Handheld Wars Week 29 - Tomb Raider Legend

A Crystal Dynamics platformer of Lara Croft on Game Boy Advance! Sign me up. It looks like a lot of fun, I don't care how powerful are the PSP or DS versions.

They both suffer from typical Nintendo version downgrades, lagging at least a generation behind the regular versions of the game, thankfully in the case Legend and Underworld for DS specifically (unlike the war crime that is the GBA version) they both manage to be enjoyable games on their own, as at least some effort was put into their development.

If you can find either or both cheap enough I'd say they're worth getting.

I'm looking for them myself but sadly the prices are far too high for both here (Underworld I can find one place that sells cartridge only for an almost okay price, if they just have one minor sale/discount on it I'll order it).

Cervantes They're very similar overall, they use the same game engine and share most of the same gameplay elements, they're both semi-on-rail 2.5D style games.

One of the few bigger differences is the shooting mechanic, where in Legend, as you mentioned, it's a poke-the-screen-to-shoot-the-bad-guys minigame type of deal. Thankfully it's quite easy to do, at least early in the game, I don't know how much harder it gets later on as I've never played through either game on DS, but it felt more like an attempt to add an element of action than a true shooting skill challenge in Legend.

The shooting action in Underworld is integrated into the regular gameplay in a more common and normal way and as a result is far less intrusive.
I personally prefer the way Underworld does it as I'm not a fan of touch screen or motion controls in general, especially not the resistive type that DS and 3DS has, I prefer capacitive over resistive.

Then there are the dedicated motorcycle levels in Legend that weren't in Underworld.

I haven't played far enough in Underworld on DS to get to the parts where you used a motorcycle in the regular version of the game, but I think they may have removed it entirely in the DS version as I've never seen screens or footage of anyone using the motorcycle in the respective level on DS.

Indeed, it's a straight up 1:1 port of the console/pc version.

It only really had two compromises to make such a feat possible:

1. the graphics took a minor hit with some lower res textures in some places and fairly common but relatively minor framerate drops, though ultimately nothing that changed the experience from the rest of the console/PC versions as some of those also have low res textures in places and framerate issues

2. the controls have been modified ever so slightly to make up for the lack of a second analog stick for camera control, instead it's been given a button assigned to it that you have to hold down when you wanna move the camera, the rest is the same

Having played through it on PSP and most of the console/pc versions (I lack the GameCube port, though I have played it before), and in some cases literally side by side making direct comparisons, I can honestly say those two minor changes didn't matter in the slightest to me and the experience was virtually identical from beginning to end.

If anything it was in favor of the PSP as it's the only port of the normal version that isn't tied to a TV/monitor and allows for continued play while on the move, so when I had to stop playing the other version I could keep playing on PSP no problem. That's a pretty unbeatable benefit for the PSP to say the least, it literally leaves the rest behind.