Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light (PC Singleplayer) Review

OH NO! I have a game that is actually quite good but isn't great so I can't get excited about it! It's in that zone of "really good but nothing special." Unless you play the local co-op, where it is something special.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is a Bastion/Diablo-camera'd, puzzle-filled, action game, with a hint of RPG. You (in the singleplayer) play as Lara Croft (surprise!), and your mission is to save the world from an Aztec demon.

So the story and writing are cliches, complete with average voice-acting and never-have-had-English-lessons Aztecs who speak perfect English. But not important. Although the skin isn't good, the baby seal meat under it is. And said meat is made of collecting weapons and stat-boosters, getting achievements, solving puzzles, escaping traps, murdering.

In the singleplayer, Lara gets the following: guns, a spear (that you can throw over and over again, as it respawns in your hands), passive powerups, bombs you drop and manually blow up from anywhere, a grappling hook, and an ability you charge-up by collecting gems and/or killing things (the charge-up charges down when you get hurt). In the co-op, your Aztec time traveler friend will wield the golden spear and a shield; Lara loses the spear but keeps the grappling hook. With these tools split between Toltec and Lara, you and the person sitting next to you will help each other do everything. My experience of the online co-op was fun, using each other's avatar's unique skills and our ability to speak with our mouths. It was fun until the Online co-op lagged out. And then it kept lagging out. And then, after a year of patches, we tried again and it lagged out.

But this isn't a review of the co-op.

It's not the presentation that keeps this game from being great, but the combat of its first half; it's too easy; even on the hardest difficulty setting, I never came close to dying in combat until after half of the game.

But at least many of the puzzles are exciting. They often involve spikes and poison and lava and death. And when you die it ends up feeling almost funny ("Doh!"). Dying rarely feels bad since the game respawns you at the point right before you died, although with a smaller gem score.

Those gems. If you get a high enough of a score (racked up by collecting gems and killing things), you can unlock a something. If you do any of the other extra tasks, you'll be rewarded with a something. But almost sadly, many of the rewarded weapons and powerups feel useless (and many of them actually are; like half of the powerups boost something to the detriment of something; many of the weapons feel pointless when compared to other weapons you've already collected).

I think most of the time you'll play the extra stuff because either they provide a fast-paced challenge or because you're a completionist.

So in your busy lives, dear readers, should you buy this game? It has a low price of fifteen dollars, with up to fifteen hours of gameplay. It doesn't have amazing visual art nor sounds amazing, but it eventually becomes quite fun.

My answer: If you have someone in your home who'd like to play a game with you, on the same screen, then download the demo and see if you can get the controls for two people working (YouTube says that one person can use a keyboard and mouse, and the other a gamepad -- if you don't have two gamepads). If the controls work, then I highly recommend this one. You can do all the puzzles together and then one (or both of you) can do a speed run.

★★★★☆