I just finished playing through Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light for Grouvee's Game Club, and... It wasn't good. It definitely had the potential to be a downloadable classic, and while the overall gameplay is solid, it's completely overshadowed by a ton of questionable design decisions that detract from the experience, making the game into an annoying, boring mess.

The story's as follows: While exploring Mexico, Lara Croft gets captured by a local warlord and is forced to find an ancient mayan mirror. But it turns out that this artifact was cursed! Oh no!!! As soon as they remove it from its resting place, Xolotl, an ancient mayan demon, gets released upon the world and kills everyone but the protagonist. Now, it's up to Lara, accompanied by an ancient mayan warrior, to stop Xolotl from destroying the world before the night ends!

And that's it.

I'm not kidding, there's literally no more story to this game other than the intro cutscene. Once you watch it... that's all you get. Sure, there's a few cutscenes along the game, and Xolotl will pop up every once every few levels, but all he does is say "grraahh i'm so evil" and run away. And even when you reach the final level... well you just fight him and defeat him. Honestly? The story might as well not be here at all.

Surprisingly, the gameplay's actually really good. The game's an isometric shooting game, kinda like a dungeon crawler, where you have to progress through multiple temples while fighting hordes of enemies. The combat's really solid, and while there's not a lot of weapon or enemy variety, combat itself is very dynamic, and having to dodge all the enemy attacks is a lot of fun.

But also, it turns out that the gameplay's also really bad! The developers made a ton of weird choices that only make the game more frustrating to play. All stages abuse the hell out of insta-kill traps as you near the end of the game, and all enemies become bullet sponges to the point where most fights end up with you using your crappy spear while waiting for an ammo box to drop. There's so, so many ways to die in this game and it never feels like it's your own fault.

I do think the way the game handles unlockables and items is really cool, though. Half of them are unlocked from puzzles, and they mostly revolve around using the physics engine to your advantage to unlock hidden items. One of your weapons allows you to make your own platforms to traverse the world, and figuring out its mechanics to solve these challenges is really fun. The other half come from sidequests and objectives, which are all more akin to achievements, being really simple and fun to complete. I just wish most items didn't feel useless in this game but it's fine I guess.

There's also a multiplayer mode in the game, and it looks like it changes a lot compared to single-player but... I had nobody to play with so I'm not even gonna mention it teehee.

I do think the presentation's really good. While they aren't the best, the graphics hold up incredibly well for a 2010 downloadable game. While they're mostly gray and brown, the environments still manage to look good and interesting, with a bit of variety in certain levels. The animations, however, are pretty hit or miss, especially when it comes to the cutscenes. Some of them are fully animated and feature a lot of camera work, and others are just Xolotl walking in and going "grraahh i'm the bad guy" while moving his arms around.

In conclusion: It's fine, I guess. The gameplay showed promise at first, but it very quickly transforms into an annoying experience, full of instant kills and loading screens that add nothing to the game. It feels like every good part of Guardian of Light is eventually ruined by something else, and it ended up feeling more like a chore than a game by the end. Even though it lasts about 6 hours, it's just not worth your time. 5/10

I've played pretty much every Tomb Raider game out there, aside from a few mobile and GameBoy games here and there. And yet that's not really too relevant as this game and its sequel, Lara Croft and Temple of Osiris break the format more than any other title in the franchise. Instead of the 3D platforming with a behind-the-back or over-the-shoulder viewpoint, these games use an isometric perspective featuring combat that's more akin to something like Gauntlet Legends or Diablo than Tomb Raider. As well, the game is fully playable (and probably best played) in co-op with a friend. That said, weirdly, there's a lot of staples of Tomb Raider as well with an emphasis on puzzles, platforming, and exploration throughout, despite the significant shift in perspective and combat gameplay.

The combat itself is kind of meh. It's fairly mindless and while it's definitely dangerous here and there—especially near the end of the game—it's fairly easy to finish most of the levels without achieving a mastery of the game's systems. It's frankly not super fun though and by the time my friend and I reached the last few levels, we kind of groaned when enemies spawned.

The puzzles are where Guardian of Light excels, at least sort of. I personally found a lot of them rather clever and they do what good puzzles should do: utilize a limited number of abilities in increasingly creative ways. I found them generally pretty satisfying with at least half requiring us to take a minute and really stare at the elements before figuring out the solution. Several of them stumped us for a good bit. That said, there were many, many times that we'd uncover the solution and immediately say "wow, that was so fucking stupid, I can't believe that's the solution." I never found this to hit a frustrating point, but I usually laughed at how silly some of the solutions were rather than feeling like it all fit together satisfyingly. Further, a few of the puzzles we left literally not believing we'd used the intended solution such as a couple times one of our characters made it past the obstacles and the other character could just jump into a hole and respawn on the other side.

However, that leads me to why I still give this game a high rating: I found it hilarious. I was laughing so hard almost the whole time we played it and it made for a really good time the couple of sessions it took to finish. The puzzles also require a lot of cooperation to utilize each character's unique abilities, so it's a great game to play with a friend over voice chat. It's in many ways rather mediocre, but it's such a simple fun(ny) time, I can't help but rate it higher than a basic description of its merits may otherwise suggest.

Played on PC as part of the Grouvee Game Club over on the forums.

This is a tricky one to review. What is obviously intended to be a co-op experience from the start, the game can still be enjoyed in singleplayer despite the constant reminders that another character, Totec, is meant to be joining you on the journey.

I played the game in singleplayer and had an enjoyable time with the twin-stick style mechanics. I found it pretty funny how Totec pops up at the beginning of levels to deliver a line or two and then vanishes for the rest of the level if you're playing solo. Because of this, the game feels disjointed at times, at least narratively and pace wise. Not that the narrative is particularly complex, nor is it the focus of the game.

There's a good variety of levels on offer with different enemy types per level. In one level the music switches up and you get a sort of trance / techno beat going on which weirdly felt really good with the gameplay despite it not really suiting the environment. My 8 hours with the game felt justified, although sometimes a bit dragged out. It's a decent game to pick up and play for an hour every day.

The mechanics are what make this game shine but are also the cause of a few headaches occasionally. I love the physics mechanics with the grapple and how the grapple line can bend around moving objects, I like rolling the giant balls around the level and using them to block enemies, but sometimes the puzzles and their solutions feel infuriating because mechanics either aren't obvious or aren't explained fully. The flip side to this is that because of this there's a few times where when you discover the solution yourself it's really satisfying.

There's a ton of unlocks and collectibles to obtain via challenge rooms and hidden items as you navigate through the various chapters. The pacing felt a bit odd for me with the weapons as I reached the last third of the game and still had an entire page or two of weapons to collect. I assume the rest are hidden away or unlocked via challenges that I missed? Some of the artifacts you find offer very nice buffs to your weapons and speed etc. The movement and combat feels really nice especially when dodging. The bar that I guess is a sort of power bar that builds up as you defeat enemies did allude me for most of the game until the end when i realised that at full power it gives you the buffs from the artifacts you've equipped. By the end I had unlocked a golden shotgun and with full power with artefacts that gave me powerful blue shots I was one-shotting the toughest enemies and defeated the final boss in a few hits. It felt like I'd cheesed the system, but honestly I wasn't complaining because up until that point almost everything had turned into annoying bullet sponges. Ammo is sparse and only dropped occasionally by enemies. The default spear is pretty nice to use though.

I'm torn whether to give this 3 or 4 stars, but given that I haven't really played the game in its intended form (co-op) I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. If you like casual gaming, a bit of fun and challenge, and enjoy twin stick mechanics it'll probably be worth your time if you can get it on sale!

Lara Croft and the GoL is not your traditional Tomb Raider game but this addition to the series is a welcome to not only the series but the isometric action game genre. The visual during gameplay are very detailed but not excessive to the point of distraction. Enemies look diverse enough to know which type they are without having to look directly at them. The story is on the weak side but is interesting enough to make you want to know the conclusion. Lara is hired by a group of "explorers" to find the legendary Mirror of Shadows. They removed the Mirror from it's resting place and awake Xolotl from his sealed prison. The Guardian of Light, Totec, is brought back to life and with the help of Lara, must defeat Xolotl and seal him back in the mirror.

The gameplay is where its at! It's fast pace and non stop. There are some severe navigation issues and it is a real task when moving the stone balls from location to the other and having to place a bomb, roll and detonate the bomb. Now playing with the game pad is controlling Lara in action perfect, but makes aiming seem a little tedious when compared to the mouse's point and click shooting. Single player and online co-op both smoothly done with co-op reigning supreme when compared to each other.

Replay value in this game is great. Each mission has three levels of score total, three to five map challenges and 4-7 bonus items on each mission. Giving you three way to play each mission in and different levels of difficulty, you can easily spend 15-18 hours on this game. The music is good and keeps the atmosphere and action going but the voice acting is sub par.

Overall, this game would have gotten a 4 stars for having bad K&M control and below average voice acting and story but the action is in the game, online co-op, the ease of playing with a game pad and the incredible amount of replay value. Just make sure you have a game pad for this game.