O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
I’ve already revisited Tomb Raider: Anniversary several times before. In fact, it’s been one of my favorite entries in the series, up there with The Last Revelation. But it’s been a while and the game has never been perfect in the first place. I was somewhat worried that it has aged more poorly than I’d expect.
Nah, it’s still great.
Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a remake of the original Tomb Raider from 1996, quite faithful in some regards, very different in others. For one, it’s bringing the original story into the “Legend timeline”, which is implied to be slightly different from the original one, so some of the story events have additional elements and characters have slightly different reasons for being in the game. Additionally, lots of the gameplay mechanics and concepts from Legend (apart from those which gradually appeared in TR games until Chronicles) are present, some completely new ideas are introduced yet also some of the classic concepts return after being absent in Legend. The grapple is back, though not magnetic this time around, the inventory from the classic TR titles is back, however with some quality of life improvements and action mechanics have been changed again. This time around, due to the absence of human enemies throughout the game, instead of jumping off enemies to trigger slow motion, enemies might occasionally get enraged and rush you and if you dodge them at the right moment you get a chance to one-shot them in slo-mo.
The absence of human enemies, by the way, is a curious choice which I personally love. I’ve always considered TR games to be exploration and adventuring first, hence my initial dislike for Legend, and seeing Lara be less of a murder machine is nice. In fact, this was the first attempt at tackling the “Lara’s first human kill” and despite delegating the sequence to a QTE (yes, the game still has QTEs :c) it was overall handled in a less awkward way than what Tomb Raider reboot would attempt 6 years later.
All that said, you do kill a lot of wildlife and even though I get behind the direction, this change does make action far more annoying than fun as it was in Legend. Enemies in this game have way too much health and fighting them isn’t particularly fun. The dodge-shot isn’t that great, especially since you can’t guarantee it will even be triggered. Yet it becomes the go-to mechanic for all boss fights. Additionally, while I love that the inventory and weapons here work almost exactly like they did in classic TR games, after all this type of resource management has been a dead art kept alive only by occasional attempts at survival horror at the time of the game release, but in practice using the weapons in the game, and managing ammo for them, is a bit of a chore.
It’s great, then, that the action isn’t the focus of Anniversary, even if there’s plenty of it as well. Just like in classic TR games, this title is all about exploring astonishing ancient ruins, avoiding deadly traps and solving devious puzzles, mostly using Lara’s platforming skills. There’s no one on the radio this time around and Lara is silent most of the time, yet it still feels like an adventure that the character is enjoying, even if it’s often hard. Instead of the really beautiful but noticeable tunes we get more ambient tracks while exploring, though variations on the TR theme appear here and there and the overall mood of the music and sounds is very reminiscent of the classic Tomb Raider.
Occasionally it falters, just like it did in 2007. It feels as if the developers simply didn’t have enough time to polish every part of the game, so some of the rooms or sections are full of bizarre annoying elements, like context sensitive jumps suddenly not triggering the way they would elsewhere, some timings being way too demanding for the camera and controls or moments where some randomness can be added to the above issues, meaning that you’d restart one trap over and over again, failing because “stuff happened” and not because you did something wrong. These are very few, but even without playing this game for 10 years as soon as I’ve gotten to those spots, I remembered to brace myself for frustration, which indeed followed.
It’s such a joy to play overall, though. There are little fun things like developers commentary for those, who wish to learn more about the original game and the remake. The metroidvania-ish Croft Manor level returns as well, now with an actual end-goal and mini-story. And every part of the world you visit, full of puzzles, traps and secrets, is exciting. If it were to be remastered, I wish we’d see those rough moments revisited and tweaked, if even possible. But even without remastering, this game is still fantastic and is one of the best action adventure titles out there.