When I started playing Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris for this here review, I went over how I did the review for the previous games in the series, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. That’s when I remembered that I had never reviewed that game. I found that odd considering that I played the hell out of it and WOULD have written about it. I then realized that the first game came out in August of 2010, months before I even began writing for my blog.
It hasn’t felt like that long ago but it’s been over four years since we’ve had a sequel in this series. Kind of surprising considering how cool that game was and how much fun Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is.
This game isn’t really about its story. Instead, the focus is on making it through the elaborately designed levels either individually or on your own. There is a bit of story about the Egyptian God Set wanting to destroy the world and how only Lara and pals can stop him by reassembling Osiris. Again, this is just a backdrop to the core gameplay. It’s not a problem however since that is as solid as you can expect.
Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is presented in an isometric view which allows you to more easily run around levels with your teammates. Each level has a certain amount of traps to avoid, puzzles to solve, and enemies to kill. You get a decent amount of firearms as you progress and even some rings and amulets which augments your weapons’ abilities.
Besides standard guns, you also get a magical staff which can be used not only as a weapon, but to solve puzzles. The puzzles are fairly simple but they can be a bit head scratchy at points. The fun part is that the puzzles change depending on the amount of people playing the game with you.
I played Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris on the PlayStation 4 and it was obviously a big graphical upgrade from the one I played on PlayStation 3 all those years ago. The graphics weren’t top quality compared to some other games out there but I did enjoy all of the subtle environmental effects like mist and god rays that the game had. Though this takes place in Egypt, there was a good deal of variety in the levels with each having a specific theme that offered something new to see. The characters were also well designed and I enjoyed their animations.
The highlight of Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is the boss battles. Yes, they are all pattern-based encounters but considering that I really like that sort of stuff, I was in boss fight heaven. Individually, boss fights are cool but with friends they are even better since you all have to work together to overcome them. The later boss fights need you to do specific environmental manipulation so having people with you to help pull levers or bounce light off mirrors to hurt a boss is a must. The bosses are also really big too which I enjoyed. Who can NOT like giant monsters?
That’s pretty much all there is to say about this game. It’s a fun title which can be enjoyed solo or with friends. Even though the view is different, this is about as classic of a Tomb Raider experience as you can get. That alone makes this a game that deserves to be checked out by fans of the original series. There are also many secrets and goodies hidden throughout and a good amount of post-game content as well. You can devote a lot of time to this if you want to.
Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is another solid entry in this series. Let’s hope the next one doesn’t take as long to be released.
This review is based on a digital copy of Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris for the PlayStation 4 which was provided by Square-Enix. This game is also available for the PC and Xbox One.
