tesseract's Full Review: Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary for Windows
Remember entering that snowy cave in Peru for the first time in 1996, pistols in hand? Climbing rocky ledges, dodging poison darts, fending off wolves, and finding secrets? Ahh, those were the days. When raiding tombs was simple and pure.
Guess what? You can live those days all over again with Tomb Raider Anniversary.
If you've never played any of the Tomb Raider adventure games, there's no time like the present to get to know our intrepid heroine, Lara Croft. Long-time Tomb Raider fans who have often bemoaned that none of the sequels have ever lived up to the thrill of the original game will also have reason to celebrate. For the 10th anniversary edition of Tomb Raider, game developer Crystal Dynamics did exactly what fans have been pleading for-- a re-visit of the original game, with updated graphics and all-new puzzles and challenges. With Tomb Raider Anniversary, Crystal Dynamics achieved the perfect combination of nostalgia and freshness. Longtime fans will recognize the locations from the original game, including memorable levels like The Lost Valley, St. Francis' Folly, and Palace Midas. But familiar or not, getting through them will be an entirely new challenge. While the gameplay and level design are pure old-school, everything else is relatively modern, if not quite cutting-edge, and environments and challenges are bigger, better, prettier, and more complex, making TR Anniversary possibly the best Tomb Raider game ever.
Gameplay
Even after playing Tomb Raider Legend, the predecessor game based on the same engine, mastering some of the trickier jumps and techniques made me feel like a Tomb Raider virgin all over again. I'd almost forgotten how hard it was to learn the jump you needed to use in order to get that first secret in the first level of the original Tomb Raider. In retrospect, it seems so simple, but TR Anniversary puts advanced players through the paces all over again, forcing you to learn a new, trickier, sliding/jumping technique to get the first secret of the redesigned first level. As frustrating as it was, it made me giggle with glee to see how the new game design intentionally mirrors that of the original game while simultaneously providing completely new challenges. In fact, I giggled all the way through the Peru section, and I literally clapped my hands in childish delight when I first spied the giant staircase in St. Francis' Folly. It's just as detailed, confusing, frustrating, annoying, and plain FUN as its first incarnation!
In keeping with Anniversary's back-to-basics attitude, Lara's equipment is pared down, and she no longer carries grenades. The only weapons available are her classic infinite ammo pistols, a pair of 50-caliber pistols, a shotgun, and a pair of mini-submachine guns, which are picked up in more or less the same locations where you got them in the original game. But Lara still carries a grappling hook, and swinging/grappling challenges abound, including a few that will have you pulling out your hair in frustration. Use of the grappling hook is also an integral part of solving many of the puzzles, as there are many objects that can only be moved by grappling onto them and hauling. Crystal Dynamics wisely dumped a couple of equipment limitations that were present in Legend: you can now carry all the available weapons without having to choose which gun to take with you (although you're still limited in how much ammo you can carry for each one), and you can carry unlimited health packs again. That's good, because combat is much more challenging than in the past even without these limitations.
As with the original, the emphasis here is on adventuring rather than combat. Jumping, climbing, swinging, delving, solving puzzles, finding secrets, and figuring out how to move on to the next level is the meat of the game, and enemies are relatively few. When you do encounter enemies, they're often clustered, but there's also frequently a way to take them out from a safe spot without risking your own hide. A few of the combat sequences force you to mix it up melee style, and then things can get hairy. Although Lara can jump, flip and roll away from attacks, it's much more difficult to avoid an attack using acrobatics than ever before, and if you're hit, you get knocked down, leaving you vulnerable while you try to get back up and ready your weapon again. The hand-to-hand moves from Legend are absent, so keeping your distance is a must. Many of the wild animals can grab Lara's arm or leg in their teeth if they get close and then Lara's a goner unless she can break free. A new combat feature, and one that I found quite difficult to learn, is Adrenaline Dodge, which requires Lara to dive out of the way of a charging enemy or be knocked down. A successful dodge gives you a chance at a critical shot. As difficult as it is, it's also essential to winning the boss fights.
The boss fights are one factor Crystal Dynamics still hasn't gotten right, in my opinion. They're extremely difficult, and require very specific techniques to get through them, but they're depressingly boring and repetitive once you figure them out. I personally have no earthly idea how one is supposed to figure out the secret technique necessary for winning each fight without going to a walkthrough, and even after you know the secret, accomplishing it can still be prohibitively difficult and annoying. I lost patience with them quickly, and I'll confess that cheats and downloaded savegames were the only things that got me through.
The reward system is similar to that used in Legend, except that you have two levels of reward (Artifact and Relic) instead of three (Bronze, Silver and Gold). Artifacts are relatively easy to find, and there are usually several on each level. Relics are rare, hard to find and even harder to obtain, and each one is unique and will be put on display in the trophy case at Croft Manor once you get it. All rewards are tied to bonus content, including art galleries, commentaries, character bios, and outfits. The one type of extra content that isn't tied to rewards is cheats, which are unlocked by completing levels in Time Trial mode. If you don't get all the rewards the first time through a level, the game is designed to allow you to replay previous levels while still remembering where you are in your overall progress through the game. But you must finish that entire section of the game before you can replay any of the levels in it.
Controls
The Crystal Dynamics game engine, the basis of this game and its predecessor Tomb Raider Legend, makes the high-precision jumping and grabbing of the older TR games largely a thing of the past, which is a great thing. There's no more walking to the edge of a ledge, jumping back, and then running at it to make sure you have the jump lined up perfectly. But jumping in Anniversary seems to be a little more persnickety than it was in Legend, and there were a few spots where I had to try several times to make certain jumps. Anniversary retains the saving grab feature introduced in Legend, which blends more forgiving jumps with an extra element of challenge when you try for really long jumps, but there were very few occasions where I had to use it.
Another element of challenge added in Legend but under-used in Anniversary, in my opinion, is quickly tapping the Action key to speed up Lara's movement. Both Legend and Anniversary make heavy use of shimmying along ledges and jumping from ledge to ledge, and in Legend, many of the ledges were unstable and crumbled seconds after you jumped to them, forcing you to hustle in order to avoid a fall. These types of challenges are rare in Anniversary, making the game a little easier. Instead, Anniversary adds many ledges that move, either sliding downward as soon as you put weight on them, or swinging on a hinge, which restores some of that challenge. Although the direction keys are still tied to the camera angle, which can lead to some awkwardness when you change directions rapidly, it's not nearly as big a problem as it was in Legend, because there aren't as many situations where you have to turn and jump quickly. The exception is a new wall-running technique using the grappling hook, which requires careful management of the camera angle, and still results in Lara jumping in the wrong direction at the end of the wall run about 60% of the time.
As with Legend, the single most irritating control feature continues to be the checkpoint-style save/load interface. For the most part, the checkpoint system works fine, providing an automatic quicksave and preventing you from accidentally quicksaving in a terrible spot. There is usually a checkpoint set at the end of each difficult challenge. But occasionally, most notably in the Coliseum level, there are some quite tricky spots in the middle of lengthy jumping/climbing/grappling sequences where you could really use a checkpoint, but there's not one set, so every time you fall, you have to start over from the very beginning.
The other annoying part of the save/load interface is that there's no easy way to reload the last checkpoint if Lara's still alive. If you die, the game will automatically load the last checkpoint, but if you fall and only get hurt, the only way to reload is to either kill yourself, or quit the game and then resume from the title screen. The fringe benefit of the checkpoint system is that if Lara's health is low, you can simply kill yourself as soon as you hit a checkpoint. When the checkpoint reloads, Lara will be back to full health with no medipacks used up.
Ambiance
Graphics are excellent, but are not noticeably improved over Legend, which isn't a big surprise, considering how quickly Crystal Dynamics cranked out Anniversary after releasing Legend. When Lara moves and changes direction too quickly for the computer to keep up, it does a blur-vision effect for a half-second or so while it catches up instead of just generating choppy output.
Textures, atmospheric effects, and animations are all nice, although in some places, the repeating square grid of the textures is all too obvious. The environments are lushly detailed. As usual, I have to give kudos for the detail that went into building Lara's model. You can see the texture of the weave of her tank top, the grain of the wood on the shotgun handle, and every detail of her holsters and boots. I love how Lara picks up smudges of dirt as you progress through levels, shakes water off herself after you go swimming, and stops to fan herself or retie her bootlace occasionally if you leave her alone too long.
I'm happy to report that the original Tomb Raider theme is back, in an updated version, and so is the original ambient sound/music style of the game, restoring the ethos of the first Tomb Raider admirably. The eerie whispers of ancient ghosts literally gave me shivers as I tiptoed through the sand-choked halls of the Temple of Khamoon. Sound effects are nice, too. Lara's boots crunch realistically on the snow of the Peru levels, and bridges and ropes creak ominously as they bear her weight.
What's Cool
Once again, Croft Manor provides a self-contained mini-level with its own objectives, secrets and rewards. And this time, you get to explore some of the grounds outside, including the extensive hedge maze. Because TR Anniversary is set earlier in time than TR Legend, you also get to see certain features, such as the pool room, under construction. But one function Croft Manor doesn't really fill anymore is a tutorial. Although you can practice your acrobatic moves in the gym, there's no opportunity to practice combat moves, and they really require practice this time around.
The interactive cut scenes from Legend are back, but they're not used as extensively here.
Lara's annoying support team is gone, thank goodness. It's just Lara the way she prefers to be... alone in a dark and dangerous place, with only her own wits to rely on.
Lara's acrobatic ability is more spectacular than ever, and if you're really dedicated and have some time to kill, you can have her doing handspring/flip/cartwheel combinations for miles.
What's Not
One of my favorite levels from the original game, The Cistern, has been compressed and combined with the Tomb of Tihocan, turning both into something much less complex than the original. Other players report hating that section of the original game, which may explain why, but I was looking forward to the new Cistern level, and I found it somewhat disappointing.
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