Tomb Raider: Legend

(CBS)  GameCore is a weekly column by CBSNews.com's William Vitka and Chad Chamberlain that focuses on gamers and gaming. This story was written by CBSNews.com's Chad Chamberlain, and Alberto Araya contributed to this piece

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In 1996 a pixilated, blocky female version of Indiana Jones named Lara Croft was introduced to gamers.

She made her debut appearance in Eidos' Tomb Raider: The Scion of Atlantis, developed by Toby Gard of Core Design. At the time, Tomb Raider represented the pinnacle of design for action-adventure type games. What it introduced to all those who played was a game that was built on puzzle solving, exploration, suspense and discovery in a way no other game — at the time — had provided. But as this newly created franchise flourished in successful sequels, it also set off another trend, one that is still developing as more and more games get developed for the big screen. Lara was becoming more "Hollywood."

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In 2001 Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, starring the sultry Angelina Jolie, blazed across thousands of movie screens, leaving loyal Tomb Raider fans with mixed emotions. The movie clearly illustrated the direction that the games were going in, slowly moving away from the core concepts that made the franchise so successful, such as tomb exploration and lost civilizations.

Soon after the fourth installment of the game, two more Core Design-developed sequels followed. They were Tomb Raider Chronicles and Angel of Darkness, and while the latter set out to be an ambitious project, the delayed release dates and various bugs just added fuel to the fire for already-annoyed Tomb Raider fans.

Now — two movies and six titles later — Eidos is back at it again, this time harnessing the talent of Crystal Dynamics (the developers behind the acclaimed Legacy of Kain). Eidos has these folks hard at work trying to revamp the franchise and return it to its former glory, and they will do so by bringing Tomb Raider back to its origins. They are removing Lara Croft from her current settings (sky scrapers and high tech environments) and putting her back into exotic locales (it's called Tomb Raider for a reason, people).


Returning the Tomb Raider to actual tomb raiding is a concept that will lead to huge sighs of relief from gamers worldwide. That is, if they're still paying attention to the series.

For those that are, some good stuff awaits them in Tomb Raider: Legend. How do we know? Well, some members of the Eidos team stopped by the GameCore offices to give us a sneak peek at a demo. Here's what you can expect.

In Legend, Lara Croft has an electronic life of her own. She stretches when waiting for user interaction, and the animation rocks. They've managed to significantly bump up the titular character's pixel count to a ridiculously large number (upwards of 10,000 polygon count) making her edgeless and smooth even while she's moving.

The jumps, cliffhangers and all other moments where Lara narrowly escapes death are also pretty sweet. If Lara attempts a jump and the system in place detects that it's going to be too shallow, she will either simply hang on to the ledge she's jumping from or stretch to grab unto the ledge she's aiming for with one hand. As per Eidos, you'd really have to want to kill her in order for her to die in those circumstances.

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