my mind.
To my dismay, I don’t know whether it was the PC or the controller, but there was noticeable input lag while playing the demo. Lara’s jukes definitely felt a little behind, and when combined with the floaty nature of Lara’s leaps, it definitely felt like more polish was needed as far as the controls go.
As for the demo’s content, it was quite impressive. As Lara makes her way through a lush forest at the base of a waterfall, she finds a lever on the mainland that controls the totem in the body of water next to her, along with some cogs floating in the water. The main objective of this level and demo is to find the missing cogs, connect them as they float above the water, so another entry can be opened, leading to more danger —some typical Tomb Raider danger — more on that later.
To be honest, I was a little lost once I found the first cog. I had no idea where to go next, and I wasn’t interested in any help from the booth attendees. Before long, I saw some climbable rocks and eventually found myself in a mini-dungeon from up above. The journey to get up there was fun too, as aside from parkouring, you’ll be able to throw in some swinging thanks to appropriately placed hooks.
The search for the cogs was one you’d expect from a video game like Tomb Raider. One cog was in the water in plain sight, while others were behind sea caverns and another hole that the family literally dug up, and the last cog was hiding in some ancient ruins as you go up the mountain, which required you to solve an environmental puzzle that doubled as a way to really take control of the protagonist.
It’s worth noting that, as I was attempting to solve this puzzle, my demo encountered a bug: in this one scenario, Lara sank to the bottom of the water while swimming, and the animation would not let her resurface. I solved this by standing near a ledge where the animation would play for her to get back on the ground, but I did notice funky controls right after that didn’t correct themselves until I died later in the build. Again, it’ll be a long time before this game comes out, so hopefully this bug will be squashed by then.
As for the aforementioned danger, we ended up in a situation where Lara was being chased by two dinosaurs. Unfortunately for us, even double-fisting pistols couldn’t get her out of the situation, but here we are. When in combat, you can sort of swing left and right while in slow motion to allow you to get more hits on the target, and it allowed Lara to take out the dinosaurs with ease. Eventually, she came across an even bigger dino, and that’s where the demo ended.
While the bugs were unfortunate, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis still has considerable time before its launch next February on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Other than that, what I played was fantastic, and I’m still excited for what’s to come. Until then, keep it locked to SmashPad for more from Summer Game Fest.
