Knights of the Cardboard Castle

Believe it or not I’ve never played any of the Tomb Raider games. I hate platformers and reflex-based puzzles anyway. I bought this one because I thought the isometric top-down view looked agreeably retro to me. It reminded me of Crusader: No Remorse.

• I don’t believe I’ve played a game with this control scheme before. On an Xbox 360 controller, left stick to move, right stick to draw weapons and aim, right trigger to fire. It took some getting used to but it works great. Lara’s movements feel fluid and aiming is easy, though there’s an obvious bit of auto-targeting involved. The physics are real too. You don’t stick to surfaces once you activate animations, as you do for example in Prince of Persia, so it’s all too easy to just roll off platforms while trying to dodge an enemy.

• I pretty tore through this one in less than 10 hours by not paying much attention to the optional challenges. Getting through the game proper takes decent reflexes, not so much for combat but for dealing with the timed puzzles. But it’s doable, especially since the checkpoint system is pretty generous. The optional objectives on the hand are a different kettle of fish entirely. Place a bomb on a giant ball and have it launch the ball onto the target as a hole in one? Defeat a boss in under 5 minutes? Find every red skull in the level, many of which are hidden in hard to reach locations? Those take serious effort to complete.

• There are a ton of collectible items in the game, most of which are unlocked by completing optional challenges. This means I managed to only get a small fraction of them by the end of the game. But the combat is easy enough that I stuck with the starter dual guns for most of the game, because of their infinite ammo, and felt compelled to switch to more powerful weapons only on the last few levels. There are also relics and artifacts to boost your stats and unlock special powers. And not to mention the health and ammo upgrades. Yeah, lots of stuff to collect if you’re the type to exhaustively comb levels for every last secret.
• Lots of scripted boss battles in this one and some enemies with interesting designs. Skeletons which will reform themselves unless you scatter their bones with explosives for example, and giant guards with shields that make them invulnerable from the front. But the real fun in the game comes from the environmental hazards and puzzles in my opinion. You can cheese through the combat by constantly rolling and using your infinite ammo weapons. Working through the puzzles actually takes some thought.

Overall the game is about what I expected. It’s kind of surprising that they would use the Lara Croft brand for what is obviously not a full-budget AAA-title but that’s just what a game of this scope calls for. It isn’t enough to make me a fan of platformers but I wouldn’t say no to a light romp like this one.