To celebrate 10 years of Tomb Raider and the gaming heroine Lara Croft, Eidos has published Tomb Raider: Anniversary. The game is not a full blown sequel, it is more of an updated and modernized remake of the original Tomb Raider. For those of you unfamiliar with Tomb Raider, it sees the games main character, Lara Croft as a sort of female Indiana Jones, who travels to isolated locations in search of precious artifacts. She knows her archeology but she also knows how to use firearms, which comes in handy when you are exploring ancient and mysterious territory. Lara Croft made her debut on next gen systems with Tomb Raider: Legends, which was given praise for sending the series in the right direction after a some flawed sequels on the previous generation which damaged Tomb Raiders reputation. Legends was a completely new game, but now the series has returned to its roots and it seems that after a little polishing and tweaking, it still has that charm that it had when it was first released over 10 years ago.

Gameplay:

The story in Tomb Raider: Anniversary involves a search for three pieces of an artifact called the 'Atlantean Scion' which is said to have powers beyond imagination. The three pieces were made by 3 rulers of different civilizations and have been hidden in various locations around the world. The opening level sees Lara travel to the Andean Mountains in Peru, where she must explore inside the mountains for a hidden city. The game is a mix of puzzle solving, exploration and action. For those who have played the original Tomb Raider, the opening cut scene should be familiar, however control of Lara is given to the player quicker than in the original game. Even for those who have never played Tomb Raider games before or if it has been a while, the in-game tutorial offers a brilliant learning curve, gradually introducing new moves and new actions as they are needed. At the very beginning the actions needed to overcome obstacles are the simplest, however they will gradually become more difficult and will require a link-up of moves. It seems the levels follow the same sort of pattern, where there will be a main area that will require something, a number of keys for example, to progress to the next level. As a brief example, one of the levels in Greece requires four colored artifacts to open the door to the next area. These four artifacts are located in 4 'sub areas' and can be accessed through four different doors. The doors have names of Greek gods above them, for example the door entitled Poseidon will be a water based puzzle that needs to be solved. Although the fact that a lot of the areas require the same sort of strategy, it isn't as repetitive as it sounds. There are dozens of different types of puzzles, they will require a mix of skillful gameplay as well as some brain power. As mentioned previously, they get noticeably harder as the game progresses, towards the point that will require the player to memorize the pattern that dangerous traps take and time jumping almost perfectly, as there will be little room for error. The variation of puzzles reflects the number of moves Lara can pull off, luckily she is quite the gymnast.

When you first walk into an area, the scale of things might make the player a bit scared and clueless, surprisingly however, it shouldn't take that long before you spot a route and work your way towards a goal, whether it be up to a high point of the area or all the way down, depending on the starting point. The way to go might not be obvious at first, but most of the time it will only need a little searching before you come across a ledge which can be used. A lot of time will be spent shimmying along ledges, jumping from ledge to ledge or perhaps jumping onto a swing pole or a rope - plenty of possibilities. The ledges than can be used are obvious, however sometimes you might think to yourself 'can I reach that one?' and even though its a hundred or so feet drop below, you still go for it. There is an achievement for completing levels with no deaths, however since parts of the game require a lot of trial and error type gameplay, it seems unlikely that a level can be completed first time without dying. The games responsive controls help a lot though, it feels like you have complete control over Lara. Something about the controls which might confuse some people, is the way direction reacts to where the camera is. Unfortunately the camera in Anniversary still sometimes gets in the way and makes it hard to either see where you are going or to see where to go, although this doesn't happen nearly as much as I remember from previous games. As for the direction, if say the camera is behind Lara and she jumps to the left and the camera follows her, so it is still behind here, left is actually forward and sometimes if you forget to 'straighten up' then it could cost you valuable time. Perhaps that's not explained too clearly, but it doesn't ruin the overall experience anyway. The majority of puzzles are fairly straight forward once you work out what's going on, even if you aren't sure how to solve it fully from the start; the solution can gradually become in reach with a little exploring, discovering switches or checking unvisited areas. Although exploring and putting your brain to use plays a big part in the game, from time to time Lara will have to put her acrobatic skills to fight off enemies.

Sometimes there may be the odd easy to defeat enemy such as rats and bats, which can seem kind of pointless, however the moments of action break up the puzzle solving nicely. It is easy to become engaged in finding a successful strategy, then to be shocked at the appearance of a hostile bear or a gorilla. Since most of the game is based on the adventure side, when Lara must use guns to fight off enemies, they are genuinely intense encounters that offer a rapid change in pace in gameplay. As well as random encounters from fearsome real life enemies, fictional enemies will also appear and so will boss fights. Enemies are a little tougher in this one since they attack in groups, however thanks to the adrenaline headshot trick, dispatching them shouldn't be too hard. This involves damaging an enemy to a point where it becomes enraged and will charge at Lara. Once it is at a certain distance, the game will prompt the player to press the B button and a direction to dive out of the way in slow motion, two cross-hairs will appear and once they are lined up and turn red, simply fire one shot and its in instant headshot kill. It may take a few times to get to grips with, but once learned it is a valuable tactic and also looks cool. The game also has interactive cut scenes, so don't just put the controller down when the camera pans away to a different perspective, expecting a nice cinematic movie to watch. These moments require the player to push the corresponding button that is displayed on the screen to get Lara to perform an action that gets her out of danger.

Graphics:

As expected, there is a considerable jump in graphics and the level of detail compared to the original version. It was already known from Tomb Raider: Legends that the move to next-gen systems gave the series a well deserved upgrade. The environments are detailed and of course much bigger than the original ones. The lighting also helps capture the isolated feel of the environments, you will see rays of light coming in through cracks in the roof, contrasting with the dark and unreachable areas. Lara looks great, with some good detail on her equipment and her facial expressions, its also worth noting the shiny wet effect she gets after emerging from water. Although the environments look great and really do feel like lost and abandoned cities, it is nothing spectacular. On rare occasions, the game also has a few frame rate issues, sometimes making it difficult or distracting to do acrobatics, it can be off putting but it doesn't happen that often.

Sound:

There isn't much dialog in the game, but Lara's English accent is just as you would expect from someone who owns a mansion estate and will be instantly recognizable for fans. As for music, there isn't really a soundtrack, but music will play at appropriate times, fast tempo orchestral music for action encounters and mysterious harp music when important discoveries are made. The noises Lara makes depends on her actions, so a hard landing and she will grunt and bear it. There is also plenty of background noise and ambient sounds, such as the distant echoes of animals and splashes of water.

Longevity:

The game should take around 12-15 hours to complete on a first play through, some of the puzzles really do require a lot of time and its unlikely that everything can be done the first time it's played. There is also more content planned for release though the Xbox Live Marketplace. For the achievement hunters, there are hidden relics and artifacts to find for achievements and bonus material, as well as difficulty achievements and the one mentioned before where levels must be completed first time with no deaths, pretty tricky for there really isn't much room for error, especially on the later puzzles that involve timed traps. Its hard to imagine a Tomb Raider game with multiplayer, there is no Live options here, perhaps leader boards may have some relevance, but the game manages fine at being a purely single player experience.

Overall:

Tomb Raider fans have had to endure some fairly dismal games in the series, however most believed that Tomb Raider Legends was a step in the right direction. A remake of the original game could have been a disaster and another one of those instances in which the original should have just been left alone; however Crystal Dynamics have pulled off one of the best remakes here. Surprisingly for a game that needs a lot of accurate jumping and good timing, it doesn't get too frustrating and offers a fairly smooth gameplay experience. They have tweaked the gameplay, adding new moves, improving the environments and left out elements which have let down previous games. The end result is a game which keeps the charm of the original as well as giving us something playable when compared to current games. If you have fond memories of Tomb Raider from 10 or so years ago, then it is very likely you will be able to pick up Tomb Raider: Anniversary and relive good times. The game might not have the best graphics and some may dislike the Tomb Raider style, but for fans, its a dream come true.