Don’t mind us if we get a little choked up about Lara Croft’s latest outing, Tomb Raider: Legend. After all, she’s been there to guide us through the early, fumbling days of 3D gaming. She’s also been there at the very start of action/adventure gaming, defining the genre with battles against T-Rexes and early iterations of a fussy, manually controllable camera.

But you’re wise to be skeptical. Things haven’t always been so rosy for the first lady of gaming. But from the moment you leap, dive, or grapple your first cliff edge in Legend, you’ll discover that this time around – things just feel right. Heck, even the crate-pulling feels good.

Played out against a backdrop of childhood tragedy, the action heats up rather quickly from the minute you drop down into the game’s first stage. Gunplay, standard adventuring (jump, swim, etc.), and all your new gadgets take a bit of getting used to for those who’ve romped with Lara before. But Crystal Dynamics has done a solid job of making the action and exploration segments fairly seamless with intuitive, customizable controls.

Your arsenal of moves includes quite a few crafty maneuvers. Grappling has been complicated with a one-handed hand plant that you must stabilize by pressing the Y button (unless you want to take a tumble). In fact, Lara’s as agile and limber, if not more so, than a certain Persian prince. Leaping, swinging, and shimmying along ledges – all are incredibly responsive, and Lara’s body language serves as your guide for where to hop to next. Because of this, adventuring in Legend stays fun, fresh, and challenging throughout – something the series has always done best.

Another strong point during your journey is Legend’s plethora of ruins-based puzzles. While you’ll still have to pull a switch or two, the game banks a lot more on the environment. As an example, in the first puzzle room you enter, you’re given two crates (they’re baaack!), a stone seesaw, and a mission – get those crates to a higher ledge. Pulling one onto the seesaw is your first move, but learning that you must jump onto the far end to toss it up onto the ledge is another. Simply running to the far end won’t do. You gotta jump. And this is just a taste of Legend’s gaggle of organic puzzles. They range from clever to frustrating, but boring? Not a chance.

But exploration is just one part of the formula; combat provides the game’s other ingredient. And frankly, it’s the weaker of the two. Fickle lock-on targeting, finding creative ways to use your magnetic grapple, tossing grenades, swapping between one of two firearms (you can only hold two at any given time, Halo-style), and occasionally manning mounted turrets – combat may feel tighter and more varied than any of Lara’s previous outings, but it never matches up to the marvel of adventuring. And certainly, anything in the game is better than the handful of tedious motorcycle-riding sequences. Thankfully, the key word is “handful” – you won’t have to suffer long or often.

So, what’s Lara’s best new ability? The magnetic grappling hook. Snagging items, hooking enemies to pull close, finding a way to cross a seemingly impassable gap – the grappling hook handles it all while making you feel oh-so-smart when you discover new ways to use it.

But are we overly happy about Lara’s new adventure because of how we remember her early days? Or is Legend a true return to form for the series? A little of both, really. Legend hits its share of potholes with uneven graphics (at least on Xbox; we’ll have word on the 360 version next issue), a checkpoint system that doesn’t always behave, and combat that sometimes feels flat – but the minute you drop into the Himalayas, faced with a labyrinthine series of jumps, poles, and crevices, most of the foibles become background noise. And the feeling of having a world of possibilities opening up in front of you –  that’s exactly what Tomb Raider is all about.

ON XBOX 360

+ It just feels right – it’s good to have Lara back.

+ Plenty of collectibles and extras.

- Combat isn’t quite as polished as we’d like it to be.

? We see the guns, but where does she store those idols?

8.0