Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - Anniversary

The Good
Toby Gard consulted Crystal Dynamics and served as the story designer in reimagining the original Tomb Raider. Gard borrows heavily from the first film in that Lara Croft uses research preceded by her father, Lord Richard Croft, to discover the Atlantean Scion from the original game. Also, Crystal Dynamics reverted back to traversal environments and made controlling Croft more fluid thanks to their Legacy of Kain technology. The score in the original Tomb Raider consisted of choirs by Nathan McCree that would cue when a new puzzle or vista was discovered, which is replicated again in Anniversary by the BAFTA winner, Troels B. Folmann.

The Bad
Unfortunately, the QTE's introduced in Legend return in Anniversary and these can break away from the puzzles and exploration the original emphasized on. Due to the Wii exclusive controls, the grappling sections later on are even more challenging than the console versions.

The Bottom Line
It was a bold move for Crystal Dynamics to value Gard’s industry experience, having worked on Tomb Raider and Galleon with Paul Douglas. In retrospect, Anniversary captures the essence of the original Tomb Raider, but falls short with unnecessary arcade elements that break up the pace.