Tomb Raider: Puzzle Paradox

Poor old Lara. She's got a lot to get off her chest. As if getting married to the likes of Jonny Lee Miller, Billy Bob Thornton and Brad Pitt wasn't enough to keep a girl occupied seven nights a week, she also spends hours as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador and is adopting children from each of the seven continents. Where she finds the time to get around to raiding tombs, we can't imagine.

Sorry, we're getting confused again. Angelina Jolie? Lara Croft? Tomb Raider? That's the way it goes when you're a global gaming sex symbol. The reason you got famous in the first place somehow gets lost and other considerations come into play.

It's much the same state of affairs with Tomb Raider: Puzzle Paradox. Sure, it's a puzzle game, but one paradox is: What it has to do with Tomb Raider? OK, so there's some exposition in one of the two game modes that explains you're Lara Croft, trying to solve some puzzles to break into a tomb.

Whatever; you'll really have to squint hard to make out her face in the pretend video feed. And as for the three puzzles the game contains, they could have ended up in any branded game, such is the low-profile role of the Lara we know and love.

The first puzzle, Trapped, takes off suduko. The grid is only four by four, and all you have to do is place coloured gems – red, green, blue and yellow – in gaps in order to complete rows, columns and, finally, an overall square. You place a gem with your phone's joystick, and press the action button to cycle between the colours.

It's simple and fairly effective stuff, even when you're playing the more tightly time-controlled Story mode, where you have to complete puzzles to unlock Lara's progress through the tomb. The other option is playing the endless Legendary mode, in which you complete puzzles only to be presented with a slightly harder example. Depending on how fast you finish each level, you'll get a better high score.

The second puzzle, Illumination, isn't much more difficult. Each top-down level shows beams of light which must be directed to light receptors to complete the level. To do this, you have to position the available mirrors and prisms. You can't rotate them though, so it's merely a question of working out what the angles are that you have to play with. It's not rocket science, but it is pretty engaging.

Which brings us to the game's Achilles' Heel. Called Vault, it took us as long to figure out how it worked as it took to complete the other two puzzle games. Even reading the in-game help required lateral thinking before the coin finally dropped.

When you do get it, the concept is rather neat. Basically, what you have to do is 'bank' a certain number of coloured circular symbols within a fixed time period. The rub is that you can only bank the circles by creating a sequence based on matching either the colour or symbol of the circle you previously banked (you get a bonus if you can match both). Pitted against a strict time limit, you'll end up struggling to bank enough of at least one of the four colours you have to collect.

It's a nice idea (when you eventually get it) but sadly one that's completely spoiled by the lack of time you have available, especially in the Story mode. It took us an hour of failure to make it once through the first, and easiest, level.

Maybe that's the challenge of being a tomb raider? Certainly if the rewards matched the skills you need to beat this game, we might recommend Tomb Raider: Puzzle Paradox. Riches, fame – even a wallpaper of Angelina would be a start.

But as it is, while two of the three puzzle elements are satisfying if lightweight, the third is just too hard to be any fun. While you can play the games individually in Legendary more, you need to tackle sets of all three games to complete the Story mode. The near-impossible Vault puzzles soon grind progress to a halt, which means that for all but the most masochistic, a huge piece of the game will likely go unplayed.

For that reason, we'd say avoid this tomb. It's cursed.