Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition

November 5,2007 - After being released on the PC, PS2, and PSP, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary now makes its way to the Xbox 360. This “Anniversary” version of Tomb Raider is basically a remake of the original ‘96game, but what makes this remake so intriguing is that it was built from the ground up using the same engine present in Tomb Raider: Legend. This leads us to believe that there’ll be lots of beautiful looking environments, great action adventure gameplay to go along with them and a whole lot more control over Lara Croft than from some of the pre LCTR: Legend games.

If this is your first time playing through the original title, you might want to know what’s going on with Lara. She’s been hired by a rich woman to find a missing mythical object called the Scion of Atlantis and bring it back so its secrets can be revealed. Hot on her heels, though, are some shady characters looking to retrieve the artifact before Lara.

This dangerous mission takes our heroine all over the world through a number of interesting settings like, Peru, Egypt and Greece. These environments certainly are very pleasant to look at from afar but when you get up close you’ll notice that all the textures are flat. So graphically, they’re not exactly equal to Legend’s environments but, there are still enough nice little features to make up for the lack of detail in this title’s back drops. For instance, when Lara gets her feet wet the water left on her skin will have a light shine to it. The higher resolution in the game is definitely a plus and so is the lighting but, the lighting has its drawbacks. Sometimes when you move into a lighted area or if a number of things are going on at once the frame rate will drop in and out, which can be pretty annoying.

The game’s audio also helps make things a bit more convincing enough, allowing you to feel as if the environment is living and breathing. Ambient noises are found in and out of the tombs, like running or dripping water. Animal calls can also be heard. They’re usually from a distance but, sometimes these calls can be used to determine if danger is nearby.

Speaking of danger, it takes a variety forms here in Tomb Raider. You’ll be attacked by a number of different creatures such as wolves, bears, tigers, and dinosaurs. Encounters with these enemies leads to fairly decent gun fights that feature a simple lock on system and the addition of the adrenaline dodge makes things a bit more interesting. At certain moments when your enemy is in a rage Lara can dodge their oncoming attack and go into bullet time. During this time two crosshairs will slowly come together over your enemy’s head. If you pull the trigger at the right moment while the crosshairs are together you’ll execute a headshot killing or seriously injuring that enemy.

Your number one enemy however, won’t be the surrounding wildlife. Many times you’ll find it to be the environment. Tombs house many booby traps and the presence of gravity will probably cause you all sorts of trouble. Lara will fall to her death a number of times, either by coming up short on a jump or not hitting a certain button at the right time if Lara loses her grip. This was first introduced in Legend and gave a more immersive feel to all the climbing and acrobatic gameplay and that’s one thing Anniversary doesn’t fall short on. You’ll be able to shimmy along ledges, jump from one vertical pole to the other, swing from rope to rope, and so on. All of this will come naturally and feel satisfying thanks to how solid the acrobatic gameplay is.

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned yet is the huge puzzles the series is also known for. You’ll find that to move to the next area you’ll have to pull a lever to open up a gate to move on. The problem is to get to that lever you’ll have to scale a huge wall, and then jump from a ledge onto a moving gear that brings you to switch that’s timed; you get the picture. All these environmental puzzles are challenging but not to the point where you’ll want to crack the game disc in half.

All in all, everything pretty much meets our expectations. Again, this remake of the original is based on the engine found in Legend, but really could have used more from it. It’s absolutely worth playing because it’s fun and actually better than the original Tomb Raider. It’s really worth a buy only for those who wish to spend more than 20 hours trying collect everything and get 100% completion.

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