Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris Review • Codec Moments

Crystal Dynamics brings us another chapter in Lara Croft’s many adventures, this time following the formula they used in Guardian of Light. Temple of Osiris is a downloadable isometric action, platform, puzzle adventure that returns to the Tomb Raider roots of… well… raiding tombs. What’s different about these mini-adventures is that there’s a focus on co-op support rather than a pure single-player campaign, so does it deliver a fulfilling experience?

Lara finds herself in Egypt trying to obtain the usual rare artifacts from forgotten tombs (this time the Staff of Osiris), only to be usurped at the last minute by rival raider Carter Bell. Unfortunately, grabbing the staff curses the two treasure hunters and marking them for death by the god Set, with their only hope of being saved lying with two other imprisoned gods, Horus and Isis. By resurrecting Osiris the foursome will be able to face Set and stop his return to the world which will be undoubtedly by a bad thing, and so starts the task of finding all the pieces of the absent being.

As with Guardian of Light, your adventure takes place in a well detailed isometric world where exploration and combat are the order of the day. There’s a hub area that links all the tombs where the pieces of Osiris can be found, and provides something of a training ground where you can try out your moves, as well as hunt down challenge tombs which are bonus areas that reward with new weapons, health or ammo upgrades. The bulk of the game however is spent retrieving the limbs of Osiris and battling several “boss” figures. If you’re playing on your own (and you can do the full game solo with pretty much no issues), then you’ll be Lara Croft. If you decide to brave the multiplayer co-op then you can pick to be anyone of the main protagonists, and more on that later.

Working your way through a tomb is relatively straight forward, there’s only one route you can take and progress will only be barred by various puzzle elements, usually involving levers and platforming. You’ve a number of gadgets to use – grappling hook, torch, mines, timed bombs which have appeared before; and a new one in the form of the Staff of Osiris. The staff enables you to control environmental objects by raising, speeding them up, slowing them down or blasting away Set’s influence. It’s an interesting mechanic that doesn’t get overused throughout the game and adds a new dimension to solving some of the puzzles. Bizarrely, the staff use gets explained in a tutorial pop-up but none of your other toys do. Maybe it’s intelligent and because I’d played the last game and knew how they worked it didn’t need to prompt me, though I would have expected the info to have been shared with new players more readily.

Combat is fairly fluid – point the right stick in the direction you want to shoot and press fire, what you expect from a twin stick shooter. Your primary weapon in Lara’s case are the dual pistols and come with infinite ammo. More options are collected along the way ranging from shotguns to railguns, and everything that’s not your default has an ammo limit. What’s nice about this is that you don’t have to worry about picking up the right type of ammo, it’s simply shared amongst all secondary weapons. There’s also a lot of it lying about so there’s incentive to experiment and find out what you like the most. Alongside this there’s a ring and amulet upgrade system that adds buffs to the player depending on what’s equipped. Rings tend to focus on physical attributes, amulets on weapon effects, and all range from minor to major changes. New ones are collected by completing level challenges or buying them with gems from the ridiculous amount of chests found at the end of levels or in the hub area.

What I like about Temple of Osiris is the gradual opening of the hub as you complete tombs and boss fights. Gaining access to a device that allows you to control the weather of the area is a nice touch, one that opens areas previously unavailable, and also gives some replay value after you’ve finished the main story. Sadly the game is pretty short. I remembered Guardian of Light seeming to take ages to finish, but I’d clocked through this in less than 6 hours – though I do have numerous challenges to go back and beat to open up new weapons and items. There are end game activities too, and place markers for the DLC levels coming soon. What I struggle with is the viewing angle for platforming. On balance it’s not that bad, but occasionally it zooms out to give you a great panoramic view and means you can’t really see where you’re jumping, or causes you to run straight into some sort of fiery death. The particle effects are really nice, though when things get busy you can’t see your character and what you’re doing, so expect to get mauled and maimed in those situations.

Heading into co-op online is interesting. The tombs are subtly changed so that each of your compatriots skills are used and you’ll all have to work together to progress. This promotes teamwork that comes naturally and I found some of the sessions I played to be some of the most rewarding I’ve had online, all without mics and trashtalking each other (though the characters on screen do that themselves). There’s a big drawback though, the technical setup of drop in/drop out is absolutely terrible. If you’ve not setup a private game then anyone can join, which is usually a good thing for a title promoting 4 player co-op, not in this case. Each time someone joins you get kicked to a loading screen then have to reselect your character, losing progress back to your last checkpoint. The same happens when someone leaves. After one session where it kicked and loaded 6 times in ten minutes I decided I’d wait until I had friends who owned the game.

Alongside the game joining frustrations there’s the boundary limit on the screen meaning that if someone is lagging behind they’ll prevent any further movement. This keeps the party together, though can result in failing jumps unexpectedly. And the issue with how busy it gets in single player at times that obscures your view? Yep, expect that tenfold. There are also strange lag impacts now and again, with one particularly memorable moment when I kept dying on non-existent spikes that another player had triggered whilst standing completely still. It’s a real shame about these problems because when it works, it works better than most co-op games that have been released this year. I don’t know if there’s a fundamental coding issue that will prevent patching this poor co-op joining out, so if it’s not possible then stick to private games where random players can’t join to avoid getting really frustrated.

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is a good game, but suffers from technical setbacks that stop it from becoming great. You also have to consider the price as well, and for the length of story you get it works out quite expensive. The game looks good, the voice acting is decent with Keeley Hawes returning as Lara, and it’s reasonably forgiving in terms of checkpointing which makes it enjoyable to play. I can’t help but feel that the extra levels coming as DLC should have been included out of the gate, and that even though I got the season pass version, the fact that costume packs are being sold outside this on launch is a wee bit cheeky. Crystal Dynamics have produced a Tomb Raider adventure that you won’t regret playing, it’s a shame it’s not quite as polished as the ones that have come before it.