Tomb Raider: Anniversary

"A competent fan-service and decent enough for newcomers"

The Tomb Raider franchise has always been one I have loathed. The focus seemed to be more on the curvaceous body and ample bosom of Lara Croft, and this marketing scheme to attract sexually frustrated teenage boys was masked under an unconvincing veneer that Lara empowered women and was a symbol for feminism; a positive female role model in the macho world of video games. But when you consider that Samus Aran had been adventuring across the galaxy and killing Space Pirates before Lara Croft was even thought of, and yet she has never attracted mainstream praise as a feminist icon, I can't help but feel that the main appeal of Lara Croft was among sweaty teenagers rubbing themselves through their trouser pocket as they searched for the "nudity cheat" on the internet.

Its hard for me to imagine that the mass appeal came from the actual games, since I found them hideously clunky and awkward to control; manoeuvring Lara was akin to a pissed Hippopotamus attempting to rollerskate. I remember taking a considerable amount of time trying to remember the combination of button presses required for Lara to to walk slowly to the edge of a cliff, hop backwards, run forwards and then finally jump. Add in the fact that most of the time Lara would crumple on the rocks as she failed to grab the ledge and my Tomb Raider experience was one of great frustration.

My expectations going into this game were considerably low therefore, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the controls are far more intuitive and Lara is actually relatively easy to manipulate. You run about with the control stick, control the camera with the right control stick, there is a jump button and a grab button and that is pretty much all there is too it. The controls have been greatly streamlined to make for a much more beginner friendly experience, and as this is a remake/update of the first game, this is a very good place to start for beginners.

The controls and gameplay aren't all lovely and rosey though. Sometimes the camera expresses a certain contempt for your desire to be able to see properly and pick out any hazards and obstacles, also, when jumping from a ledge you sometimes have to make a leap of faith because you cannot see where you are going. Similarly to the original games, you will spend a lot of time crunching on the rocks as you miss a jump yet again and you'll experience a repetitive cycle of reloading check points. This can be frustrating and unfortunately reduces the gameplay to trial and error at times. Once you practice a certain area and learn the precise pathway of jumps and grabs etc, there is an element of satisfaction at fluidly manoeuvring through an area, but that fluidity rarely comes first time through however.

The gameplay is very familiar and what you would expect from a Tomb Raider title, Lara progresses from area to area shooting the odd endangered species and solving exceptionally improbable puzzles which leave me to believe the ancient Inca civilization who built some of ruins (presumably not originally ruins) and "tombs" Lara makes her way through must have been comprised of phenomenally athletic and agile people. Also, some incredibly anal engineers and architects intent on creating the most annoying giant lock mechanisms in the world.

As this is an updated version of the original game there are some new moves for Lara, such as the ability to jump sideways across precarious ledges when shimmying across them and scrambling upwards. Not to mention the unnecessarily erotic way in which she climbs up ledges sometimes. She can also balance on vertical poles and jump between them and also swing on horizontal bars and jump from them; something she seems to have stolen from Prince of Persia, oh yeah, and the wall running. These extra moves remove the clunkiness of the original controls and despite having so many, the button presses are all relatively simple and context specific.

The combat is as pointless as ever really, though this time in a stroke of ingenious originality (har har!) Lara can enter bullet time and fly around acrobatically and shoot endangered species in the face while the camera gets the best slo-mo shots of her boobs and arse possible. Tomb Raider is definitely a game that would work without combat, its just a momentary distraction from the core fun of the game, which is the exploration and lonely sense of isolation. Just have more puzzles and less of the pathetically easy enemies. There rarely seems to be any coherent reason for the fighting, just sometimes they throw in a random grizzly bear to keep you on your toes and to anger the RSPCA presumably. I mean, yeah, there is the odd boss battle, but they are nothing special to be honest.

Metroid Prime on the Nintendo Gamecube nailed the atmosphere of being a lone explorer in an alien and ancient environment perfectly, and Tomb Raider anniversary gets that feeling across pretty well too. There is no human interaction and no constant radioing back to base or anything stupid, just you and the "tombs" that you "raid." The puzzles are often quite clever and satisfying despite being ludicrously improbable, and the fun of the game is working out how to solve them and spending a lot of time doing this without worrying about hordes of respawning enemies. The loneliness and emptiness of the places really is great, though it can get a little boring at times, and I found the combat to be an annoying distraction much of the time.

The level design works, but I would hesitate to call it "good." The reason for this is that you are supposed to be exploring the ruins of an ancient civilization, but it feels like these ancient civilizations designed their palaces, temples or whatever to the specification of a young, supple and athletic british woman visiting them. There are loads of conveniently placed ledges, and while this is fair enough, they look really out of place, not as though they are actually incorporated into the architecture. The thing is, you don't ever really feel like you're in a believable environment where you could imagine people actually living or moving about in practically. There are also sections that are just mini assault causes for Lara; slippery slopes, poles to swing on and vertical ones to balance on with the odd ledge to climb up as well and it is hard to imagine that actually having been built thousands of years ago.

In the Peru level, I could imagine an ancient Inca ruler saying to his builders "Well, yeah, that hallway is pretty good, but what if an athletic british woman comes here in a few thousand years? Make some bottomless pits, throw a few ledges in here and there and some poles. Oh, and build a lock mechanism for that door that spans three rooms." I guess I am being pedantic, as it would be a poor game indeed without the crazy puzzles and massive drops to swing and jump over, but the problem is that the environments never feel authentic.

In keeping with the rest of the game, the graphics are ok but nothing special. They don't really push the Xbox 360 to its limits and there are no "Wow!" moments that you often come to expect. This is probably because this game has been released on everything that is electrical and has a TV screen on it, but still, I wouldn't mind knowing I am playing the powerful next gen console version of the game. The environments are pretty bland and lacking any real flair or colour, and there are no stand out moments or epic locales at all.

Typically however, a lot of polygons have been dedicated to making Lara as curvy and nubile as possible. Her character model is very good and better than any other in the game. The developers make the most of this by giving her the least amount of clothing possible and the most revealing they can squeeze past the ESRB. They also like to show this off by zooming the camera in on Lara's tight buttocks when she is crawling through a narrow space and having her body glisten and shine after she has been swimming in water. This just seems a little childish to me, and if Lara is supposed to be a powerful female role model in a male dominated industry, it doesn't help that she is completely tailored to male consumers. Ok, she can be feminine and sexy, but Lara is just a stereotypical example of thirteen year old boys' **** material. It doesn't help matters that if you leave the game for a short while, she begins performing incredibly gratuitous stretches and limbering up. This does nothing to relieve the stereotype of sad and lonely nerds playing video games.

Lara is largely animated very well and realistically, particularly her catwalk method of walking. There are some instances of dodgy animation, for example of you jump a little to the right of a ledge, sometimes Lara spaz out a little and change direction suddenly to grab the ledge and I have also fallen off a ledge and got stuck on a wall and been floating around before finally falling to my death. The collision detection can be very suspect at times, it must be said, but most of the time your progression through the game will be fluid and without a hitch. The sound and music is well, forgettable if I am honest. It reeks of average, there is the Tomb Raider theme, but I cannot remember how it goes for the life of me and there only seems to be music playing when enemies attack. But this adds to the atmosphere so I can't take points away for that. The voice acting is satisfactory, but again, there is just nothing particularly remarkable about this game. It doesn't do a lot wrong, it just won't blow you away.

It was the general consensus of the gaming community that the Tomb Raider franchise, and Lara, was dead after the release of the reportedly awful "Angel of Darkness." This game won't completely revive her but it does go some way towards it. They have managed to create a game that is a good fan service as well as being user friendly enough to attract new gamers to the series. This is a good starting point if you have never played a Tomb Raider game and want to learn the early story. It is a largely enjoyable game, but it won't completely blow you away and it certainly isn't a must have AAA title for the 360. A reasonable return to form for Lara, nevertheless.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 12/23/08

Game Release: Tomb Raider: Anniversary (EU, 10/26/07)