In the beginning there was Indiana Jones… but no matter how cool Indy was, he was soon forgotten once Lara Croft first appeared in Tomb Raider. By today’s standards the game was awful – low resolution textures, blocky environments, a retarded camera system and triangular breasts (which we all still drooled over nevertheless, right?). The game spawned a legacy that is still alive and kicking today, though only a few selected titles in the series were any good. With the recent jumpstart the franchise got with TR: Legend and 2007 being the 10th anniversary of the series the news that the original game would be remade caused quite the uproar amongst fans. Was the uproar warranted?

Nothing like the previous titles

The thing that made TR: Legend so great was that it was almost nothing like the previous titles. This sounds kind of ironic, but nobody in their right mind would consider the original concept to be good in today’s gaming world. The game introduced new controls which not only made it way more forgiving but also made exploration more fun. Some might say that the spirit of Tomb Raider was lost by doing that, but what good is keeping the spirit intact when you can’t enjoy the game because of it.

Porting the new controls into a 10 year old title wasn’t a piece of cake, especially considering the original game focused on platforming and exploration unlike Legend which was more action oriented. I’m still not sure how exactly the authors did it, but Anniversary plays just as good as Legend did, if not even better. The Prince of Persia like controls fit the tomb exploration theme perfectly and after a few hours of playing you’ll start asking yourself why Legend didn’t focus more on this aspect of tomb raiding.

The story in Anniversary is… well, the same as it was 10 years ago. The sparse in-game cinematics portray Lara as a daring tomb explorer and don’t touch her background at all. In fact, the story is barely existent, but you’ll barely notice that. Oddly enough Lara doesn’t comment on her surrounding anymore either, so you are left with a very limited journal (which is surprisingly enough voiced over) that gives you hints on how to progress.

Cartwheel through a series of traps

It’s not often that a game manages to strike the perfect gameplay balance and remain enjoyable even though you are doing the same 3 things over and over again throughout the entire length of the game. In this case the 3 things are platform jumping, animal killing and puzzle solving. The first is a mix of the new Legend controls with the huge tombs and temples found in the first Tomb Raider. Because of the more fluid controls the remade levels aren’t exact copies of the originals, though the authors did their best to keep the flow of each level intact. Fans of the first game might recognize some of the locations, though more often than not the similarities are found only in the way you have to pass a certain obstacle and not in the appearance of the locale. While I wasn’t convinced this was the best way to go at first I soon realized that the old level design had some serious flaws that would be even more apparent with the improved graphics the game has. For example, while square blocks sticking out of the wall made sense back then it would be a bit hard to explain a 1 ton block levitating hundreds of feet about the ground (especially when located in a crumbling temple). Outside of changes like these the levels didn’t change much. They are generally more open and you’ll see the clear blue sky quite often, something that was a rare occurrence 10 years ago.

While all the jumping and hanging on the edges works extremely well it doesn’t take long before it becomes second nature. You’ll be able to spot crevices you can grab and fragile spots with ease, so even though the occasional jump does end with Lara falling into the depths of a bottomless pit, you’ll mostly have no trouble staying alive. That is, until a huge bear attacks you or a crazed T-Rex decides to spice up his raptor-based diet. Back in the original TR it was possible to survive such encounters by just jumping around like mad and letting the automatic targeting do the rest. The approach still works in Anniversary, though it is not nearly as fool-proof as it was. Except for the larger enemies you’ll usually face entire packs of animals, so aimlessly jumping around usually ends up with Lara getting cornered. Due to the somewhat rigid camera it is also near impossible to jump-strafe around the foes. Usually the best way to handle an encounter is to find a high spot which your hunters can’t reach and finish them off one at a time. Hardly an ideal approach, but it works.

That leaves us with puzzles. The later Tomb Raider games introduced puzzles that required more than just block pushing or lever pulling. Unfortunately most of those ideas didn’t make it into Anniversary. When entering a new room you usually only have a few possible ways of progress (only one at a time though). The first and most common one is to jump/crawl/swing over a series of chasms, grab a few ledges and move on. The next is finding an item (or several items) that can be found somewhere in the room or in the adjacent halls (which often turn out to be entire “levels”). With the item in your backpack you’ll usually be able to unlock a door or trigger a mechanism which will allow you to progress. The last trick the game has up its sleeve are levers/buttons. I personally didn’t miss them in Legend and am still not too thrilled with their return, but alas, here they are. Most of the time these levers function just like items, so you only have to climb/swim/cartwheel through a series of traps to get to them, activate them and then move through the newly opened doors. Unfortunately sometimes the levers are timed, so getting to them is only part of the problem. I never was a fan of such timed sections, but thankfully the time frame given usually allows a few mistakes to be made.

Depth-of-field blur took a leave of absence

Graphically the game looks years better than the original did (well duuh!!!). Unfortunately it doesn’t look much better than Legend did. In fact, some of the very nice next-gen effect Legend had are nowhere to be found. Depth-of-field blur took a leave of absence as did all the bump-mapped textures found in the previous title. Generally speaking the environments aren’t as detailed as they were in Legend and Lara lost some (polygonal) weight. On the bright side the performance is improved and the next-gen effects (what little there is left of them) aren’t limited to pixel shader 3.0 enabled cards anymore.

Where the graphics of the game took only a slight hit compared to Legend the audio front didn’t fare so well. Music is now limited to combat tunes and the occasional chord or two that play when you enter a new area. As mentioned before Lara has become strangely quiet and will only mutter the occasional *oomph* when catching onto a ledge (she still screams like mad when falling to her doom though). At least the environmental sound effects still rock and standing near a waterfall feels like the real thing, save for the mandatory water in the air (a humidifier comes to mind).

Conclusion

Out of all the games this reviewer has played in his lifetime the original Tomb Raider still holds a place at the top of the favorites list. With Anniversary the authors didn’t just take the original and slapped on some pretty graphics, but decided to pay a tribute to the father (or should that be mother?) of dungeon exploration games. The new levels play and feel like the originals, but with all the extra work that went into them they are a fresh experience as well. For the masochists the authors even included the option to play the game with auto-grab turned off (it works, but it makes the game frustratingly hard, just like the original). At times the game might feel like a crude mix of Legend and the original TR, but such times are few and far apart. In-between however the game feels like a refined culmination of all the made the Tomb Raider franchise so popular.

Gameplay	18/20	It’s the original Tomb Raider with all the improvements the series made packed in.
Graphics	18/20	Not as good looking as Legend, but a very close second.
Sound	16/20	The tombs sound like tombs… Unfortunately Lara is dead quiet as well.
Value	18/20	Tons of unlockable material make the game last for a while.
Multiplayer	N/A	You’ll be doing all the raiding and mansion exploration on your own.
Overall (not an average)	88/100	If you ever wanted to give the original another spin but dreaded the dated looks and rigid controls, Anniversary is just what you were looking for!