14 DAY TRIAL // 
I'm confident there isn't one gamer on the face of the earth that hasn't heard of the luscious Lara Croft, and - if we take into account the percentage of male gamers - you can only imagine the sheer volume of fantasies spawned by this extraordinary phenomenon. Even if she started her adventure back in '96, Lara never aged a single day, making her appearance in this late title just as beautiful and appealing as ever.
I'm not sure how many of you had the curiosity to check out the new website for Tomb Raider Anniversary. Someone at Eidos had a marvelous idea of placing screenshots, artwork and concept art from all the games and I have to say that reviewing all those materials made me question my memory. As I said before, we all remember her to be a beautiful woman but if we take a look at those images, we might begin to wonder "what the hell were we thinking". All my colleagues (myself included) found the old Lara to be at least hideous and psychotic. I'm not sure how she managed to embed herself into the collective mind as the character we all remember. The only explanation is that gamers had different expectations back then and, as I'm sure you imagine, the 2007's expectations have increased exponentially.
Story I could be a little condescending and just say that Anniversary it's the reiteration of the original game, but I know that a lot of kids didn't even hear of Tomb Raider in the first grade and even if they did I don't think any of them got past her tiny shorts to remember the story and background. For many of us, the hardware possibilities in that particular age and the lack of proper age grading gave us access to our first voyeur experience. Leaving all these gory, aftermath details, Tomb Raider Anniversary is trying to solve the mystery in the last title, Legend; which is kind of weird considering that the original came out 11 years ago and Legend just surfaced last year. I don't think anyone considered the whole story in the beginning and at this point, we can easily see that it's patched from game to game.
In Tomb Raider Legend, Lara recalls an episode from her childhood when she had a plane crash and lost her mother through a weird series of coincidences and an ancient artifact. The game ended abruptly, leaving the task of finding her mother in a sequel. In Anniversary, the past hideous and presently gorgeous character finds another artifact that could shed some light on her mother's disappearance. Like any serious artifact, the Atlantean Scion is presently divided into three parts (probably because it's too powerful) and scattered in three locations: Peru, Greece and Egypt. A fourth one will conclude the story leaving us wanting for more.
Concept Even though it's built having the first one in mind, the concepts of this last game are far from the original. The human memory is quite selective and not many remember that she didn't corner very well and some jumps meant the end of many keyboards and gamepads. With all these technical limitations, Tomb Raider led the way to a new genre or better yet a subgenre as the third person shooters got a smaller brother, third person adventure, which in time has secured a special place of its own.
The goal is very simple and - unlike other games where the accent is placed on the shooting your way out of the situation - Tomb Raider has always been about exploration of mythical and hidden locations, unseen by human eye for eons. This simple exploitation of the exploration gene has made Eidos rich over the years, even if some of the titles were a little disastrous. The producers made a smart choice and again enlisted the help of its original creator Toby Gard to stop the franchise from its downward slope. Legend managed to slow down a little and once again Tomb Raider was on everybody's lips. This new edition is by far the most successful of them, all because it combines without too many problems the original atmosphere from the first games with the new technology we're experiencing today. The most important feature is by far the acrobatic puzzles which are again the main focus of the game. Sure there is some shooting involved, but it's only peripheral and captivating only when confronting a level boss. I'm sure that any fan that was dissatisfied with the previous titles will find Anniversary to be refreshing and a return to the good old days.
Gameplay She may not look too muscular but I believe she can do some one handed tractions with no problem whatsoever. This ability will be used extensively throughout the game, as the present Tomb Raider is the most intense acrobatic experience of the series. Legend only scratched the surface to what she will be able to perform in the next games and Anniversary is proof of that. Her body motion is a lot more fluid and Chrystal Dynamics inserted small additional moves like pole balancing and side jump from grappling hook.
In many ways Lara has remained the same, but the gameplay has changed somehow to reflect the new adventure oriented franchise. There won't be humans and the ones you do interact with are in some semi action cut scenes. Not only that it's not a problem, but I believe it was the right move to do as the previous game was way too crowded with dozens of guards and other obstacles that required too many bullets.
This is one of the most intriguing aspects of the game. The complete lack of human opponents or better yet computer-driven human enemies will not surprise the elderly part of the gamer population as the game stays true in most aspects to the first title in the franchise. I have to say that I would take any hostile armed with a Kalashnikov than a 600-pound gorilla that has only one single thought: tearing my beautiful character limb by limb and for heaven's sake, even take advantage of my precious Lara after I shut down the computer. The AI governing the local wildlife is not particularly bright and the pathfiding is at best mediocre. Nonetheless, the rarity of these encounters and the possibility to take them out in one single blow with an "adrenaline shot" makes these not-so-interesting parts of the game be forgotten a lot easier.
Every location seems to have been designed to reflect the mythological parallel. In Peru, we have a Mayan temple that implies a specific type of gameplay and the Greek location will surely bring back some painful memories that imply holding your breath for extended periods of time. In this manner, the producers were able to apply a certain flavor to every puzzle and level so we'll remember everything much easier the second time around.
The best part of the entire Tomb Raider experience has remained, with some small exceptions, the puzzles. Even if the core gameplay has remained the same with get-the-key-to-open-the-door objectives, Crystal Dynamics has decides to make our life a little bit more complicated by implementing tree-like missions: you still have to get the key, but for this you need to get some crystals from different areas of the level, which in terms are small puzzles by itself, so you can open the door in order to find the metal which can be turned later in key. Maybe I'm overreacting a little bit, but it's true nonetheless. Just for a moment, Lara has reminded me of Jill from Resident Evil 3: Nemesis and that insane hunt for some seemingly usual objects that would later be used in some specific situation. This turn in gameplay gave the player the opportunity to think for a change and worry about kicking some ass later.
Video When I first heard that Anniversary will be powered by an improved version of the engine used in Legend, I certainly wasn't impressed. Even if it showed some interesting aspects, only one comes to mind: water dripping on her skin. Sure it had depth of field and a mysterious option called Next Gen graphics that behaved like a vampire that never got tired of sucking my video card dry. I never managed to get Legend running on an acceptable frame rate with that option on. But as I was saying earlier, the only thing that comes to mind is the water.
This version is so improved that a lot of options disappeared and will probably never be heard of again. The first one, Next Gen graphics, was no longer necessary as the industry caught up with the game and the novelty factor vanished. I guess they figured out that a game has to rely a lot more on gameplay and innovation rather that just eye candy that it's not even working properly. Having said that, Tomb Raider Anniversary is a good-looking game, really stable and with no visible artifacts. Maybe it's not the best looking out there, but it sure could use some improvements in character animation, and I'm not referring here at Lara. You have to keep in mind that most of Croft's enemies are animals and their animations are extremely difficult to copy from Mother Nature (we might even say that Mother Nature has one hell of copyright protection). At many times I felt they could have done a better job at capturing the motion of a bear for example. I'm aware that we're not going to get an animal to cooperate and let itself be wired up with sensors; nonetheless, some extra hours would have been quite welcomed. Another disturbing fact in 2007 is the disappearance of corpses. I could understand it on PS2, as any dead body would just occupy valuable space in the console memory, but on the PC, it has no excuse, because this fact alone has stolen from the game's aura.
If you get past all the smaller annoyances that any game will throw at you, Tomb Raider Anniversary will even surprise you at times with stunning sites and beautiful renders animations of Lara. On top of the fact that it's better looking than its predecessor, the present game is even running a lot smoother even on medium PCs which will make it more popular that ever before.
Sound Something doesn't feel right when the producer shoves some composer screaming from the "heart" of their lungs that now we should pay more attention to the soundtrack just because it was hand knit with sounds from 10 years ago by a someone that's a stranger to most normal people out there, not to mention the gaming community. Apparently, I should remember the soundtrack from the Legend, but if I were to be honest, I can't say I do because it hasn't caught my ear at the time.
The best thing they have done was to give up that annoying sound that most people call a soundtrack. Not any game is suited to have a non-stop track playing in any circumstance and in Tomb Raider it certainly wasn't the case. I have difficulties understanding why they have placed a soundtrack disc in the collectors' edition when all the music in game is completely dynamic and it's only being played in combat situations. I would have enjoyed a huge poster with Lara but apparently, producers have lost any sexual interest after all those years of companionship. I know Toby Gard had this wild idea of shielding her, as much as possible, from becoming a sex icon. Let's get real for a moment: if you get a beautiful woman, dress her with some of the shortest pants you can find and on top of that a couple of pistols, you can't really expect kids with pimples not to get a little too exited when the camera angle is just right.
Everything else seems to be in place and I enjoyed the silence between fights, giving me the opportunity to listen closely to her moans and the occasional sighing, all in the name of archeology of course. Making this choice was the right step, taking the game a little closer to the heart of the gamer (male gamer that is).
Multiplayer Two Lara is one too many. I pray to God not to see this atrocity one day.
Conclusion Tomb Raider Anniversary is simply the best in the series so far. Some might argue, melancholically looking back, that the present one is juts to much bling-bling. Everyone is desperate for the good old days of gaming, but no one realizes that 10 years ago we had a much smaller palette of games to choose from so even if a game would have been mediocre after today's standards, back than it would have been considered a masterpiece. Among all these titles that are flooding the market today, Anniversary stands out as Lara's definitive game and most exiting one so far. If Chrystal Dynamics is following the current ascending trend, I can't wait to see what they're going to come up with next.
