
User reviews: Very Positive (1,552 reviews) - 93% of the 1,552 user reviews for this game are positive.
Release Date: Sep 28, 2010


Buy Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

Packages that include this game

Buy Tomb Raider Collection


Buy Eidos Anthology

NOTE: This version of the Eidos Anthology is not playable in Germany.


Recommended By Curators

"The first franchise reimagining was better than the second."

About This Game


Key features:

System Requirements

    • OS: Windows 7 / Vista / XP
    • Processor: 3+ GHz Intel or 2.5+ GHZ AMD
    • Hard Drive: 7GB
    • Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card and drivers
Helpful customer reviews
15 of 16 people (94%) found this review helpful
22.7 hrs on record
Posted: September 29
Short Version:

+ Great puzzles
+ Good level design
+ Most bosses are great
+ All levels have challenges which enhance the replay value
+ A good amount of collectibles
+ Enjoyable singleplayer
+ Amazing local co-op

- Paper-thin story
- Cheesy, dumb villain who is also a coward - he runs away from you from start to finish
- Buggy online co-op
- Voice acting is weak
-Cutscenes are lackluster - The characters lips do not move; the camera angles "cleverly" change to make that unnoticeable.

"Long" version:

I'm a big Tomb Raider fan and when Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light was announced, I thought it was a horrible idea. Fortunately, this game is quite an enjoyable experience.

Lara finds herself in Central America looking for an artifact called the Mirror of Smoke. After a long journey, she is successful, but a group of mercenaries led by a local warlord ambushes Lara and misuses the mirror, unleashing Xolotl, the aztec god of death and darkness. Totec, the Guardian of Light, is then awaken - he informs Lara that Xolotl must be stopped until dawn, otherwise, the world will face certain doom.

The story is really predictable and shallow. You release an evil god and you spend the whole game chasing him. The thing is, you are always on his heels, so he feels like a total coward, constantly running away. Its design is also bad in comparison with all the other bosses; he looks too cartoony and the stakes are never high. You don't care about any of the characters and the only reason you "care" about Lara is because of how well-established she already is as a videogame character/icon. If she was a new character, we would know nothing about her. You can play as Lara (Singleplayer/Multiplayer) or Totec (Multiplayer only) and the levels design changes accordingly.

The game can be played with a single player and a second player can connect at any time - Locally or Online.
Single player is good but I would suggest playing Local Co-op for a full, rich experience.
Local Co-op is amazing - solving puzzles with a buddy is awesome. You can also kill your teammate so there are a ton of possibilities for revenge and a few laughs, usually followed by an impalled/crushed ally.
On the other hand, Online Co-op is full of bugs and there are a lot of synch problems. Bullets doing nothing to enemies and Totec's spears not spawning (they are necessary to cross certain obstacles) are only some of the bugs I encountered with friends.

The gameplay is this game's main strength; it focuses on platforming, combat and puzzle solving.

Platforming is relatively simple. Lara and Totec can use their gadgets to get to higher places or to cross pits and chasms. Totec has a shield that allows Lara to jump on him and perform a bigger jump, allowing her to reach higher platforms; Lara can then pull him up using her grapple. Totec also has spears; once thrown against a wall, Lara can use these to cross certain obstacles.

Combat is good. You have a lot of weapons to choose from but you'll find yourself using the same combination over and over again. Once you kill enough enemies, you'll enter some sort of berserk mode and you'll get an upgrade - mana/health regenaration, scatter shots or even better mines - that will last until you are hit by your enemies. This kind of makes the game's combat super easy. If you pick a powerful weapon and you keep regenarating mana, you'll be able to kill everything with ease. Your enemies are a bunch of clumsy demons and summons who are kind of shallow in design, but they offer a decent enough challenge later on, when their numbers are massive. Some of these creatures get a different color pallet on certain levels, which provides them with different abilites (ressurection, explosion when killed, etc.). My real gripe with the enemies is that you only come across a really limited number of different creatures. More variety would have been better.

The puzzles are quite easy to figure out and only slightly harder to solve. You'll have to time jumps and dodges, activate pressure pads and deactivate hazards/barriers that block your way. Their design is really good and the scale grows bigger and more impressive in later levels. Unfortunately, even harder puzzles are sort of basic and provide no real challenge..

To mix things up and add replay value, each level provides some optional challenges to complete. They can be really easy to complete - destroy all trucks in a level or jump 12 times over a trap - or "infuriating" (complete the whole level in under X minutes or navigate a trap-filled hall on your first attempt). Once completed, these challenges provide helpful new weapons, health/mana upgrades or even relics. Relics are equippable items - they change your stats and help you in combat (better bombs, better speed, etc.).

Sound is kinda generic - guns don't really sound all that great but it's serviceable (explosions sound good, though). The dialogue is really cheesy and considering the story is also bad, you won't care about what the characters are saying - not that it matters. The game features a good soundtrack - I might be wrong but I think some of it was used in Tomb Raider Anniversary and maybe even in TR Legend and Underworld.

The game looks fairly decent. You'll have some graphical glitches from time to time but the game knows what it is and it tends to amaze you with huge environments instead of with graphical detail. Character models are ok, but their lips do not move during cutscenes; the camera angle keeps changing so players won't notice.

Overrall, this game is a great purchase if you enjoy inventive puzzle solving, mixed with a fair amount of combat and platforming. It might have big flaws, including what was supposed to be its main selling point (online co-op) but the gameplay is so satisfying and local co-op is so good that this is an experience I gladly recommend. The game currently costs 10€ - I'd suggest getting it on a sale. I think it is worth 5€ if you are desperate for a puzzle game but it goes on sale fairly often so I'd wait for a 75/80% discount.

Final Score: 7.5 out of 10.
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15 of 17 people (88%) found this review helpful
15.1 hrs on record
Posted: June 2
Good controls, fun levels, probably one of the best local co-op games around. Works well with 360 or compatible gamepads.
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3 of 3 people (100%) found this review helpful
7.2 hrs on record
Posted: April 18
LC: GoL is a much more arcade-like game than many of the others in the Tomb Raider franchise, but it is no less fun to play.

The story follows Lara and Totec as they attempt to prevent Xolotl from destroying the world. The story is told through various means within the game, from narration at the start to comic and "live" cutscenes. This could have possibly been made more consistent throughout, but in no way affects the quality of the story. It does at times seem like many of the classic villain tropes come through in Xolotl however: Manic laughter, taunting the player etc., but this isn't too over the top.

The gameplay has 2 main styles: linear and open levels. The linear levels (usually in tombs) generally require fighting your way through monsters, solving puzzles with balls and hazards like spike pits and fire, and jumping puzzles. The open levels are similar in what they require from the player, but instead of funneling you through a tomb you are generally given a "hub", with multiple paths to tombs to "complete". You need to do all of them anyway, so it's sort of the illusion of an open level more than anything.

The puzzles themselves are generally quite easy, although there are one or two of the jumping puzzles which, like in all games, can be a bit frustrating. Overall, though, for an arcade-level game they are well made. The fighting scenes, which can occur randomly at any time (monsters spawn from out of the ground), seem to result in a sort of pseudo-bullet-hell type gameplay, which isn't a bad thing. The game difficulty can be changed depending on how you like your fight scenes (easy being you just tear through enemies, and hard gives you enemies that soak up bullets).

To aid the fight mechanic you can collect different weapons (machine guns to explosive grenades), powerups (health boosts etc.) and various relics. The relics require a charge which when filled can enhance your fighting power. At the endgame, when the top tier ones are unlocked it becomes very easy to fight through vast numbers of enemies, which the game will happily provide.

The sound design is very good in this game, with dramatic music when required and more ambient music for within non-combat puzzle areas. Similarly, the voice acting is very good, even if it is only heard in cutscenes. Given the isometric-style view of the game, you never really see things in a close detail, but even at a distance the graphics in this game are very nice, from the rocky textures of walls and brickwork to the design of the monsters and characters you fight.

The game plays either using a controller or a keyboard. Personally, I would just stick to using a controller, if you have one, as the arcade-like nature of the game suits this playstyle best.

In terms of bugs: If you intend to use a controller, note that the game might not automatically assign it to player 1, so you may need to go into the options to manually assign it. I only had the game crash catastrophically once. No idea why it happened, but restarting it solved the issue.

To summarise: If you want a more laid-back adventure game, then this is definitely worth buying. It isn't terribly difficult, but it does offer a nice story and nice gameplay.
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4 of 5 people (80%) found this review helpful
10.7 hrs on record
Posted: September 22
this game is underated.
pros :

nice action and adventure genre
easy to play
further level is more chalenging, ( the enemies, the puzzles, etc)
its very fun when you played with your friend (local coop or coop) together , solving the puzzle together which is very challenging and kick enemies azz

mediocre story line
isometric, (you cant rotate camera view)

buy it when its on sale, you guys should have great time together playing this game
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2 of 2 people (100%) found this review helpful
9.2 hrs on record
Posted: August 16
Different style from the traditions of the series but still feeling like a proper Tomb Raider game, Guardian of Light is a really cool co-op puzzle and action game with an isometric perspective. It has a really cool mix of combat and puzzles which keep the game interesting, with a ton of collectables to find. I would recommend playing it co-op. It is more enjoyable to figure out the puzzles together than alone because of the emphasis on teamwork, as each player has a different set of gear to solve puzzles with. One problem is the camera can sometimes make the perspective difficult to gage and it would have helped if the camera could be moved to make some of the platforming less annoying. Furthermore, the menu system could be a little annoying to navigate. Overall though, a fun game to play through with a friend if you enjoy both combat and puzzle solving, as well as a bit of collecting.
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