Tomb Raider: Anniversary
Score: 93% ESRB: Teen Publisher: Eidos Interactive Developer: Crystal Dynamics Media: UMD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Action/ Third Person Shooter/ Platformer (3D)
Graphics & Sound: Tomb Raider Anniversary is a very appropriate title for this game to my reckoning. It was just ten years ago that I purchased my first game system and booted up a game. Of course, it was Tomb Raider. I played a lot of games on PlayStation after that, but Lara Croft will always occupy a special place in my gamer's heart. My wife and I celebrate our tenth anniversary this year so you can bet she was there for the action. I remember her looking really good back then. I'm talking about Lara Croft - my wife still looks amazing, if you were wondering. The reality is that today's Lara looks a lot better than the Lara of 1997. Even on a small scale, everything about Tomb Raider Anniversary looks and sounds and plays better than the original. The graphics aren't a huge departure from last year's Legend, but they have improved in some ways. The really neat thing is how Tomb Raider Anniversary manages to remake the original and still be original. There are unlockable promo images that will blow your mind as you play through the game and collect artifacts or relics. Were we really so naive in 1997? The Lara of then is a far sight from the Lara of now. Most of us can't achieve better skin without Botox treatments, but Lara seems to have slimmed and smoothed over the years. Her figure is much more lithe and her motions are sometimes so seductive that you'll blush. I could spend a lot more time talking about unlocking cool costumes and original game art without even getting to sound and music. There are few things that can make or break an immersive gaming experience more quickly than good music. Good sound is rare but almost always tends to push a good game into greatness if handled correctly. Think about Myst and other games that built entire puzzles with sound and music. Tomb Raider Anniversary doesn't take things quite that far, but it does offer some great soundscapes throughout the game. There are appropriate changes in the music to match the action on the screen and there are some nice foreshadowing techniques through sound effects that increase tension. Lara's voiceover is perfect and one of the best things I remember from the original game. Once you beat a level and collect enough goodies, you'll also unlock commentary spots in that level. It is amazing that this hasn't been included in games before now, considering the popularity of director and actor commentaries on DVD. In Tomb Raider Anniversary, you can listen to the game's creators talking about various aspects of the game's design from both the 1997 and the 2007 perspective. This and the other unlockable content offer great reasons to replay and find all the hidden goodies.
Gameplay: The story of the original game was a nice one because it really showcased Lara Croft as a strong and complex woman. Lara has deep connections to her family and is intent on solving a mystery involving a strange artifact that her father coveted. The mystery even involves Lara's mother in some way. Meanwhile there are other parties interested in finding the artifact before Lara and there are (of course) strange mystical forces involved. The original Tomb Raider appealed to those of us weaned on Indiana Jones, but it also carried a huge amount of sex appeal by way of Ms. Croft. None of this would have mattered if the gameplay wasn't right - it was then and it is even more so now. The fact that Lara Croft explored tombs was not really as interesting as the way in which she explored them. Unlike a typical maze game, there was a sense of depth and space in Tomb Raider. The remake goes even further into expanding the environments by virtue of the powerful PSP hardware. Teetering on a pole above a raging river or above a wolf gnashing his teeth is actually a bit scary thanks to some very immersive environments and graphics. The quality of the first game's puzzles are retained and improved in Tomb Raider Anniversary. The satisfaction of navigating the many jumps, grabs, slides, and shimmies of each level is immense. Each puzzle takes some brainpower but usually revolves around collecting an item or items necessary to trip a switch and open a door. Other puzzles are more about how Lara could get from one place to another using some very strenuous moves. Jumping from ledges, grabbing other ledges, shimmying up poles and balancing on them at times... Some of these are new moves and many were part of the original game. It is easy to remember how frustrating it could be to fall and die and have to replay large chunks of the game. This was partly a function of the game's save system. In Tomb Raider Anniversary, you can save at any point and retain all your work up to the previous checkpoint. There are frequent checkpoints that alleviate any frustration. This isn't to say that some of the puzzles don't feel overly hard, but practice does make perfect. The gist of the game is to collect items and you'll need all your wits about you in order to solve some of the puzzles within the game. When enemies stand in your way, you'll have to take them out. This often requires tact and skill since most all the enemies are bigger and more powerful than you. Load times are minimal and the environments are huge. There are plenty of opportunities to explore and even solve some of the larger puzzles in different sequences. Special collectables unlock game content and these range from well hidden to virtually invisible. Replaying to beat a time or find a particularly obscurely placed relic or artifact is easy to do from the Main Menu. You can also explore Croft Manor, which was where all of us spent time learning the game originally.
Difficulty: Even with excellent placement of checkpoints and the option to save anywhere, this is a damned hard game. In places like Greece, where Lara arrives in the first half of the game, opportunities to fall to certain death are many and frequent. If you can relax and embrace the "fail forward" methodology, you'll have a grand time. If you are the type that doesn't like spending a lot of time lining up jumps and nailing just...the...right sequence of button presses, this isn't for you. Enemies and bosses are equally challenging. If the level of difficulty keeps knocking you down, you may want to dial down the entire game's difficulty setting. This seems to have an effect on how long enemies endure and how forgiving some of the game's punishments are to Lara's health. Veteran gamers can even dial the difficulty up, so there's something here for everyone.
Game Mechanics: There are a wide range of controls here for moving, jumping, shooting, grappling, climbing, swimming... Do you get any sense this is an action game? I think we all can relate to how the original Tomb Raider spoiled us for motion. When Metal Gear hit shelves and poor Snake couldn't lift his feet off the ground unless he was climbing a ladder, we secretly wished he had Lara's moves. Who would want her moves? Nobody but Crash Bandicoot has more bounce. The animation of all the moves is incredibly fluid once you get the hang of the controls. The only complaint you'll have is how the sensitivity sometimes leads to false-triggering a jump when you really don't want to jump. Nailing the correct direction for some of the reverse jumps is also tricky. Moves like the pole-climb and Lara's ability to balance on the top of a pole are neat additions to the catalog of moves she's had before. The only problem with reverse-jumping as you do on the pole is that you sometimes end up with unintuitive moves where you are pushing forward to jump backwards because the camera has you looking at Lara's front-side. If it sounds confusing it actually gets more intuitive as you play. The idea of having the camera create the context for jumps is cool and helps keep the game flexible. It doesn't always make jumps as predictable as you might like. The only downside to Tomb Raider Anniversary is that it is a solo journey. Online content isn't available and it's a shame. Something like the training levels that we saw as additional content for Metal Gear or the add-on tracks that Wip3Out offered would have really pushed this classic up a notch. Ironic that a previous Tomb Raider game stole the "Legend" title, because Tomb Raider Anniversary is really the anniversary of the birth of a legendary figure and franchise in gaming. There have been some less than stellar moments in Lara's history after the first game, but this marks a triumphant return. Doubters will have to eat crow and loyal fans have something enduring that they can add to their gaming shelf much like Lara would add a rare relic to her home museum. Enjoy!
-Fridtjof, GameVortex Communications AKA Matt Paddock
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