Honestly, it doesn’t seem like ten years have passed since the first Tomb Raider game. Yet, thinking back over my gaming career, I can’t really remember when the iconic archaeologist/adventurer wasn’t part of it. Video games were made for Lara Croft and her puzzle/physical adventures.
To celebrate the longevity of the series – in books, comics, movies, and other media – Eidos commissioned Crystal Dynamics, the same developer who gave us Tomb Raider: Legend, a game I absolutely loved because you could do so many different things with Lara and the visuals were a lot more stunning than anything we’d seen by Core Design.
I don’t want to take anything away from Core Design, though. They did create one of the most iconic video game heroines ever conceived. Combining action sequences with puzzles, archaeologist Lara Croft became an overnight success and was on everyone’s lips when it first came out. She went on to star in movies, comics, and paperback novels, as well as action figures, tee shirts, and posters.
I have to admit to mixed feelings with Tomb Raider: Anniversary, though. I wanted another full-blown game like Tomb Raider: Legend, filled with stuff – action as well as archaeological history and sites – that I hadn’t seen before. Sadly, Tomb Raider: Legend even looks better than this remake. So we’re still not getting as good a quality as we did on the last game.
Instead, Crystal Dynamics delivers what is essentially a reboot of the first game. Familiarity breeds contempt, they say, and I’m a big believer in that.
Even though some of the game play is smoother and you get to perform different actions (such as the pole-swinging made famous in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time), there’s just not enough new content to feel like you’re getting a great buy. The game engine is the same one that was used in Tomb Raider: Legend.
I wanted a new story, a new villain, and a new set of puzzles to solve along with Lara. In addition to that, even though some of the “worlds” within the game were made more compact for greater ease of play, they still remain problematic. In the “Lost Valley” sequence with the slides and the jumping, I ended up having to go through a lot of the same game play over and over because I couldn’t quite get the hang of one of the jumps.
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