Blog Post: Aggro Aggregation: Tomb Raider: Anniversary Subscribe to this RSS feed

Lara Croft is back, and for the first time in years, that's actually a good thing. How gaga are gaming sites going over this update of the decade-old original?

My, how you've changed.

My, how you've changed.

I'm the kinda guy who sticks with a franchise long after its expiration date--see my dust-collecting copy of Tony Hawk's American Wasteland--but even I had it up to here with Tomb Raider after the series rehashed itself into near-oblivion on the PlayStation. After Lara's dreadful PS2 debut with Angel of Darkness, the entire industry was about to call her the next Crash Bandicoot.

Thankfully, Crystal Dynamics pried the series out of Eidos' cold dead hands and created Tomb Raider: Legend, a game that revitalized the series. When it was announced that the next title in the series would be a remake of the first Tomb Raider, many thought it would be a return to poor form for Lara. Many were wrong. Here's some of the more insightful commentary about Tomb Raider: Anniversary:

1UP goes into detail in the difference a decade makes:

Even though it comes from a different developer, Anniversary feels like what Tomb Raider was always intended to be. In this fond reimagining of the first game, the story is the same, the levels are named the same, and they're set in the same areas...but virtually everything else is different. Gone are the vast black, cubist spaces of the first game, replaced by enormous, gorgeous, detailed levels with plenty of opportunities for vertical movement and vertigo-inducing acrobatics.

GamesRadar points out why a return to the original's form was such a smart move:

See, what provided the brilliantly engaging atmosphere of the original Tomb Raider - something lost in the increasingly urbanized sequels - were the tombs themselves. Vividly imagined and tapping into an Indiana Jones-style matinee spirit, the archaeological environments were bursting with a character that the later, blander settings couldn't compete with.

I rather enjoyed Legend, so Anniversary is quite tempting, though I'm hesitant to go last-gen on a simple remake. Thankfully, I may not have to. In the meantime, check out all of the critical attention the PS2 version's received thus far!


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