by David Kamikaze

Created on: March 01, 2010   Last Updated: March 02, 2010

You know, some games are very confusing. Some go on and on with little to no artistic or entertainment value, some are amazing and do not sell at all and some sell huge quantities on the back of the promise of a little jiggle and bounce. Tomb Raider an example of the latter, for years the series has marched on without changing, making only minor changes to the proceedings and inflating Lara Croft's enormous... ahem... ego exponentially. No, I really did mean ego. Honest.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary (hereby abbreviated to TR:A) is a peculiar title - it's new, but it's not new. It's a remake of the original game, with new level designs to take advantage of the technology that wasn't available 11 years ago, when Lara was a fresh young face in the world and men slapped posters of her all over their bedroom walls and girls dressed up as her. Hmm... maybe not so much has changed... Anyhow. The first thing to get out of the way is this; TR:A is easily the best Tomb Raider of the series since the first one. But then it is the first one. Sort of. Oh dear, this is going to get a little convoluted...

The first thing to say about TR:A is just how much of it is instantly familiar, despite the new design. Traditional frights are now boss battles, with clever mechanics woven in to even out the score a bit, and St. Francis' Folly - a real high point in the original - is instantly recognisable, and the huge shaft of the four Greek characters brings back heady reminders of how one mistake meant a plummet of doom. And yet, it's all fresh and new, with new ways around it - with more forgiving mechanics for grabbing things, environmental tricks to pull off to even fights and guide the way and more logic put into the puzzles - it is like playing it again, for the first time. See, this is getting messy.

Thankfully, the aspects of TR:A focus far more on the adventure than the combat - which, to Crystal Dynamics' credit, is much more polished, but joyously a secondary aspect to the game. TR:A goes out of it's way to make the adventuring that much more refined, with plenty of secrets and little bits to poke about in and explore - this it does, to a very great extent, but in doing so they've once again fallen into the trap that even Prince of Persia fell into. The whole thing is a little too easy now, which is a shame, but it's a massive game so it does balance it out somewhat. Everything is a little TOO obvious, and a little too much mollycoddling is used in places and this is nowhere

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