Holmes had Moriarty, the Doctor has the Master and Lara Croft has...  Well, over the years Lara has been her own worst enemy, with Eidos and Crystal Dynamics bringing out less-than-supreme titles that were fraught with bugs and over seemingly before they started and with very little replayability.  But with this summer's release of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light came the scent of change in the air.  This downloadable game, available now on XBLA for 1,200 Microsoft points and coming September 28 on PSN and PC for probably about a tenner, takes your third person perspective to the extreme, giving you a fairly fixed isometric-style angle on the action.  And my word, there's a lot of action: somewhere deep in Mesoamerica, as Lara, you meet a man called Totec, your new best bud.  With Totec, you can now play two-player co-op (Gauntlet meets Tomb Raider) either locally or online (from September 28) and share the fast and furious pace of Guardian of Light with a friend or enthusiastic relative.  Gone are the back-and-forth puzzles that have you collecting keys, bars of lead or what-not, Guardian of Light has a down'n'dirty feel to it, stripping away the tit-and-arse-gazing acrobatics that drew some of Lara's audience in and replacing it with a twinstick shooter-style fury where wave after wave of critter will try to slow you (or indeed, you both) down in your simple A-to-B mission.

Somewhere amongst the mess of bodies, exploding toxic gas plants, spiders, lava and spellcasting lizard-men (copied and pasted from Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II, by the looks of it) there is a faint storyline about a displeased god called Xolotl, who generally tries not very convincingly to kill poor Lara and Totec at every available opportunity.  Or at least he would if I were playing him.  Instead, he makes some dodgy remark about how he hopes Lara lives to see his amazing victory and then runs away from her, like a seven-year-old playing kiss-chase.  But really, who cares about the storyline, this game is a thrill-a-minute bombardment of enemies, fun traps and puzzles, speed runs and boss battles, chopped and tossed in a salad of beautifully-rendered graphics, piss-easy controls and a heavy lean towards thrilling you so much, your pants fall clean off.

And yet my pants remain on and this is largely because on occasion, the game becomes repetitive, but also because I do think that in wonderous 1080p, the screen gets incredibly busy at times.  Noisy, even.  I find it hard to spot where I am and occasionally, I will just fall off the edge into some spiky pitted doom or immerse myself liberally in lava.  This is the nature of the game, however and really can't be helped, but not being able to zoom in and follow where I am means that sometimes, I just lost it.  Another downer is the clunky and seemingly ineffectual artefacts system where you can boost some of your skills with trinkets you've collected.  I've no idea how that works and no inclination to find out and perhaps the fact that I've been able to get on okay without worrying is a good thing, but it is there and I only noticed it when I was looking for my grenade launcher, which, I'm afraid, doesn't make the same noise as in Tomb Raider II.  That 'thhhpmm' noise?  It's not there. 

What is there, however, is replayability.  They've worked hard on hiding bits and pieces over their varied and pretty levels, making sure that there are plenty of things that you'll miss on your first playthrough: score challenges, ten red skulls to collect (sometimes in devilishly hard-to-reach areas) and bespoke level-specific challenges; blimey, what more do you want!  It's a game you will easily keep coming back to, if just to take out a bit of frustration on the enemy hordes with an impressive array of weapons, including magical puzzle-busting climbable golden ceremonial spears.  And big, spiky balls you can satisfyingly roll over monsters.  That's good after a bad day, just that crunch.  Brutal.

It has its faults, of course, but for my money, it's a brilliant slant on the franchise that breathes new life into Lara's ample chest by taking her out of her normal Tomb Raider environs; if Crystal Dynamics can keep the main Tomb Raider franchise this fresh and exciting, then bring it on!