Tomb Raider Anniversary

Very few games are ever remade, and the ones that are rarely are done justice. Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a solid, well-made interpretation of the original, but ultimately hasn’t gotten the same polish and love put into it as the original, or Tomb Raider Legends for that matter.

When you first boot up the game, you may ask yourself as Lara poses her nearly naked body on the snow-laden cliffs of Peru, “why is she wearing short shorts in below freezing weather?” Ah, my ignorant friend, welcome to the world of sexually provocative, female exploitation! And don’t you start thinking they could have sold this game any other way (Geez…).

Criticism aside, what made the first game great was its sense of atmosphere and engaging puzzles and all of that is retained in the 360 game. The developers made a good move not to recreate the original piece by piece; but instead opted to reinterpret it, taking all of the new moves we expect Lara to have and incorporating those into the level design. The puzzles are generally fairly explanatory using the traditional ledge, pole, or moveable box for most of the early cave puzzles.

The gameplay is relatively tight, and as good as Tomb Raider Legends’. Lara is at least not as stilted as her character was in the original and it doesn’t take 15 minutes for her to wobble a 360-degree turn. Moving and jumping is nimble and precisely tuned to the analog stick, close to Prince of Persia, which is something the later Lara Croft adventures have done a good job in correcting.

The graphics really are the weak link in this remake. While the art design is well done and similar to Twilight Princess, the graphics sadly rival that of the latest Zelda game and feature little if any Next Generation bells and whistles. Strangely, all of the levels have pale, flat textures that look like straight ports from the PS2 game. Cavernous walkways feature none of the glimmering texture work evident in early Xbox 360 games, like Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, and enemy models barely can be considered last generation.

Even though this buxom babe animates well, her frame rate is prone to stop and stutter as often as you make her jump ... which is a lot. Her own polygons are the best of the game, but only feature a slight polish.

The camera is still as broken as ever, sadly. Sometimes, when dangling over a bottomless pit, the camera won’t even show you where you should be jumping to next. Occasionally it will back out and frame the whole scene for you, but this is a rarity. Another flaw is the horrible A.I. The animals literally are only programmed to attack you, and that is it. On one occasion towards the beginning of the game, I came upon a pack of wolves, so I naturally shot them. Immediately they took off running – away from me! Then they froze against a wall and I killed them both. Maybe it was a glitch, but generally the animal A.I. is laughably bad. And easy too – rarely will you have a problem gunning them down with only your pistols.

The environments are made well and do convey a great sense of atmosphere from a distance, but up close you are quickly reminded that it is merely a video game, a ported game at that. And not to judge a game by its water, but the H2O in this game is rendered a little better than the original. Ok, it’s not that bad, but the ripples are choppy and feature none of the physics from Legends.

One thing that I really have to complement the developers for is the pacing. The game is constantly feeding you checkpoints, accompanied by a little “ding!,” and giving you a new area to beat. Even during the first hour of play, I felt like I had made significant progress just by the well-timed checkpoints and changeups. The game is always progressing, something most big budget titles of late would be encouraged to copy.

Gameplay: 8.0
Solidly executed gameplay make this a much more accessible platformer than the original it’s based on.

Graphics: 6.0
The graphics look almost identical to its PS2 counterpart. While the atmosphere and environments are expansive and detailed, the textures and models are all last-gen, and have a pale, darkened look to them.

Sound: 8.0
The hollow, atmospheric noises are well done, along with the occasional crescendo of a solid soundtrack.

Difficulty: Medium
The game does a good job of balancing simpler puzzles with harder, more cerebral brain teasers.

Concept: 8.5
This is a remake, but the idea of reinterpreting a game is something far too uncommon in today’s game industry, especially when movies are remade (sometimes for the better) all the time.

Overall: 7.0
Everything is good about this game except the graphics; the developers really didn’t put any effort into making this game look good at all. It looks like a straight port from the PS2 version. The $40 price point is appropriate for Anniversary, but ultimately I can’t recommend a purchase unless you’re a hardcore fan, or at least willing to look past the awful presentation.