Tomb Raider: Anniversary

Debilitating bugs that make it difficult, sometimes impossible to progress. I can't recommend someone spend money on something they possibly can't play. Game needs to be fixed. The original had great controls that glitched at times but were at least reliable.

https://www.backloggd.com/u/gamemast15r/review/2009208/ (For Intro, Plot (including some differences from the original), Graphics, Sound Design and Outro)

Before sitting down and playing through Tomb Raider: Anniversary, I had only really played through the newest reboot trilogy and only really the first two in that trilogy until a couple of months ago. My experience otherwise was “Ahhh this sounds familiar”, “Cool I guess”, and “Angelina Jolie is hot”; all of those completely valid; however most of the other Tomb Raider games I hadn’t really had much experience with. Originally after Shadow of the Tomb raider, we were going to go down a Star Wars rabbit hole due to my one friend’s love of Star Wars (shoutout to Kat). After we kinda threw on a couple of them (with Star Wars: Clone Wars, Bounty Hunter and Knights of the Old Republic being a bit of a starter), she decided instead to continue down to Tomb Raider and asked about Anniversary. I shrugged my shoulders and said “sure, depending on the price”, and when she pointed out that there was a Steam Sale for the game that made it 97 Cents, I really had no excuse at that point. So over the next couple of months, I had patched the game and played when we both weren’t busy and had an interesting time with it.

The gameplay of the original game (as well as the subsequent six or so more from there) was a lot more slow paced, methodical, and precise in both its traversal and in its combat. Without even playing the game, I can tell you that Anniversary is much more compact and linearly structured that Crystal Dynamics had used in Legends and would go on to use in Underworld, with a little bit of backtracking. Some of the differences from the original included quick time events in cutscenes, pressing certain button prompts (i.e. Pressing Y when Lara is about to lose grip of a ledge or falling from pole), the use of a grapple hook to traverse between certain spots as well as make certain jumps, and a shoot dodge mechanic in which if you’re able to dodge at the right time and then line up an aiming reticule you can get some serious damage John Woo style. The shoot dodge mechanic and grapple hook stuff are perfectly fine, though admittedly the quick time events feel unnecessary and kind of hamfisted for this type of game. After all, the Tomb Raider series is known for action so how’s the action? There’s like little action encounters here and there where you can shoot creatures or hostile animals (who eat more bullets than mobsters do spaghetti takeout dinners) with either your infinite ammo dual-wield pistols or go HAM with a shotgun, desert eagle, uzis or maybe more; but they’re not really bombastic set pieces as they would later grow. I have a preference for the second reboot set pieces, though I’m not going to give hell to a game for going in the other direction. After all, raiding tombs isn’t about committing mass murder it’s about raiding tombs. Raiding tombs equal puzzles, and I’m surprised to say that it’s not always that bad in this game? There were a couple of times where I had to legit break out a guide, but the more I played the game the more I surprisingly got the hang of how the game functions and works to where I could auto-pilot the game.

However, I think for me, playing the game felt jank sometimes on a functional level. I remember at least a couple of times having a hard time making a jump because instead of, say, jumping back to the left to reach an out of the way ledge, I would have to use the D-Pad instead of the joysticks due to her deciding that she was going to jump into a wall. In an area in Egypt or Greece (I forget), I had to turn on VSync in order to literally make a jump correctly and I only found that out after looking up a guide. For others playing the game, Croft Manor apparently had a checkpoint glitch problem where it wouldn’t save your progress though I was somehow spared from that fate luckily. One of the notes I put down in the game was “f u c k Egypt’s second level” and that is “The Obelisk of Khamoon”, where admittedly due to struggling with control jank I had a REALLY rough time with the game. The last thing I can think of to bring up here is that I put down as a note “PC button prompts even with controller support”, which I had apparently fixed at some point (I don’t know how, my apologies) as using the Grappling Hook always had the Xbox 360 X button for as long as I can physically remember. I guess the only real summary I can think up for the gameplay for me personally is this: “It feels smoother once you get used to certain janky control schemes, the combat is okay I guess and the puzzles can range from simple to annoyingly frustrating depending on where you’re at and overall? Feels kind of mid.”

Tomb Raider: Anniversary, or at least its PC port, isn’t my favorite game in the series by a long shot. Perhaps I joined in at the wrong game, or even played the wrong PC port, but the truth is that it was a bit of a left turn from what I had gotten used to playing for the last year or so. I wasn’t used to the emphasis placed on the puzzle solving aspects and the lack of a shooting gallery (minus freaky animals and even a dinosaur) and a lot of the mechanics from back in 2007 like slow motion dodging and trying to jump backwards from a ledge, but that’s not something I’m going to hold against this game. After all the further I got into it, the more I had grown accustomed to all of the mechanics and the inner workings of the puzzles to where I didn’t even need a guide to solve all of them. Eventually I would like to play the rest of the games in the series and as such, it’s best to go into the rest of the series with the pretense that it’s not going to be the murder gallery shooting fest that the reboots were. I think however that if there was anything off about this title (at least on PC), it’s that it’s a bit janky. I had to deal with glitches that required different solutions like pressing the D-Pad to jump back and grab a ledge or to turn on V-Sync in order to grab ANOTHER ledge or else I would just keep dying. But for the most part, while my least favorite in the series of all of the ones I’ve played, it’s serviceable enough that I didn’t hate the game by the time I finished it. Maybe I wouldn’t play it again, but it was acceptable for the most part.

Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_Raider:_Anniversary
https://www.thegamer.com/tomb-raider-anniversary-differences-original-release/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/8000/discussions/0/558749825241900096/
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/tomb-raider-anniversary-qanda-demo-details-general-game-updates/1100-6171573/
https://web.archive.org/web/20151126052345/http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132511/postmortem_crystal_dynamics_tomb_.php?page=3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svrAtAGw2Sk&ab_channel=LaraCroftTombRaiderGamingChannel
http://www.vgmonline.net/nathanmccreeinterview/
https://web.archive.org/web/20090310042410/http://www.planetlara.com/trae/interview_phil01.asp
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/7/22219080/tom-raider-10th-anniversary-remake-lost-playable-internet-archive
https://web.archive.org/web/20100709172801/http://www.planetlara.com/trae/interview_rich01.asp
https://tombraiders.net/stella/anniversary.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuU60pbO9ng&ab_channel=SethMcKenzie
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/TombRaiderAnniversary
https://web.archive.org/web/20140228072934/http://www.nixxes.com/nixxes/projects/19-uk/projects/136-tombraider-anniversary
https://www.wikiraider.com/index.php/Secrets

I played through Tomb Raider Anniversary start to finish and while I think that traversing the world and exploring is fun enough, the jank control over Laura and the very inconsistent targeting make it a very hard sell to anyone. I wouldn't recommend you put yourself through the irritation from this game.

Still a fun game to revisit. A big tomb raider fan since I picked up its predecessor; Tomb Raider Legend 18 years ago.

Absolutely crammed full of bugs. Awful camera angles. Frustrating gameplay. Utter piece of crap.
Major issues trying to complete level 5 because she wouldn't grab a ledge.
Now I can't progress any further because she won't jump across a small gap on level 7. She just glitches near the edge and falls to her death. Must have tried about 30 times now (double checked a YouTube walkthrough to make sure my approach was correct.)

Why is Steam even allowed to sell this?? If I sold a product at work that behaved like this then there wouldn't even be a business for me to work at!!

Using a Controller,the games camera quickly shifts to different angle and cause a death. Even if you save your game at a certain spot the load game puts you at the last check point.

This game aged horribly. Very much inferior to the original, which thankfully was remastered.

Aquí no hay bordes ni salientes con pintura amarilla. ¡Aquí se viene a jugar!

Creo que hay que tener en cuenta la importancia de este juego para la época en la que salió, y es que Lara Croft: Tomb Raider es un icono del videojuego importantísimo en aquel entonces, tanto que hasta diría que está a la altura de Mario y Sonic. Ha llegado a aparecer en cómics, películas, incluso hasta en revistas no relacionadas con los videojuegos. Gente que ha jugado a estos juegos incluso soñaron con ser arqueólogos de profesión, así que no es ninguna broma que jugasen con los recuerdos de la gente 10 años después del lanzamiento del primer juego con Tomb Raider: Anniversary.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary es básicamente un remake del primer título: Tomb Raider. La historia, música, niveles y personajes sufren algunas variantes, pero manteniendo la esencia del original, con cambios para justificar que se busca atraer tanto a nuevos jugadores como a los veteranos. El cambio en la historia es tal que se considera parte del arco de la trilogía Legend (Legend, Anniversary, Underworld) La pega es que no trae los niveles de la expansión Unfinished Business.

En cuanto a la jugabilidad: Los controles no siempre hacen caso y no siempre está claro por donde tirar, pero no diría que hace falta una guía para esto. Aquí no hay bordes ni salientes con pintura amarilla. ¡Aquí se viene a jugar! La clave está en saber explorar bien en todo momento en cada nivel. Y sienta bien cuando cumples dicho cometido y vas avanzando. Diría que el verdadero problema son los combates, que no siempre te terminas de aclarar cuándo se activa la cámara lenta, necesaria para enfrentarte a los jefes

El juego también tiene cierta rejugabilidad. Tiene varios coleccionables (artefactos y reliquias) con los que desbloqueas nuevos atuendos y hasta trucos.

Por lo general un buen juego, solo que quizás no para todo el mundo, pero es bastante entretenido y en Steam Deck corre 100% bien sin ningún problema, sin tener que configurar nada. 👍

Un mérito lo que han conseguido con Tomb Raider los de Crystal Dynamics, un remake a la altura de la visión original de Core Design. Lo recomiendo si te gustan los juegos de plataformas con acción.

Good game

I cant stand this piece of shit game. Controls are very buggy: try a jump 5x, fail and then randomly succeed on the 6th.

If you fail a jump you usually go ALL THE FUCKING WAY AROUND and try it again.

Bad sense of direction, frequently no idea where to go what to do, running around in circles. I know this is the charm of older games but fuck did i feel like i wasted my time.

I’d say the platforming and the retarded ledge grabbing mechanic are the biggest reason to avoid this game. I’m about 70% done and i cant wait to uninstall this garbage tier piece of shit game

This game is way too long, the puzzles get repetitive, and the levels are too boring. The combat feels very cheap and annoying, you constantly get boxed in a small room with an enemy with nowhere to dodge. Camera is shit as well, the game disregards your actual movement inputs and does whatever it decides it wants to do instead. There is also absolutely no story until you get to the end of the game, so you're just better off watching a 30 minute cutscene summary on youtube and moving on to Underworld, I've heard that one's actually good. Fuck the Egypt levels, btw.

A great game. 7.5/10
Overall really enjoyed seeing all the levels from TR1 re-imagined, music is a great, also has a semi decent incentive to replay the game and get all the secrets. My only issues were the jumps that didn't stick to the platform even thought you should have nailed the jump. And the enemy staggering you especially when fighting multiple at a time it can be a bit annoying.

better than underrworld and rise.

Really fun game, sadly it softlocked about half way through, and I am not sure how to fix it.

It crashes every time I try to fix my display settings. Thanks for that!

Took me about 15 hours or so to complete very good game for its age lots of bugs that I had to work around but overall was enjoyable and challenged the few brain cells I have left. Shoot gorilla puzzle puzzle puzzle shoot person puzzle puzzle puzzle shoot bear puzzle puzzle puzzle

the best game in the world i replay it once a year the soundtrack is perfect lara is perfect this game is perfect i love u lara mwah mwah mwah

My feelings regarding this game are very mixed: I love the Franchise which makes criticizing it very hard, but "Anniversary" is just in a pretty weird state.

The stuff thats definitively good about it are the graphics (they hold up very well, especially if you consider the games age) and the amosphere, wich is also incredible. Additionally, the Level Designs are great and some of them are just stunning.

However it feels like this game was never play tested - at least not for PC. A lot of the sections are just very clunky, the camera keeps focusing the wrong things and some stuff is just very buggy. You need a lot of patience for most sections towards the end of the game because your actions just dont register or the game just ignores your input (e.g. falling through Ledges you clearly should´ve grabbed),

Having to do the same segments over and over (eventhough you cant do anything about it because it´s the games fault) will be very frustraiting and annoying, so if you are somebody that gets tilted very easily you should probably not play this game.

Also, keep an online guide ready, you´re gonna need it because some of the puzzles are just so absurd and unintuitive that its almost ridicoulus and sometimes its incredible hard to get them on your own.

All in All: If you like the Franchise and action/adventure games give it a try but you should be tilt-resistant and bring lots of patience.

The controls are buggy like grabbing ledges and ladders, can't progress if you don't access triggers the way the game wants you to. OG controls were stiff but at least you were able to successfully grab on to ledges and ladders

A relic of distant times that will never return to gaming. As a re-imagination of TR1, the spirit of this game is based in making the player think . A skill that is demanded by games only in certain niches, but was the norm back in the 90s.

That being said, this is not the kind of game you relax with - unless of course you are very used to puzzles and similar cognitive challenges. Especially if you feel like your job/studying is mentally taxing enough.

While the game has some bugs, which I dont remember the CD version of the game being THAT buggy, none are game breaking.Just make sure to have your FPS limited at below 60, and force Vsync it.
I didn't experience any game-breaking bugs, just visually frustrating ones with the aforementioned settings.

IMHO most of the negative reviews are by people that this game was not made for . So I do recommend keeping that in mind whilst reading the other reviews.

Very fun. This game has that old school feel with a smooth easily playable engine (I'm using an XBOX controller.) Graphics hold up well and its less complex then the next-gen Tomb Raider (which is, by the way certainly also awesome.) Got this and a few others for pennies during the 25th Anniversary Sale. I'm set for Tomb Raider for a long time!!!

As a remake of the original TR1, Tomb Raider 1 is infinitely better, sorry if the truth hurts but it is what it is. If you want to play any Tomb Raider from the Xbox 360/PS2 era just get Tomb Raider Legend or Tomb Raider Underworld instead of this. But if you want to learn more about the story of TR1 you may want to get Tomb Raider 1 itself. As a matter of fact, with the release of the Tomb Raider Trilogy Remaster, the story and gameplay are much more enjoyable, but you do you.

Alot of puzzle, with 2 bugs that I found and need to youtube to pass to next level

<3

mommy

fun game to play

game crashes despite many attempts at fixes and repairs and re-installs

All of the great memories and gameplay of the old lara crofts without the clunky, dated, and annoying controls. Perfect remake. A bit hardcore, though :3

Game Review: Tomb Raider: Anniversary

Wendrex wrote:

Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a reimagining of the 1996 classic Tomb Raider, developed by Crystal Dynamics and released in 2007. This title is not only a celebration of the iconic original game, but also a modern update that refines and expands the original experience with updated graphics and new gameplay mechanics. Here's a full breakdown of what makes Tomb Raider: Anniversary an exceptional experience.

Storyline and Setting
Anniversary follows the same basic narrative as the original game, with Lara Croft on her quest to find the mythical Scions Shield, an ancient artifact of immense power. The game maintains the essence of the original story, but with a more polished and detailed approach that enriches the narrative and character development.

Pros:

Classic Storytelling with an Update: The story continues to be captivating, with a plot that mixes mystery and adventure, while the modern reinterpretation makes it more engaging and cohesive.

Immersive Environments: The environments are richly detailed and offer a sense of grandeur, from underground caverns to ancient ruins, creating an atmosphere that is both familiar and refreshing.

Gameplay and Mechanics
The gameplay of Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a skillful combination of exploration, puzzle-solving, and combat. The game modernizes classic gameplay mechanics with new controls and greater fluidity in movement, while maintaining the essence that made the original so acclaimed.

Pros:

Deep Exploration: Exploration is a key part of the game, and the levels are designed to encourage players to discover secrets and solve puzzles, with a perfect balance between challenge and reward.

Creative Puzzles: The puzzles are well-designed and varied, offering a challenging experience that requires logical thinking and skill to overcome obstacles.

Improved Movement and Combat: Lara Croft’s controls are more refined and responsive, and combat mechanics have been improved to provide a more fluid and satisfying experience.

Graphics and Music
The graphics in Tomb Raider: Anniversary are a significant upgrade over the original game, with more modern and detailed visuals that bring Lara Croft’s adventures into the modern era. The soundtrack and sound effects complement the gameplay experience, effectively immersing players in the environment.

Pros:

Updated Visual Style: The game features improved graphics that do justice to the original design, with improved textures and models that create a more vibrant and realistic world.

Immersive Soundtrack: The music is evocative and fits well with the game’s tone of adventure and mystery, while the sound effects are well-designed to heighten immersion and tension during gameplay.

Length and Replayability
Tomb Raider: Anniversary offers a gameplay experience that is long enough to fully explore the story and puzzles, with an average playtime of 12 to 15 hours. Replayability is encouraged by the presence of collectibles, challenges, and the ability to revisit levels with new abilities.

Positive aspects:

Adequate length: The game's length is ideal for a complete experience without becoming excessively long, allowing players to enjoy the story and challenges.

Replayability: The presence of hidden secrets and collectibles, as well as additional challenges, encourages players to revisit the game to discover everything it has to offer.

Conclusion
Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a brilliant reinterpretation of the classic Tomb Raider, combining the nostalgia of the original with modern enhancements that refine and expand the experience. With an engaging narrative, well-balanced gameplay, and updated graphics, the game offers an exciting and rewarding adventure for new players and longtime fans alike. If you enjoy a good mix of exploration, puzzles, and action, Tomb Raider: Anniversary is an excellent choice that promises to keep you entertained and engaged from start to finish.

I hope this review helps highlight the strengths of Tomb Raider: Anniversary and why it continues to be a valuable and memorable experience in the adventure game genre!

Fall die often simulator. Still its probably the best of them tbh.
These Tomb Raider games are very good. Obviously I just ragequitted at dying too many times trying to get some artifact in the early game that is why I only have 0.3 hours played so far .. But still think this is a very good game.

:)

LOVE IT <3 <3 <3