Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light Demo

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is a 3D action game developed by Crystal Dynamics, the same studio that is responsible for the bigger titles in the same franchise.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is not your average adventure game. Since it’s made by Crystal Dynamics, it’s easy to see why this would be much better than anything in its class. This studio usually only makes triple-A titles, so an adventure game like this one feels like a big budget experience.

The fact that it’s 3D environment shouldn’t distract players from the real genre of this game, which is an action platformer. It has a storyline and all the trimmings, but players are concerned, for the most part, with jumping, dodging, and generally navigating the levels more than anything else.

Lara Croft is looking to find an ancient artifact named Mirror of Smoke and has partnered up with Totec, a Mayan tribesman. The game will have players explore numerous levels, solving puzzles, and defeating dangerous enemies.

It can be played in single player mode, but since Lara has a partner, it can also be completed in a cooperative mode. The isometric view is not the best for this kind of collaboration, but it’s not a major obstacle. Both characters have the same kind of underlying physics, so it’s easy to play with both of them.

The puzzles elements are also not overly complicated and you can understand immediately what you must do. Most of the time you’ll fail because the control is not ideal, and you will drop the items or have problems pushing them into place. It’s not a major issue, but players will notice it from time to time.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light uses a light engine that looks great from afar, but not all that great from close up. Fortunately, the camera doesn’t move close to the action very often. The advantage of the engine is that it doesn’t require any kind of loading screens between levels.

The demo only features the first major level of the game, but it will take a while to complete.