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It’s kind of sad when you think about it. The original Tomb Raider came out 1996. And over 10 years and more than a dozen games later, it remains the pinnacle of the series. Sure, last year’s Tomb Raider: Legend was a complete reversal of fortune for a series that has sucked for far too long, but it still wasn’t as good as the Lara’s original adventure back in the day.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary changes all that.

Birthday Bash

But this isn’t just a graphical update to the old PlayStation/Saturn classic. While Tomb Raider was pretty revolutionary back when 3D platformers were in their infancy, the grid-based, Prince-of-Persia-esque play mechanics just don’t hold up by today’s standards.

Instead, developer Crystal Dynamics has retrofitted the whole game with the graphic engine and control of Tomb Raider Legends, which was one of the prettiest, most fluid platforming setups seen in recent years.

The next step was to re-design each level with the new graphics and play mechanics in mind. And the results are just spectacular. Basically, this is one of the most polished action-adventure games available anywhere.

Vertigo

The original Tomb Raider puzzles and levels were genius, so messing with them was a risky move on Crystal’s part. But they’ve somehow managed to maintain the spirit – and in some cases the exact solutions – to most of the puzzles in the game.

As an example, the cog puzzle found early on in the game (fans of the original will remember this as the T-Rex level) has been completely reworked to be far more exciting. The puzzle is the same: find three cogs insert them into the ancient mechanism to turn off the waterfall; move on. But now the level requires Lara to climb to dizzying heights above said waterfall, swinging like an acrobat off jutting rocks and rickety bridges as she places each cog to move on. The spirit of the level remains the same, but it takes advantage of the game’s new engine in awesome ways.

Raiders of the Lost Art

At first, Tomb Raider’s strength was incredible level design and a focus on puzzles – not action – to create the challenge. Over the years, the games lost that focus somehow. Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a fantastic throwback to those heady days, and hopefully a lot of other game developers will study what Crystal Dynamics has done here long and hard before sitting down to design their next platformer.

Article by: Greg Sewart