From the start, Tomb Raider Anniversary makes a strong first impression. Upon selecting Croft Manor, you are now treated to a full-on level instead of a short bout of tutorials about the controls. You'll still learn jumping, dodging, block pushing, swimming, climbing, and grabbing, but now you'll learn how your grapple hook works once you find it in a newly added hedge maze, you can use your pistol (and later the dual calibers, shotgun, and uzis like before) to target objects to either destroy them or activate switches to unlock new ways to progress, you can swing from poles, hop about from the top of column posts, use other types of columns to shimmy up or down, and finally rope swing across one area to another. Most of these mechanics were introduced in Legend, the game before this, but if you're like me and transition from the original to this one, it's all new and very much an appreciated sense of fresh air. Yet, by the time I finished TRA, I was exasperated and exhausted.

Despite this team's best efforts, and even a helping hand from the leading man for the original Toby Gard when it came to crafting the story to fit this new continuity with Jason Botta being the lead director of the project instead, elements of the original were either lost during the arranged shuffle of this reimagining, or are outright ripped out and received a change so drastic and ill-intended I was left dumbfounded. There's still remnants of it lingering and there's newly made distinctions that does feel like its uplifting and adding onto the formula, don't get me wrong, but this is a scenario where the lines of "reimagined events" and "old, yet new" cross wires on numerous occasions, producing this weird hodgepodge on attempting to but never fully succeeding in meshing these elements together. Before I get into that though, I do want to at least give more props to the things I appreciated. I once again apologize for how extensive this will become, because whoo boy I have THINGS and OPINIONS to share.

Continuing on, Peru's Mountain Caves has a newly added beginning, where instead of watching a cinematic then starting inside, you instead control Lara as she now has to climb up to the top from the broken ladder steps, as well as to the mechanism that will open the door. If you, for whatever reason, opted to jump straight into the game instead of exploring the Manor, this still acts as a decent tutorial of what to expect in the game, and it also acts as a nice bonus for any returning veterans of the original to sink their teeth into. Even after this, you can start to feel the distinctions being made. You can now turn off the spike trap with a good eye and climbing towards it, there's a new section where you have to jump, slide, shimmy, and hook across to continue on, alongside finding a new collectible in the form of Artifacts and later within the level Relics. The secret where you go off to the side after the bats and climb up a wall is still there, of course, as well as the bridge sequence where you fight the wolves below should you so choose, and finally the crumbled jump across a pit where a bear waits below, though this time being done with a rope hanging off the ceiling. While the door unlock is different in form, the principle's the same; go to each side of the area, activate the switches, and it opens. All minute changes in the grand scheme, yet potent enough to be noticeable with a keen eye.

The same also goes for St. Francis' Folly, though to a lesser extent. Instead of going through the front and back end of the room at different elevations to open the way forward, you climb up the crumbling pillars to go to the back of the map and do a targeting puzzle to unlock a ball to roll onto the switch below, then later get access to an artifact that's tucked away at the left instead of supplies you do a series of platforming challenges on at the room on the right. Once you get back up the roof and go across to the other side, activate the lever to open the door and drag the ball there after shooting down more lions, the stairway opens and upon going down it, you come across the familiar Jenga Tower from the original. From here, things play out roughly the same: go all around to unlock the four Greek Gods' rooms, Thor and Neptune now being replaced appropriately by Hephaestus and Poseidon respectively, go into them and complete their trials, and get the keys needed to unlock the door at the bottom. It's the arrangement of them that makes them stand out, especially considering they're now containing gates that act as the in-between them and the central tower: not only is the lightning trap in Hephaestus' room much easier to grasp and get across, and while you still use the hammer to get across to the other side, it's now also done to break open a cube containing a statue, lining up all three gets you the key; Poseidon's room is no longer just a series of water hallways, but now a centralized room where you utilize ever-changing elevations in order to make sure you can not only get to the top, but can also jump across via a raft in order to enter the chamber with the key; Atlas and Damocles have a fair bit of spruces done, but not to the same degree as the last two, as the former has some additional switches and targets to use in order to get the ball down and nab the key, and the latter has additional platforming to be done, as well as a newly made spike floor you have to get past via timing. More immediate and noticeable changes, and while I still prefer how the original was framed and scaled, the rework done here is still very much appreciated, and does a great job giving this room its own identity by comparison.

I very briefly talked about Nathan McCree's contribution to the original's music, which I regret since I've since grown to love it, so I want to amend that by saying Troels Brun Folmann's new orchestral pieces are great as well. Croft Manor's theme perfectly captures the sentimental, homely atmosphere, even containing different suites done depending on the room you're in, the ambience found in the Atlantis portion still exudes this brooding, almost chilling atmosphere, and this version of the franchise's main theme might actually be my favorite from the ones I've heard. Maybe. Admittedly this is a case where I had to listen to the in-game soundtrack player, as well as doing it on my own time, due to focusing more on the game aspects than the music, but I'm glad I did so regardless. As for how the game controls, it's much like Ubisoft's Sands Of Time trilogy that came not that long before Crystal Dynamic's LAU Era entries, and the Uncharted games in which the first game actually came out a couple months after this one. It's... rather clunky unfortunately, which I know sounds ironic coming from me since I poked fun at people doing the same for the original. Here's the difference though, while TR96 very much made sure you were in total control of Lara and her actions and the camera mostly being pretty steady and usable especially with the Look function, Anniversary Lara feels a lot more springy than before, which took some getting used to from the grounded and weighted approach, and I've had way more moments of the camera freaking out when trying to make jumps, having to jerk the right stick at alternate intervals solely so it can finally back out and let me see where I need to go. Not helping is how uncomfortable some of the actions became, like how jumping out of a slide didn't actually carry the momentum over and has Lara instead stop DIRECTLY at a spot, and then jump. Sometimes the game just, also refused to accept jumping grabs either cause I wasn't quite close enough from when I started, or cause I happened to do something out of order, despite seeming like a possibility regardless, hell sometimes it just let me grab something anyway cause I was in the vicinity. I got used to it sure, but I never really felt as in-control as Lara96, or even The Prince from SoTT. As you can tell, this is now where my problems and nitpicks sprout in place.

City Of Vilcabamba, being a damn good level originally, has been touched upon in a way that doesn't quite strike the same chord for me here. Instead of feeling claustrophobic with its low ceilings, so tightly interconnected with its rooms and beaten paths connecting from one another within these little shacks in order to make my way towards the gate, it's now a small little area where you swiftly go from each place and spot very quickly, not really setting the illusion that this was once a settlement people roamed and took care of here and instead feeling like a makeshift campsite. The opening of the large gate is also odd to me, cause despite the two rooms having nearly the same layout, it doesn't feel quite as involved or intricate as before, and I can't quite put my finger as to why that is. Lost Valley's another one I'm not quite sure on, having you now start at the bottom looking onward to the waterfall instead of standing on top of it. Alongside this, the gears are now reoriented to work on the machines outside the waterway instead of being within it, even having a nice little touch where the spot that the gears would've been used at, are now broken and in disarray, never to be fixed. This, itself, I don't have much issues with, and even grew to like, but it's the dinosaur half of the equation where I have issues. There's some inferences you can make that the original placed you outside and within a small sector where these beasts have been untouched and roam free, something even Paul Douglas from the original team has went on to say very recently, but regardless, it was a dark corner of Peru that you came across by happenstance in an effort to find those missing cogs and placing them onto the machine. Now though, you still happen to stumble upon it, but it's from the game dropping you down from a decaying piece of wood, and going over to see the new, sunlight spotted sky. The velociraptor encounters still play out the same, but once that's done a new cutscene forced upon you plays showcasing the T-Rex in action, and it's here where you learned these original bosses that you fight normally... are now regulated to a mixture of QTE prompts presented upon you at the start, and/or pitting you in a boxed area where you shoot at them a bunch in order to build up a new Rage meter that, when filled allows the boss to charge at you for the other new mechanic, Adrenaline Dodge, in order to hit a button at the right time and wait for the right moment to shoot back, allowing them to inadvertently do something that then serves as massive damage to their health, rinse and repeat and the fight's won.

To be blunt, I find this new direction to be incredibly perplexing. I would never say TR96 had outstanding boss encounters, and I'm not wholly against the use of QTEs for these events and other situations, but TRA aiming to do this approach doesn't really add or entice anything to the action, instead downplaying these threats at the same level of fodder mooks, and granted I'll concede in that the death animation from these aren't quite as bad as you'd see in the Survivor continuity. The Centaur Boss at the end of Greece and Giant Atlantean near the end of the game are at least formatted in a way that fighting them can be enjoyable, but that's only two bosses compared to the rest this and the original have on offer. There's also the presentation at hand, and granted while I do think this issue is perhaps overblown, I do find myself siding with those in saying the tendency to have the visuals be more washed out and muted is more of a detrimental design choice than the intended effect of being more realistic and lived-in. The original had plenty of striking and intense color usage despite the hardware it was released in, ranging from peachy pinks to charcoal blacks, and the way it manage to use this palette to still give each individual area and part of the world their own color identity was fairly impressive. TRA trades that in for the beiges, the grays, the browns, and other similar tones for a lean on realism and lived-in natures. Some of this works, like with the Tomb of Qualopec, but then you hit Egypt and it's like, hey wait, some of these colors are missing. I can see some blues and yellows sometimes, but the abundance of those as well as the teals and greens are missing. Now again, it's a bit of an overblown problem, Lost Island - renamed from Atlantis - tends to have a great mixture of this once you reach it, even if the vibes and direction are different than the original, and areas within the chasms of Greece and indeed, Egypt, also have some nice bouncing effect between the water and the lighting, but it's still something I can't help but mull over. Going back on fights real quick, combat is formatted very much like the original, even right down to jumping and dodging like a maniac being an effective strat alongside the new Adrenaline mechanic, only this time enemies are bit a more aggressive and I feel happen to appear more frequently than before and it's not quite the best. It took the weakest aspect and made it a smidge weaker essentially, but to its credit it beefed up each weapon to feel more poignant and important to swap over, especially the shotgun since it can now stun enemies if they're close enough to you.

I imagine some people would propose that some problems I had with the combat and controls could be because I played the PC version, and while it does have issues, I don't believe they're intrinsically tied to these despite what some of the reviews on here would lead you to believe. I've checked on Steam, GOG, the Tomb Raider forums, and even the franchise's subreddit (listen I don't like the site much either, but at least with dedicated communities it can help sort out potential problems) and all pretty much came to the same conclusion: the way this feels and manages is about on par with every other version of the game, excluding PSP and Wii for obvious reasons regarding those ports, and considering this was being developed alongside the initial PS2 release with help from Nixxes Software for the conversion instead of Buzz Monkey Software, I'm inclined to believe this. Like I said though, this version has its issues that can be fixed, such as externally allowing for AA since for some odd reason using the in-game function disables shadows, using VSYNC to prevent any scripting and animation quirks from being commonplace amongst the AI, and finally a texture pack polishing up any seams and issues that can appear. There's also an HD Texture overhaul, if you're into that sort of thing, as well as TRAWindowed which, well, adds in windowed and borderless window mode if that's your thing, which it is for the latter.

Back on track, it's time I finally talk about the linearity aspect that comes from this gameplay formula. While the original can also be quite linear, it focused more on the dungeon crawler side of the mixture, being more interconnected and expansive in size, as well as going back-and-forth between areas a fair number of times to get a move on. If you were really good at the game, you can do specific and tight maneuvers to get a leg up on the timer and lay of the area. While this newfound puzzle-platforming adventure kit still has you able to do much of the same, such as as the slew of examples I gave beforehand and Egypt relatively being the same as before, often times you'll be given a set path that the game wants you to do, even being done via new corridors and hallways that serve as a way to make these places feel more intertwined. Sometimes it's fine, such as Palace Midas being truncated into a hub with the statue in the middle and having you do the three challenge rooms in a set order to obtain the lead bars, but other times it messes with how the original was done to such a degree it's SUPER noticeable and truthfully detracts from the experience, both in a veteran and a casual standpoint. The Colosseum? Now just a small circle with like, four rooms total, following very simple puzzles and slightly involved platforming and grappling in order to get to the end about as fast as you can be able to stumble upon it, instead of a more involved area you go across and around multiple times in order to activate the gate at the end {ADDENDUM: I forgot to mention this, but Pierre who before you fought in a majority of the Greece levels, adding some sense of character and tension between you and him, he now just makes benign, rather unfunny taunts towards you. I'm not really a fun of this change, but perhaps this was intentional since he goes out in the funniest scene in the game}. Tomb Of Tihocan? Adds in Cistern into the mix to now have four total levels instead of five, which would be fine if the only involved part wasn't just the first half of Cistern, practically throwing you into the end with little fanfare. Even a level I didn't like before, Great Pyramid, got shafted in this regard, cause instead of being this grand, towering building filled with some of the toughest and most grueling challenges in the game, you uh... just shoot at a target, have the flying enemies appear, maybe get stunlocked by them for one reason or another while fighting them off, do the platforming challenge to go up a level, rinse and repeat. Instead of being tired due to excessive onslaught of obstacles being thrown at me, I got tired cause I was doing the same thing over and over again with barely any added difficulty on top of that.

If you want me to point out the single aspect that sums up my contested thoughts on this game though, then let me talk about the frankly bizarre nature of the writing. As mentioned at the beginning, Toby Gard helped out in designing this narrative, but the actual scripting part was done by Matt Ragghianti, who has a fascinating yet small resume on IMDB. Now for the first half, its direction has shifted from more Southeast Asian action flicks and Indiana Jones shenanigans from before and focuses solely on the latter, and like before it exists! There's some new lines to bridge into this continuity such as Lara's Father now being called Richard and stronger emphasis on price of ambition and stakes, as well as some differences in how the cutscenes are presented such as the intro being at a nuclear testsite in New Mexico instead of some random ass place in that same state, but for the most part it's about on par with how the original was. I don't think Keeley Hawes hits quite the same cadence and vocal delivery as Shelley Blond did, but she still works pretty well as the voice of Lara, especially when delivering more snarky and sentimental lines. What I take issue with, is right around the beginning of the Lost Island. Now, all of a sudden, there's a conflict about Lara having to kill just for her own personal needs and wants and how it's supposed to be this super serious and interpersonal stake and it's just such a nosedive in quality for something so near to the end. Feeling so forced and last-minute that I genuinely believed I accidentally skipped some cutscenes, it was more of a background theme and is now suddenly The Main Point and it's like, nah man, not when you present this big emotional and climactic moment with dopey animations and another lame QTE sequence, sorry. It doesn't even get elaborated much either, there's only three more cutscenes after this to have more story-related elements, with the confrontation against Natla having Lara be tempted by her offer, before shooting back at the Scion, thereby abandoning her father's wish but simultaneously standing firm that she's independent of the people that try to position her on equal grounds, that she does what she does for her own beliefs instead of the opposition's. This is a rather debated part of Anniversary from what I've gathered, and it's pretty easy to believe given the type of writing Lara was getting during the CORE-era and even Legend before. I'm not really against this sort of characterization of the heroine, even if I find it rather eye-rolling - doubly so considering what I know of the Survivor continuity - but it needed way more effort than what was done here, which from the looks of both Legends and Underworld, do manage this somewhat better.

Once I hit the ending cutscene, I got a gut feeling that parts of the game felt rushed. I have nothing to back this up, and I should be clear in that the game feels complete enough to not be an immediate thought, but considering how the story's written and the backend of the game downsizing the scale to such a degree it feels like the beginning instead of the tumultuous end as it should, as well as how this was being done alongside Underworld's development, where that game's staff got shorthanded alongside other issues it faced during development, it's hard not to shake this feeling. I also thought that perhaps the yearly release for Legend, Anniversary, and Underworld had come through was also a case, but considering this was around the time where that development cycle was still a process making the rounds albeit in less frequent numbers, especially with the aforementioned Sands Of Time trilogy also having this same period done, I'm not certain it's a main factor. Regardless of this speculation, I'm saddened to say that, despite its appeal and framework, despite its popularity among the fanbase as being one of the best titles in the series, and despite that very strong first impression, Anniversary isn't a game made for a stickler such as myself. I was really hoping otherwise, cause I learned about it thanks to a trilogy of videos by SteveOfWarr as part of his Tomb Raider retrospection and got apprehensive over what I was seeing, and it pains me to say that this foresight came out true. It's got the original's body frame, it has some of its bones and meat intact and chunks of the new stuff are fairly made, but this created specimen's essence doesn't quite hit me the same as the original form does.

LAST TIME: TOMB RAIDER 1996 / UNFINISHED BUSINESS EXPANSION

NEXT TIME: TOMB RAIDER LEGEND (I will go over why this is next in that review)