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Tomb Raider: Anniversary


Lara's back for her birthday bash

Anniversary - because of what it’s doing, as much as how it does it - brings back the welcome tingle of nostalgia, and reminds you what a great game the original Tomb Raider was, without ripping your pink contact lenses from your eyeballs and making you face up to the graphics. It’s the very best kind of nostalgia, because it acknowledges that the past wasn’t perfect, and changes it wherever it sees fit.

If your memory is as dim as ours, you’ll think this is how it played, but then you’ll realize that ropes weren’t introduced until The Last Revelation, and swinging from horizontal bars was first seen in Chronicles. Take away the personal assistant and pocket torch from Legend, add the ability to leap onto and balance on poles and wall-walk from your grappling hook, and you’ve got Lara ’07. Plays like Legend, feels like Tomb Raider. It’s an intangible feat that stares you out, defying you to put your finger on it.

Controlling Lara, you’ve got the choice of whether to use mouse and keyboard, or a control pad. It’s actually more fun to play with mouse and keyboard; the ability to whip around 180-degrees and jump immediately from pillar to post while your 360 player would still be turning around - it makes you feel that little bit more like the gymnast you’re not.

It’s not all roses, though. The control you have over the camera can sometimes be a burden. For example, when you’re wall-walking from your grappling hook and need to jump backwards from the height of Lara’s run, unless you’ve got the camera perpendicular to the wall, the keys don’t quite work to make Lara perform the required jump, and she tends to jump off at the wrong angle and land on a massive sword instead.


 
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The Knowledge
Tomb Raider: Anniversary
Tomb Raider: Anniversary

Genre: Action
Expected release date: 05/29/2007
Published by: Eidos
Developed by: Crystal Dynamics
8 GREAT
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