It makes it clear from the very beginning that Temple of Osiris has no intention of becoming part of new-Lara’s world. Lara is sporting her classic blue tank top, that’s infamously and fashionably a couple of sizes too small. The interaction between the four available characters makes it even more obvious that there isn’t likely to be darkness and intrigue around the corner in Temple of Osiris. So with visions of the new, gritty, Lara aside you can just let yourself work through the game raiding its various tombs and temples.
You can play as Lara, her friend Carter, Isis or Horus. Depending on how many people are in your team, and what combination of abilities you have available, the way you complete a level will change and the levels themselves even change. The Temple of Osiris is well designed so that you don’t need to play as certain characters or teams just to get through it although there are the usual advantages of playing co-op. Somehow when you play solo it just doesn’t feel right especially considering all the goodies that become out of reach.
Each character has four weapon slots, two rings, an amulet and a costume to equip. There are plenty of rings and amulets to collect and each one makes a noticeable difference to your character. You might have an increased bomb radius at the expense of defence or an increased fire rate at the expense of bomb radius; for example. It becomes a balancing act of trying to find an accessory that has a negative effect on something you’re willing to sacrifice but improves something you want. There are so many combinations that you rarely stop swapping things out and upgrading. There’s a moment were the idea of grinding out temples and earning gems with your co-op partner to earn all those lovely prizes seems like you’ll be playing forever.
There’s a methodical, if not completely unimaginative, design to Temple of Osiris that means you’ll need to raid various tombs and find all the pieces of Osiris, his hand or a foot for example, until you can put him together again. Hopefully then he can take the curse away. It’s not clever or original but for Temple of Osiris it gets the job done. For each ‘main’ temple you’ll often find a puzzle temple which offers up rewards like new guns and a bunch of gems which is more than enough incentive to find them and complete them. But they’re pretty easy and often you’ll spend little to no time figuring out the challenges in them.
For example you might need to blow up a wall using the Ancient Egyptian Big Round Bomb Dispenser™ and a labyrinth of man made streams to divert it to the right place. There’s some nice teamwork involved but (apart from the time it didn’t work) we rarely spent long in the puzzle tombs. It would have been nice to have a decent challenge or at least something mentally taxing but they still provide a reasonable distraction.
Better yet would be some variation other than rolling around balls that either explode or function as keys that fit into cylindrical slots. I can only assume it’s a link to Egyptian myth but it’s difficult not to feel like your rolling around balls of dung for a living at some points. The core mechanics of Temple of Osiris are solid, relying on puling leavers moving objects into place and standing on platforms among other things. There is a solid base on which Temple of Osiris is founded but its uncomplicated and relatively simple puzzling can be a let down. The absence of a script to translate, or something that justifies some extra secrets to find is also surprising. One secret collectable in each area would have added some welcome intrigue and mystery.
Action is well spaced out between exploring the tombs. There is a multiplier system which doesn’t get in the way but gives you a nice reason not to repeatedly get hit and/or die. Once you’ve unlocked a few weapons you’ll undoubtedly find ‘the gun for you’. Every weapon but the character’s default will use a blue bar representing ammo that can be replenished from enemy drops or fixed pickups. After a short time I stopped using the default weapon religiously and started making real use of the ammo consumers. There’s something strangely satisfying about being an Egyptian god running around with dual MP5s.
Unfortunately I there’s a stiffness to the combat that stopped it from becoming a glorious ballet of left and right thumbsticks. It never hindered the gameplay as such but the combat just didn’t feel as fluid as it could have done. I never felt as connected with my characters movement in a way that something like Dead Nation allows, walking forward flicking the light on your gun from left to right like a member of SWAT. But the controls are responsive enough that you can get your character to do what you want and I never felt let down by a lack of responsiveness.
There are quite a few moments when the combat becomes a tedious engagement of enemies that run at you, usually on fire, as you work in tandem with a friend to take down another enemy with a shield, all the time avoiding the environmental traps. I didn’t feel I had the mobility I wanted when dealing with those combat scenarios. Sometimes it isn’t a problem, other times you lose your combo and die which is just plain irritating.
The Temple of Osiris does exactly what you’d expect. It’s too short and more often than not too easy with combat that is nothing more than a bit of fun. But somehow it kept me coming back, if only for a little while. There’s a decent loot system that allows you to feel like your character is developing as you raid your way through all the Tombs you can. For a PSN title The Temple of Osiris is exactly what you expect and is a great bit of fun for an easy distraction filled with puzzles. In the couch co-op arena there are few better than Temple of Osiris.
