Tomb Raider: Anniversary

After pumping goodness knows how much time, energy and capital into their baby, the last thing a developer wants is for it to fade into bargain bins unnoticed. You could tie it to a well-loved motion picture, thus ensuring a pre-existing audience… but what if you can’t afford the license? Then it’s time for what charitable reviewers might call “paying homage!” Here are 20 games that are just really, really big fans of their cinematic cousins… copyright be damned.

3D games, as a rule, don’t age well. The games of the last couple console generations might have been awesome for their time, but take a look at them now and it’s hard to see them as anything other than jaggy abortions in which cardboard rectangles masquerade as limbs. And as if that weren’t embarrassing enough, most of those games contain female characters who, in their day, were genuinely considered sexy.

What happened to Snake? With those layered and textured wisps of oh-so-touchable hair, that Rambo-ninja headband, and a perfectly landscaped maze of lovable facial scruff, MGS 2 Snake was downright dreamy. Several years and one blond douchebag later and Snake is back with crow’s feet and the beginnings of a Geraldo Rivera 'stache. If anything is suited for sneaking, it’s the varicose veins crawling up the skin stuffs stretched over his legs.

Aug 20, 2007 1) Wrecking the T-Rex During the first few hours of play, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Tomb Raider's bestiary of enemies is nothing other than the stuff of National Geographic - bears, wolves, crocodiles and the like. Push on to The Lost World area though, and Anniversary gets Jurassic on your ass, dropping you into the path of an enraged, prehistoric Goliath with teeth like kitchen knives. And Lara takes it down with just her

Overview Time to complete 12-15 hours – but it really depends on how familiar you are with Laras tomb- leaping world and whether you get really stuck (which you shouldnt if you use this guide to help you along!) Most challenging level Egypts door slamming, post jumping, razor wire traps will have you restarting again and again. And the end levels timed lava jumping sections are enough to get you cursing Laras good name. Stuck with no way out? Youll spend a large part of Tomb Raider

1) Fighting a T-Rex Having dispatched with a couple of troublesome Raptors, Lara finds herself on the run from an oddly polygonal Tyrannosaurus Rex. Can I do it in Anniversary? Oh yes. The T-Rex battles will be Anniversarys action core. 2) The Swan Dive Lara calmly walks to the edge of the cliff, then - with surprising grace for one so unaerodynamically designed - swan dives into the clear blue water below. Its a stunning moment. Can I do it in Anniversary? Yes you will. Expect arching,