[Review] Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris

By Benjamin Kelly on 29/04/2024 21:51 UTC

There's been quite a lot of controversy lately around the Tomb Raider series of games; firstly with 2013's otherwise epic reboot being notably lacking on tombs to raid, and then with Microsoft purchasing the "timed rights" to the Tomb Raider franchise. As a fan of the series who doesn't own an XBox, this has infuriated me, as it's the kind of situation where the gamers lose out and, in fact, only the console company wins, but I'm tangenting. With the chances of me playing 'Rise of the Tomb Raider' without an XBox One gradually plummeting, I instead turned to 'Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris', cunningly named to avoid falling under the 'Tomb Raider' purchase, and ironically a game entirely about raiding tombs... 

Yes, you read that right, Tomb Raider is the story of Lara Croft, and the Lara Croft game is about raiding tombs. Go figure.

The Temple of Osiris

From left to right: Isis, Lara, Carter, and Horus - the four playable characters.

The first thing to note is how cheap the game is to purchase. The digital download version was about £15 on the PlayStation Network Store, and I picked up the Gold Edition (a physical copy with a cute Lara figurine, an art book, a papyrus map, and the Season Pass) for less than £20. This concerned me at first (what a world do we live in where people will avoid something because it's too cheap!) but I needn't have been. 'Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris' is great fun.

It is a significant change on the usual Tomb Raider formula though. Instead of wide open 3D expanses to explore and cryptic traps to unravel and traverse, LC:TO instead puts the players (yes, plural - more on that later) into an isometric world of much faster paced gameplay. It almost plays like a twin-stick shooter, with the left stick moving, the right stick aiming, and firing mapped to R2 like a trigger. The controls are intuitive and feel not only natural, but fluid enough to keep up with the fast pace. You see, LC:TO focuses on throwing hordes of enemies at you whilst you try to figure out how to explore deeper into the tombs, and the traps can be very cryptic, involving some smart exploration, and clever timing of shooting gongs, standing on pressure switches, moving sun globes or sometimes just outright surviving spike pits or poison dart traps whilst also trying to fight off scarab swarms, mummies or crocodile priests. Don't get me started on the sections where Ammet, a gigantic crocodile demon, arrives to devour Lara. These sections are heart-thumpingly intense as Lara tries to outrun death itself, whilst avoiding traps, enemies and pitfalls.

Ammet

When you see Ammet, you run.

Then there are the boss battles; exciting, intense, and mind-bendingly clever fights against gigantic monsters straight out of egyptian mythology.

Somehow, LC:TO returns to the series roots of actually raiding tombs (varying from the watery Tomb of the Ferryman, to the dark and tense Tomb of the Torturer) but mixes it up into refreshing and intense gameplay, and that's just the single player. LC:TO features the ability for up to four players to cram around a PS4 and run the tombs together. The story goes that Lara and a competing archaeologist, Carter, accidentally release Seth (the God of Evil, Deserts and Storms, and murderer of Osiris) from his banishment in the Egyptian Underworld, but in the process also call upon Horus and Isis (Osiris' son and wife respectively) who offer to aid the mortals in returning Seth to his imprisonment by gathering the pieces of Osiris from various tombs. It's simplistic stuff, but it serves as a great framework as Seth unleashes all manner of woes upon Egypt, from rain storms so intense that they threaten to flood the world, to undending night, even snowstorms (in a desert, yes). It's an excuse for four players to raid some tombs and gun down half the cast of egyptian mythology together across varied environments with ever more fiendish traps to survive.

The Hitman Outfit

Lara looks surprisingly good in the Hitman outfit...

Sadly, the game is incredibly short, and I had completed it in a little over six hours; this left me craving so much more, and the Season Pass does offer that, fairly cheaply. Whatever your view on DLC, it came with the Gold Edition, so I'm happy, and has already added a handful of extra tombs and some rather unusual costumes based on other videogame franchises such as Hitman and Deus Ex. Whether or not the DLC is worth it is up for you to decide, but I'd have glady paid the £10 extra to access just the tombs I have so far and I know there's more on the way. Also, every tomb rates you on varying statistics, from your speed of completion, to how many secret items you can find, even offering bonusses for going out of your way to do it the hard way ('Cross the bomb river without getting wet' involved me bouncing Lara across bombs to the point of nearly killing her), and there's no way you'll get all of them on a single run-through, so there is replayability, especially when you get your friends involved, but it does feel a little like having to work for the content.

Also, whilst the game revels in the mythology - something the writers clearly did a lot of research on - through the storyline, the boss characters, and wonderful little cinematics where the characters encounter heiroglyphic murals, I couldn't help but cringe at some of the voice acting, particularly Horus and Isis, who often come across as quite twee and actually a little distracting. Isis especially seems to want to yell everything and apparently quite enjoys commentating most of the game's events. It's a minor gripe (and it's certainly nowhere near as bad as the legendary original PS1 Resident Evil), but it is jarring.

Seth

8

“A refreshing twist that still stays true to form.”

With beautiful graphics and (sometimes weirdly) varied environments, Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris manages to add something fresh to the long line of videogames that Lara has starred in, whilst also staying true to the character. It's a fun and fast paced adventure that is sadly over too soon, even with the optional dungeons, but can be extended with some cheap DLC - for better or worse.
Story76%
Gameplay81.99999999999999%
Graphics81.99999999999999%