Game Reviews

Lara Croft: Relic Run

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Lara Croft: Relic Run

Almost all of the cool things you "do" in Lara Croft: Relic Run you're not really actually doing. You'll flip and dive and roll, leap onto planes and dive out of the way of the munching jaws of a T-Rex, but it's pretty much all cut scenes.

And sure, it looks nice, but it fails to detract from the fact that you're just playing another three-lane endless runner.

Tombs

The game is controlled with swipes and taps. Swipe up to jump, down to slide, left and right to change lanes or wall run. In shooting sections the view switches and you tap on mutant lizard creatures to blast them in the face.

Sometimes you'll get to drive a vehicle. Sometimes you'll swing around on a vine and the controls will shift 90 degrees. There are coins to collect, relics to find, and achievements to, er, achieve.

And that's pretty much all there is to it. There's no energy system so you can jog on for as long as you'd like, but there are currency bundles to buy to upgrade your tomb raider. Or you can grind. For hours.

There's a decent rhythm to proceedings, and it's simple enough to spend a couple of hours lost in the twists and turns of the game's never-ending labyrinths.

But you're not going to see anything you haven't seen before here. And after a while that lack of imagination starts to tell. It all feels plodding, even when a giant dinosaur tries to bite you in half.

Raiding

Lara Croft: Relic Run wouldn't feel out of place as part of the Temple Run canon. It's the same formula, albeit with a more recognisable character tacked on and a lick of paint to make it all sparkly.

And if that's what you want out of life, then great, knock yourself out. But if you want the App Store to be a bastion of creativity and fresh ideas, then give this a wide berth.

Lara Croft: Relic Run

It's a three lane auto-runner with Lara Croft in it, and that's pretty much all I have to say
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.