Today on the E3 show floor, VGChartz was lucky enough to lasso ourselves a booth tour with the fine men and women of Square Enix. When we think of Lara Croft at VGChartz, what comes to our mind? Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light of course! Okay, not really, but that doesn't mean that we won't take time out for a date with Lara Croft if we get the chance, and we did just that... minus one glaring difference. A 2,000 year old Mayan warrior named Totec showed up to the party as well. And that's why this game doesn't and shouldn't have "Tomb Raider "in its title. Although this game stars Lara and is set in similar exotic Tomb Raider locales, there's really nothing else that the downloadable shares with its older brother console counterparts.
The first thing that jumps out at you right when you see the action title is that all gameplay is done in an isometric top-down view in which there is always a fixed camera following players at any given time. Also, we noticed during our hands-on time that every TV that had the game up and running was equipped with two controllers to play the game. Two controllers are needed because of the title's obviously large emphasis on cooperative action. Sure, you could play this game independently, but that would defeat the purpose of what the developers wanted in the first place.
As for the story, Lara takes her adventure to the crumbled ruins from an ancient South American civilization, She quickly finds herself in a bit of a sticky situation when she fails to steal the magical Mirror of Smoke artifact, as mercenaries steal it from her before she can escape. All of this commotion awakes an ancient Mayan warrior named Totec, who will assist Lara in retrieving the lost treasure, who in turn is the second playable character.
From the get-go, it became apparent that in order to survive the monsters that bestow the ruins, cooperating with your partner was essential. On the 360 demo we sampled, controls were simple: pressing X made you roll, A made you jump, and LT was a weapons selection for swapping weapons on the fly. Moving the RS would change the direction in which your character faced, and RT would shoot, while RB seemed to be a bit of a cooperative action button as Lara would toss her grapple to aid Totec if need be, and Totec himself would raise his large shield in order for Lara to launch herself onto higher ground. This was necessary in areas that were hard to reach, as Lara could now reach items that were out of reach before. One of my favorite co-op aspects was when Totec would chuck one of his spears into the wall. If you make the effort to throw them strategically, you can make a set of stairs for only Lara's use that can help her traverse more difficult planes.
The rest of the game is your standard run and gun affair (or in Totec's case, run and spear) complete with many locales to scratch your exploring itch, all of which look quite well visually. When one character dies, it is possible to revive the enemy by rushing over to them and tapping B over them, but we encountered not only a glitch that casused Tortec's KO'd body to continue walking, but to walk through walls as well. This will be fixed in the final version I'm sure.
Our co-operaive demo of Guardian of Light was largely encouraging, and it was nice to finally get a chance to play the game that has been plastered all over my hotel room key this year (Yes, Square Enix sponsored our hotel keys). Stay tuned to gamrFeed for the latest news on the title as it ships Q3 2010 on Steam, Xbox Live Arcade, and PSN services.
