Tomb Raider - Anniversary (2007)

The title changes depending on where you are in the game, which is kind of interesting.

Name:Tomb Raider: Anniversary
Number:207
Year:2007
Publisher:Eidos Interactive
Developer:Crystal Dynamics
Genre:Third-Person Shooter/Platformer
Difficulty:3/5
Time:18 hours 30 minutes
Won:Yes (84W/67L)

This generally assumes you know what I said about the original. There are a lot of comparisons between the two and it won't make much sense otherwise.

Video game remakes are usually worse than the games they're remaking and even in the best of cases, they don't replace the original. Resident Evil is a case of the latter, for instance, since even the first remake is so different from the original that playing either version is a pretty different experience. Later entries are so different as to be totally different games even if one is supposed to be a remake of the other.

I think the ones that stick out the most in my mind are the various remakes of Sierra titles. The original King's Quest is the strongest. Originally, it was released on PCjr using a graphics mode which wasn't EGA, but did display more colors than your average CGA game at the time. For the time, it was mind-blowing on any system. Later ports to true DOS would change things around, but most of us didn't realize it when we played them and it affects the sequel more than the original.

In 1990 they made a true remake of the game, putting it into their new fancy engine, and giving it new fancy EGA graphics. People hated it. Depending on the kind of person you are, it can be hard to see why. Its got nice shiny EGA graphics, the ability to use the mouse for movement, and it even adds a few puzzle solutions that should have been in there before according to many.

The thing is, remakes are products of a franchise, original titles are not. Debut games are rough around the edges, because they're not made with ideas already set in stone. Even the most edgy of edgy people who get put in charge of a franchise with the sole purpose of shaking things up cannot do more than the original author setting it up. A remake knows full when what is going to happen.

So there were no more official King's Quest remakes (unless you count console ports), but there were more unofficial ones. Eventually, King's Quest was turned into VGA by fans. VGA being logically better than EGA since it has more colors, and naturally it also uses a fancy mouse cursor and actions for everything instead of a parser. I myself bought into this at the time. Graphical interface over parser, VGA over EGA over not EGA.

The issue is, I eventually realized, is that some of those EGA artists and even CGA artists, could do some pretty clever things. The best EGA artists could make you question if what you were seeing was really EGA. There's a character to EGA that not a lot of games brought over to VGA, with Sierra games and fangames not bringing that character forth. By the same token, parsers and graphical interfaces do different things, there are things you can do with a parser you can't with a graphical interface and vice versa.

And this is what is wrong with Tomb Raider: Anniversary. Its a VGA game imitating the world of an EGA game, its visuals are unquestionable, but it lacks the character the original had. Its controls are a graphical interface awkwardly imitating a parser. If it controlled well, anyway. That's how this is going to go, its a hollow imitation of the original.

I only took the one because I could easily replicate it.

Controls are quite strange. They've kept the weight of actions from the original, but otherwise they've gotten worse, often in ways that seem contrary to what I've seen said about the game. I was expecting Lara to be floaty, but basically glide everywhere and have a decent camera. Lara is quite easy to control here, when things are working, but often that isn't true. Were this a video review I would now show a montage of the many, many, many times I did everything right only for the game to decide against it. Collision in this game is awful. Every step in this game is risky. Walking does nothing, it's only with the grab button pressed that you're safe...in some situations. Often I would complete a jump for Lara to then phase through the floor. This frankly, is an absolute point against the game. Why play a game centered around platforming when the game will often arbitrarily decide you failed?

What makes this worse is that outside of the game breaking or a few objects that are difficult to aim Lara off, the game is basically a cakewalk. And this is with automatic grab off. With it on, such things would be more jarring. Its bizarre, its almost like the developers knew it was too easy, and rather than fix that, just programmed in an element that randomly decides if you're having too much fun and knock you down if you are.

Basically every piece of equipment in vision can be climbed upon in some way.

The designers also loved to give you more buttons and abilities than you will ever need. We get stealth, despite never needing it, walk, despite never needing it, crouch, of which we actually need but only rarely. Grab, use and shoot are all bound to different keys because we really needed them all to be separate. Use speeds you up when on ledges and underwater, but frankly it should have just been faster underwater and speed on ledges is unnecessary. I don't know how to get shoot and grab together, perhaps a holster button? That allows Lara to pull out her guns at a time the player wants to, rather than just shooting from nothing.

Certain tutorials are fairly obvious.

The swimming in this game is the worst I have ever encountered in a while. Its just awful. The movement keys move Lara around as if she was in 2D space, crouch and jump move down and up respectively. This is just completely counter to anything I've played outside of sub games, which is a somewhat amusing comparison to make. Now that Lara is no longer a tank, she's a sub. Next stop, Resident Evil. But what really makes this annoying is the camera.

While I understand why people dislike the original's camera in the sense that it can cause problems on occasion, I don't understand why this is the superior choice. You are completely limited to a more or less horizontal view, even while still, unless you press the aim/look button, which still restricts your vertical view more than the original. Its not very fast and it takes a noticeable amount of time to turn it around.
Further still, using this camera in ways the developers didn't intend completely breaks the game. Lara falls through objects. I couldn't believe it when I finally spotted it.

Ultimately, the problem with these controls is what the developers are trying to do is a fool's errand. Even if the controls weren't broken in such a way that movement breaks whenever the camera moves as you go onto a pole or something. Which isn't often, but happens enough to be a problem. This is just the kind of thing you need left to mean left and right to mean right.

Combat is worse than the original. Just replace autolocking shooting and jumping around with rolling around. The game offers the illusion of depth with enemy rage mechanics. Shoot them enough, they charge at Lara, at which point you have to dodge, time slows down, and you can do a highly damaging attack. Thing is, this adds nothing outside of one or two boss fights, and those boss fights it adds something to don't really work when the rest of the combat is just busywork. Worse still, enemy AI tends completely shuts off whenever Lara is somewhere they can't reach.

Worse still, combat tutorials are next to useless. They literally stop the action, which isn't very helpful in...you know, combat. It took me way longer than it should to understand dodging and how I can deal a super high amount of damage. There's another mechanic, in which some enemies grab Lara, which isn't explained, and when I did the obvious thing, press buttons until Lara gets out, nothing seemed to happen. Instead it was just tied awkwardly to movement.

Perhaps the problem is poor implementation, the level design in this game is aggressively bland. There are basically two types of rooms, which frequently function exactly the same as some room you previously went through. The go around a room clockwise or counterclockwise, and up, and the hallway. The rare exceptions are either directly copying a room for once or a very rare attempt at doing something original.

After finishing the game, you unlock, among other things, commentary from Toby Gard, who was the director of the original and Jason Botta, who I guess was the new lead. There are three issues with this commentary:

1. Neither really have much insight into the design of the original, and don't have that much to say about this version either.
2. They are clearly uncomfortable recording this commentary.
3. Tomb Raider was a team effort, and survived without Gard. Further, later interviews state that Gard had zero input on Anniversary. So we have one guy who is just here for a paycheck and one guy who doesn't really know what he's talking about.
   

This certainly isn't any bigger than the original even if it's more realistic.

Throughout the commentary the two talk about how the new game is about x2 bigger in a lot of places. I don't know if that's true or not. Lara was supposed to be taller in the original, which would throw things off. Some rooms are still clearly bigger in the original, but these are off-set by rooms which are now completely gone, some of which contributed to those areas being bigger. I suspect if I wasn't stopping to write things down I'd be finished in 8 hours. Well, 6, because I probably wouldn't finish this if I wasn't reviewing it.

The game attempts to be more realistic than the original. This is not necessarily bad, though with something like Tomb Raider you really shouldn't be attempting to make it like reality entirely. Tomb Raider consists of many larger than reality locations, and this should be reflected. Anniversary fails on both accounts. It reflects neither reality nor the larger than life locations you could reach, instead feeling like many 6th gen games, a failed midpoint.

With realism, you have to ask yourself, how would a normal person get through here? In some cases, how would people go through here without the damaged walls? The answer in many cases is, they wouldn't. There's also that problem of scale. Abstraction works when the game is on some level abstracted. The City of Vilcabamba is five or so huts in the original, but its so big and abstracted that it doesn't register. Here, it's still five huts, only now it looks realistic. Instead of a forgotten city, it looks like the love shack of a character from a Robert A. Heinlein novel.

This is basically half of the valley, there are no side areas.

They keep talking about how Lara is more agile in this game, which may be true, but it doesn't matter when you're basically going through something that might as well be on-rails. Comparing the two valleys, for instance, while the new one looks better, but it doesn't even have the pretense of the openness the original had. If you break away from the rails it's clear that there isn't anything to it now.

Gard, talking about the Coliseum, says the the original was just two keys and you go around, and Botta chimes in with top right, you go around the top right. This is said in a somewhat dismissive way. While this isn't entirely fair to this Coliseum, it's not a good comparison for the original. While both are largely linear in actuality, the original isn't linear until you know what you're doing. The design of it is very clever in how it cuts back onto itself, especially with the outer columns. Side areas here are just distractions until you get back to the arena itself.

I liked this part because it made sense for an industrial area to look like this.

I could go on, but you get the point. It's not necessarily that linear games are bad, but in a game like Tomb Raider, in which I should be searching around for something of value, it's laid out too obviously. While you could see where you could go in the original, everything was a possible ledge. Here what you can interact with is obvious and what you can pick up glows. When everything is a ledge, it's not the same thing as when the only ledges around are visually distinct.

That said, it could also be said that the game excised what was the best linear part of the game, Atlantis. Sure, technically Atlantis is still here, but the two are so different as to practically be different areas. Here, Atlantis is no strange alien world, it's a random ancient ruin someone dropped a few alien eggs in. Instead of the series of challenges that the original was, this is mostly just a single shaft up that in the original served as a sign you were making progress in the level.

The updated visuals are fine for the most part, if a bit washed out. Lara's face is weird, but otherwise she's fine. I think there's some deformation going on in the clothing, which is something I rarely see and is nice. Animations are pretty good, except they don't always play nice with the environments. The wetness effects are interesting, her clothing changes color when wet, but not her hair. Curiously, this results in a minor change from the original game, she was wearing shorts over a one-piece swimsuit, not a sleeveless shirt, knit, judging by how it looks in-game.

I think the biggest problem the game has visually are poor lighting effects. Whenever the in-game lighting changes to something bright, bloom is either used to show adjusting to the light or just used in general, and it looks goofy. Then there are the shadows, specifically Lara's. It looks disconnected from Lara and the game, some bizarre shadow puppet that seems to follow Lara around.

In the audio department I don't have many real complaints. The music is fine but not particularly interesting. Keeley Hawes is fine, but slightly off. The sort of casting you would approve of in a live-action adaptation, but not as a voice actress. Still, slightly off is better than some characters get.

Quote from man who got shot.

But I don't have the same level of acceptance towards the story. We don't need a complex story. Lara does not need a personal connection to the artifact, her father does not need to have been looking for it or even an archaelogist. Lara should not be musing about her father as she goes through an ancient tomb. And, I can't stress this one enough, Lara should not be making any sort of statement about blood on her hands. It's pretentious, because it's not believeable. In every other game Lara is gunning down so many people that any attempt at moralizing about it is absurd. The reason why the concept of Angel of Darkness worked is because we can absolutely believe Lara would murder someone.

I have been harsh on this game, but it does feel like this game has no point in it's existence. It doesn't add much to the original and takes away a great deal. Supposed improvements are questionable at best and a great deal of what was lost was pretty fun.

Weapons:
Despite four weapons, it plays like there are only three. Heavy damaging slow shot weapon, middle-of-the-road and rapid fire. The magnums increased damage is hardly important in a game where you don't need to reload for most enemies. 2/10

Enemies:
It feels like what little variety the original had has been taken away. In retrospect, where a level in Tomb Raider would have 2 or 3 types of enemies, this has 2 at most, practically 1. With the second variety being a mini-boss. Most bosses, meanwhile, while interesting, are usually ruined by QTEs. 3/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
It's fine. I expect more out of Tomb Raider is all. The occasion treasure in an alcove, but mostly a straight shot. The few times it manages to be interesting feel wrong, but I shouldn't complain. Outside of one Atlantis level. 4/10

Player Agency:
When it works, it's okay, when it doesn't, it's a nightmare. Whether this is a problem with the PC port or if it's this bad on consoles, I don't know. 3/10

Interactivity:
While the game does have a lot of stuff to interact with, it is just that, stuff you can interact with, what you can't will be set in complete stone if it makes any logical sense or not. Also, no bullet holes in glass that isn't explicitly breakable. 2/10

Atmosphere:
Manages to keep some of the isolated feeling the game has, but comes off as more mystical, if that makes sense. 7/10

Graphics:
A bit washed out, with some period graphical crutches that look crappy in retrospect. But these are nitpicks for an otherwise good-looking game. 8/10

Story:
I feel infinitely worse off for having known this variation on the story, but it is a story. 1/10

Sound/Music:
Nothing memorable, but an overall solidly sounding game. 8/10

That's 38. I'll keep it there.

While that's a good number here, for Tomb Raider that got 58, and I can't imagine anything before Chronicles going lower than that. Secondly, it's mostly in an audiovisual departments, and if that were the sole basis for judging a game's worth, I imagine you would not be reading about a man getting frustrated with games from the '80s.

This is a controversial opinion. For many, the changed controls are far better. Discounting how I view the original's controls as better on the face of it, thanks to actually working as advertised, I question this reasoning heavily. Were I to put myself in the shoes of someone who hated the original's controls, this wouldn't be an improvement. Rather than being a slow game where you slowly jump to different ledges, it's a slow game where you jump across objects in a circle until you reach the next room. Only now there's a lot of clipping through the floor.

Another point against this game is that the only reason we got it is because Core were originally going to make a more faithful remake, but Crsytal Dynamics got wind of it and turned it into a competition. Eidos being Eidos, screwed over Core again after being responsible for the massive failure that was Angel of Darkness. After forcing them to put one one game in the series a year for 5 years, which proved quite detrimental to the later entries, when they tried to redeem themselves they were basically killed off by a game they didn't even make.

In the near future the only out of chronology games I plan are playing are related to adventure games, with an eventual trip to the Acorn Archimedes port of Elite. But for now I'll keep at Elm Knight.