Lady Croft’s been through a lot. From being the darling of the industry and center stage on tour with U2 to a couple mediocre movies and endless sequels – each game worse than the last – it’s hard to believe the Tomb Raider series is still going. And yet here we are, ready to take the buxom British beauty on another adventure, this time courtesy of Crystal Dynamics.

Indiana Jane

Forget everything you know about Tomb Raider. Legend completely rewrites the mythos of the main character, and uses it as the backdrop for the game’s story. All those other games? Never happened. Especially Angel of Darkness, where Lara was accused of murder and all that other good stuff.

Legend feels like a true return to the series’ roots. Fans of the original PlayStation and Saturn game will feel right at home as Lara gets back to some good, old fashioned tomb raiding. Sure, she still ventures out into the modern world once in a while, and there’s still a bit more gunplay involved here than most fans will be happy with, but the bulk of the game is spent solving puzzles and using Lara’s acrobatic abilities to full effect as you navigate through massive rooms and dastardly traps.

And what abilities Lady Lara possesses! While developer Core design tried to give Lara true analog control with Angel of Darkness, they didn’t do a very good job. Crystal Dynamics, on the other hand, got it absolutely right. Lara is a dream to control. You’ll find yourself leaping from ledge to ledge with ease, swinging across heights so dizzying they’d make Spider-Man barf, and enjoying battles with humans and monsters that actually require a bit of problem solving. Control is never an issue in Tomb Raider Legend…for the most part.

Speed Racer

If there’s a chink in this shiny new armor, it’s the bizarre inclusion of a couple bike racing sequences and Resident Evil 4-style timed button-pressing events. Neither is done particularly well, and both just scream out “focus group” in a game that’s otherwise very tight and polished.

The bike sequences are annoying at best. The control and handling of the bike is quite sloppy, and the shooting basically amounts to holding down the fire button as you race around any number of obstacles. The few cool moments in these sequences are far outweighed by the endless stretches of tedium.

The timed events just come out of nowhere, generally catching you by surprise and ending breaking the flow of the game. Thankfully, a properly executed event does look pretty sweet, and they aren’t too plentiful or long, so that’s a plus.

There are a couple other minor problems with Legend – such as the level having to reload any time you lose a life, and the relatively brief play time required to finish it – but none of them really hurt the experience.

Tomb Robbing

Any fan of the original game knows the real star wasn’t Lara – who was basically eye candy anyway – but the environments. Stepping into massive rooms and seeing ancient gladiatorial arenas or the ruins of an underground pyramid, and then being tasked with figuring out how to enter that tiny opening at the top or disarm the trap barring entry is what that game was all about. Thankfully, Crystal Dynamics has seen fit to revive that feeling, as almost every level in the game features loads of similar, gee-whiz moments.

And on the Xbox 360 in particular, the graphics that go along with the already impressive environments just makes everything that much better. The lighting is especially amazing. The shadows that play off Lara as she navigates each new area look nearly real. This truly looks like a next-generation game should.

Don’t Call It a Comeback

When Eidos announced they were taking Lara away from her creators at Core, it smacked of a desperate, last-ditch attempt to get a bit more mileage out of the publisher’s only true cash cow. But then Crystal Dynamics goes and creates a game that arguably exceeds the quality of the original Tomb Raider, and all of a sudden we have a viable series on our hands. Fans should be ecstatic over Tomb Raider Legend. Hopefully this time around, Eidos won’t sacrifice quality for yearly sequels.