It’s as if Lara is trapped inside of a clock - everything moves in time, and either tick-tocks closer to her or into her path. The temples are outfitted with levers and buttons that create walls, rotate a platform or act as a sort of ancient elevator. There are other puzzles beyond surviving nature. Snakes, spiders, alligators and even boulders all have their rules of movement - alligators will trail you, snakes will wait for you and spiders will march, tauntingly, back and forth. Charmingly, “Lara Croft Go” will every so often add in little animations as Lara moves - a backflip here, or a somersault there. Lara can scale walls or jump on fragile pillars, but she’s limited to one movement at a time. Trails that can be traversed are outfitted with little diamonds. For every movement of Lara’s, the obstacles also get to take a turn.
Developed by the company behind “Hitman Go,” “Lara Croft Go” is a puzzle game based almost entirely around pattern recognition. It’s beautiful to look at, and gives “Lara Croft Go” a rather fanciful take on “Tomb Raider.” The puzzles are moderately challenging, but never entirely vexing. Whether indoors or out, the worlds of “Lara Croft Go” feel set amid the clouds, as rocky passageways can twist, turn or spiral around one another. The look owes a bit of a debt to last year’s indie hit “Monument Valley,” in which a princess was guided though shape-shifting castles that felt illuminated by moonlight. Spiders and snakes, for instance, tower over Lara, and a giant “Queen of Venon” is chasing Lara and destroying parts of the world with every slimy turn of her body. Whether exploring dark caverns or stepping lightly along the side of a broken temple, there’s a dreamy, lost-in-the clouds feel to “Lara Croft Go.” Everything is familiar, at least in a way that recalls films such as the “Indiana Jones” series, and the game’s take on fantasy is more whimsical than serious. Thin walkways are layered under and on top of one another, disappearing under movable bridges or delicately held together by pencil-thin rails. Each level looks like it belongs in a pop-up music box. There are levers, which will twist and turn the cavernous trails that lie before Lara, and there are metal blades, which can saw an adventurer’s body - or that of an arachnid - in two. Occasionally, paths will crumble if Croft dares cross them twice, which is handy for getting rid of shadowing crocodiles. Some levels come affixed with spears, but they’re one-time use only.
Set amid a forgotten and lost empire, the game’s mini-universes are clean but knotty labyrinths filled with puzzle-solving tools. “Lara Croft Go” is essentially an interactive board game. With swipes of the hand, Croft tap-dances around precarious ruins, all in an effort to avoid a a face-first run-in with beastly jungle creatures. Spiders stalk, snakes linger and crocodiles saunter, but the Croft here isn’t itching for a fight.
0 kommentar(er)
