Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris Review

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is the follow-up to 2010’s co-op adventure outing Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. Guardian of Light and Temple of Osiris both follow the same formula of isometric shooting and cooperative puzzle-solving through exotic locales. These new Croft adventure romps, both developed by Crystal Dynamics, can easily draw comparison to Diablo 3 or other contemporaries like Bastion and Torchlight, but their co-op puts them in a category all their own.

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is far ahead of its peers when it comes to creating truly cooperative in-game moments, and truly gives you the feeling that you really are an adventurer exploring beautiful places lost in time. However, other aspects of the experience are notably sparse, leaving Temple of Osiris equal parts ahead of – and behind – its peers.

Presentation

Temple of Osiris’ begins with a storybook flipping open, which fits perfectly: this game feels like a story out of an adventure book. Lara and rival treasure hunter Carter Bell find a mystical staff that unleashes an evil Egyptian god named Set, and things kind of just go from there. While the story itself is light on character development and detail, throughout the game I felt engaged in the world. Between the beautiful ancient environments, light banter between Croft and her cohorts, and environmental perils straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, Temple of Osiris kept me interested. If I were to give it a literary counterpart, this game is a Clive Cussler book – simple, fun action that keeps you interested right until the end. It might not captivate you with twists and turns, but it is exactly what it set out to be – a great adventure.

With this opening scene, you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into.

Gameplay

Where Guardian of Light had two players and a puzzle-solving spear, Temple of Osiris has four players and a mystical staff. When playing with friends, two players take the roles of Lara and her counterpart, Carter, both of which are outfitted with guns and mines. The other two, Isis, and Osiris, wield staffs that can interact with the environment, raising platforms and banishing evil. It’s not that you can’t play solo – you can, and the game makes up for the lack of party members by simply giving Lara all the tools and slightly altering puzzles. But the real fun comes from playing with partners, so if you have a friend or two (or three) who want to play along, do it!

While solo play is definitely still fun, losing out on those ‘we did it together’ moments does make the game feel unusually simple at times.

Puzzles aren’t ever particularly difficult to find an answer to, but they do make you work together in a meaningful way. The little victories that come from hoisting a companion up away from incoming spikes with your grappling hook or bouncing a large metal sphere onto a platform with a bomb are satisfying, and while solo play is definitely still fun, losing out on those ‘we did it together’ moments does make the game feel unusually simple at times. When playing by myself, there were a few puzzles that I solved before I had even realized it – I expected there to be another step or thing to do, but finding the solution was as simple as stepping on a platform that happened to be on the other side of the room.

Battles are exhilarating, but rarely challenging.

Speaking of simple, Temple of Osiris isn’t going to push you to your limits in terms of difficulty. As previously mentioned, puzzles are clever yet easy to figure out, and combat isn’t going to give you a hard time either. Throughout my entire playthrough, I don’t think I ever died from a combat encounter. I died during combat encounters to environmental hazards, but never to the combat itself. Weapons have an ammo system, but rarely will you ever be faced with a shortage of it before the end of a battle, and ammo spawns regularly enough to keep you topped off at all times.

The environment itself will be your greatest challenge – some obstacles, such as spiked balls, do unusually high amounts of damage compared to enemies, sometimes sapping half of your health or more in an instant. Chase scenes are a rush and will keep you on your toes, but unless you’re trying to grab every gem along the way you should be able to make it through with only the occasional slip-up.

Still A Little Dusty

I had a great time playing through this game, but its not without its gripes. PC gamers will find that compared to its predecessor, Temple of Osiris is very clearly not optimized for desktop play. Menus are clunky, and tutorials still prominently feature controller buttons. Playing on a keyboard is possible, but find a game pad if you can – characters have just enough of a turning radius that trying to make tight corners with four buttons on a keyboard didn’t always work out. Compared to Guardian of Light, it also, takes much more processor power to run which seems like a normal thing to hear given the gap of four years in between them… but Temple of Osiris frankly doesn’t look much better than its predecessor.

I also came across a few bugs in my time with it – at one point while playing solo, I managed to unequip the staff and had no way to re-equip it, leaving me trapped and helpless to solve the puzzle in front of me. There are also some collision issues here or there, but hardly enough to consider it a major flaw. Outside a few moments of annoyance, they never amounted to much.

Verdict

I had a really great time playing Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris while it lasted, but it didn’t last that long and by the end I was ready to move on. Temple of Osiris is a summer blockbuster in the form of a game – light on complexity and nuance, but still fun to plop yourself down in front of for a few hours. I hope this side of the Tomb Raider series continues, because they’ve got some of the best co-op play around and really make it worth sitting down on the couch next to your pals, but even a little bit more depth and difficulty would go a long way towards making this series a must-play. If you’re into the Tomb Raider series or are hankering for some isometric shooting and adventuring, you’ll have a great time. But if neither of those things is your cup of tea, Temple of Osiris won’t do very much to convince you.

A copy of this game was provided to GameSided for the purpose of this review. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.

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