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Lara Croft is back in fine form. Last year's Tomb Raider: Legend showed fans that they should know better than count Lara out. Crystal Dynamics took reign of the series and ended up making the most solid Tomb Raider in recent memory. Tomb Raider: Anniversary ultimately succeeds because it successfully modernizes Lara's first adventure while giving fans more of what they liked in Legend.
Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a retelling of Lara Croft's first journey. The game introduces you to the character and immediately throws you into her quest to find the Scion of the Atlantis while making sure Jacqueline Natlas is kept at bay. This means you'll again travel to familiar locations like Egypt, Peru and Greece while solving puzzles amidst the ruins and taking out the occasional enemy or two.
What makes Anniversary so great is that even though we're replaying through a familiar story in familiar locations, Crystal Dynamics has more or less used the engine that powered Legend. This means that we have a more agile, capable Lara Croft than we did when the game first launched. For instance, cheap deaths are largely avoided since Lara will grab onto edges and try to pick herself up. Everything from the jumping, swimming, climbing, and swinging all feel natural.
Because this is technically a remake of Tomb Raider, the game is much more focused on puzzles than more recent games in the series. Anniversary often makes you fight against your environment and figure out how to get Lara to a certain location, though the actual puzzles are the familiar key- and switch-based puzzles we're used to. Completing these puzzles is made slightly more difficult by the presence of gorillas, tigers, raptors and bears that try to devour Lara. Combat is simple yet effective and largely revolves around basic gunplay. That said, Crystal Dynamics did implement an adrenaline move that lets you slow down time and attack enemies fiercely.
As mentioned above, Anniversary is based off the Tomb Raider: Legend engine. Lara's character model has been updated to look even more proportional though the animation system is splendid and really brings the various acrobatics to life. The various tombs you'll raid are all quite large and detailed. It's striking to see the new areas compared to the original game, because although you can see the influence, Anniversary is miles ahead of the original game in graphics. The game looks better on the PC where it doesn't have the same jaggies that you'll find in the PS2 version and generally higher-resolution textures.
The great presentation carries over to the game's audio. The game's soundtrack is calming although it does pick up from time to time. The sound effects are largely made up of Lara's grunts, though the ambient environmental effects help bring the game to life.
With Tomb Raider: Anniversary Crystal Dynamics has successfully updated one of 3D gaming's first classics. It combines everything we loved about the original with the modern gameplay mechanics of Legend. -- Jake Wilson, PGNx Media
---- Jul 3, 2007
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