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Lara Croft has an anniversary to celebrate. Does she have the same appeal after 10 years?
August 18, 2007 | 12:16 PM PSTby: Matt Furtado
Oh Lara, how you have grown over the years. Everyone remembers when you broke onto the scene in your skimpy outfits and bikinis. Now over 10 years have gone by and you are still as lovely as ever. In your remastered edition of your original adventure from the PlayStation 1 days you came with some new toys to play around with and a few new moves that you couldn't pull off in the past such as a grappling hook, 45-degree jumps and other abilities that made there first showing during Tomb Raider Legend. It's time to revisit the great countries of Peru, Greece, and Egypt.
When Tomb Raider was originally release back in 1996, the game was received with welcome arms introducing a new sexy female character as the main protagonist. However, the game had its problems such as clunky controls and slow movements. Luckily, in this Anniversary edition the game has received many upgrades. Outside of the ancient temples being completely upgraded, versions of the original levels and the inclusion of the grappling hook from Legend, this game will come off as a completely new adventure. Lara can swing from ledges, leap ledge to ledge, or jump from a lower ledge onto a higher ledge. With these new improvements, the game allows her movements to feel more natural. Since Tomb Raider has always been all about precision movements these newest upgrades are all highly welcomed additions.
The game takes place in a variety of levels such as snow, water, jungle, and other settings. Each level is filled with puzzles which will need to be solved in order to progress throughout each temple. The puzzles range from being incredibly easy to being nearly impossible. The easiest puzzles will be the kinds that require you to find the key to open doors. The more difficult ones will range anywhere from finding four keys to open a door to use Lara's abilities in order to get into different locations to progress to your final destination. However, this far from easy to pull off because everything in the game is about timing and with one mistake you will fall to your death. If your timing is just a little bit off, Lara may grab a ledge with one hand and then you must furiously mash buttons to regain her holding. But if you miss the ledge completely, Lara will likely fall to her demise or at least take a serious amount of damage pending the fall. Sadly, these debilitating misses will occur quite a bit with the PSP’s analog stick.
The most attractive part of Tomb Raider is strong gameplay and vast environments to explore. Since the game is basically just exploring tomb after tomb it is important to make sure each tomb has its own unique look and doesn't feel too similar. Each tomb features huge environments to explore and will be filled with bats, wolves, and other viscous animals. Each tomb will be filled with broken ledges and vines that you need to swing on in order to gain access into unreachable areas. Exploration is essential to this game in order to discover everything needed to succeed in the mission at hand.
Since the PSP’s analog stick is far from perfect, the controls do take some time to master. With everything in the game centered on precision movements and timing, the PSP analog stick doesn’t always make that easy to do. Analog control issues aside the other problem with the controls is the camera. Moving the camera with the PSP’s shoulder buttons is easy but they move incredibly sluggish. You can hit the triangle button to center the camera instantly, but it doesn’t make up for the slow camera controls with the shoulder buttons. Tomb Raider needs a solid camera system so you can judge out jumps so you don’t make that fatal fall.
You may think this is a straight exploration and puzzles adventure but the game does have some intense action sequences. Anniversary sticks with the small roster of enemies from the original. Lara will still get into shooting sequences with mummies, wolves, and the always fun raptors so you can progress into to new territories. One of the most memorable boss battles returns with the T-Rex but unfortunately it didn’t get an AI upgrade. One of the biggest flaws of the titles combat is that the animals don’t carry the killer instinct. If Lara runs up a flight of the stairs the animal will sit at the bottoms of the stairs be shot to death.
Graphically, Anniversary is a marvel to look at. Lara’s model is simply gorgeous to look out. She is highly detailed and looks as beautiful as you pictured her back in the day. Outside of her character model the environments look good but sometimes bleed when moving fast. The game is also very dark and if you want to see everything crisp you’ll need to increase the games brightness settings and make sure the PSP is the brightest it can be.
Tomb Raider Anniversary is a good game despite some of the PSP’s control problems and sluggish camera. The gameplay is fun and challenging, and looks great on the PSP’s screen. With great levels and exploration the PSP does handle the game well overall even with its noticeable flaws. This is definitely a solid PSP title and should be checked out by anyone who likes Lara Croft or if you missed out on Lara’s first performance.
When Tomb Raider was originally release back in 1996, the game was received with welcome arms introducing a new sexy female character as the main protagonist. However, the game had its problems such as clunky controls and slow movements. Luckily, in this Anniversary edition the game has received many upgrades. Outside of the ancient temples being completely upgraded, versions of the original levels and the inclusion of the grappling hook from Legend, this game will come off as a completely new adventure. Lara can swing from ledges, leap ledge to ledge, or jump from a lower ledge onto a higher ledge. With these new improvements, the game allows her movements to feel more natural. Since Tomb Raider has always been all about precision movements these newest upgrades are all highly welcomed additions.
The game takes place in a variety of levels such as snow, water, jungle, and other settings. Each level is filled with puzzles which will need to be solved in order to progress throughout each temple. The puzzles range from being incredibly easy to being nearly impossible. The easiest puzzles will be the kinds that require you to find the key to open doors. The more difficult ones will range anywhere from finding four keys to open a door to use Lara's abilities in order to get into different locations to progress to your final destination. However, this far from easy to pull off because everything in the game is about timing and with one mistake you will fall to your death. If your timing is just a little bit off, Lara may grab a ledge with one hand and then you must furiously mash buttons to regain her holding. But if you miss the ledge completely, Lara will likely fall to her demise or at least take a serious amount of damage pending the fall. Sadly, these debilitating misses will occur quite a bit with the PSP’s analog stick.
The most attractive part of Tomb Raider is strong gameplay and vast environments to explore. Since the game is basically just exploring tomb after tomb it is important to make sure each tomb has its own unique look and doesn't feel too similar. Each tomb features huge environments to explore and will be filled with bats, wolves, and other viscous animals. Each tomb will be filled with broken ledges and vines that you need to swing on in order to gain access into unreachable areas. Exploration is essential to this game in order to discover everything needed to succeed in the mission at hand.
Since the PSP’s analog stick is far from perfect, the controls do take some time to master. With everything in the game centered on precision movements and timing, the PSP analog stick doesn’t always make that easy to do. Analog control issues aside the other problem with the controls is the camera. Moving the camera with the PSP’s shoulder buttons is easy but they move incredibly sluggish. You can hit the triangle button to center the camera instantly, but it doesn’t make up for the slow camera controls with the shoulder buttons. Tomb Raider needs a solid camera system so you can judge out jumps so you don’t make that fatal fall.
You may think this is a straight exploration and puzzles adventure but the game does have some intense action sequences. Anniversary sticks with the small roster of enemies from the original. Lara will still get into shooting sequences with mummies, wolves, and the always fun raptors so you can progress into to new territories. One of the most memorable boss battles returns with the T-Rex but unfortunately it didn’t get an AI upgrade. One of the biggest flaws of the titles combat is that the animals don’t carry the killer instinct. If Lara runs up a flight of the stairs the animal will sit at the bottoms of the stairs be shot to death.
Graphically, Anniversary is a marvel to look at. Lara’s model is simply gorgeous to look out. She is highly detailed and looks as beautiful as you pictured her back in the day. Outside of her character model the environments look good but sometimes bleed when moving fast. The game is also very dark and if you want to see everything crisp you’ll need to increase the games brightness settings and make sure the PSP is the brightest it can be.
Tomb Raider Anniversary is a good game despite some of the PSP’s control problems and sluggish camera. The gameplay is fun and challenging, and looks great on the PSP’s screen. With great levels and exploration the PSP does handle the game well overall even with its noticeable flaws. This is definitely a solid PSP title and should be checked out by anyone who likes Lara Croft or if you missed out on Lara’s first performance.
November 20, 2009
