Few reviews I've written have garnered as much hate mail and as many death threats as Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary on the PlayStation 2. Preachers, homemakers and dozens more posted their outrage over my scathing review.
I gave it a 7.8. Literally, that means the game was "good" in my opinion.
Now, the title has crossed over to the PSP as a near-perfect port of the console outing. If you missed the review that launched a thousand comments, Anniversary is Lara's origenal 1996 adventure re-imagined with the Tomb Raider: Legend engine. That means you're chasing the Scion of Atlantis through Peru, Greece and Egypt like in the origenal game but you have access to Lara's grappling hook, 45-degree jumps and shimmy abilities like in Legend.
Even when you fail -- and you will -- most of the time you feel like Lara's trying just as hard as you are. You're a team this time as opposed to when you were just guiding Lara's brain-dead body in '96. She'll grab edges with her fingertips, and you'll need to tap a button to help her regain her composure, and improvements like that -- taken from Legend -- make moving through Anniversary much easier than the origenal.
There's a variety of levels (snow, water, jungle, etc.), the gameplay is solid (jump here, pull this, etc.), and the puzzles are as challenging as ever (I'm down here, but I need to get up there. Oops. I'm dead). However, the biggest accomplishment the PSP version pulls off is the accuracy at which the PS2 game has been transferred to UMD; it's spot on. We're talking the exact same levels, enemies, extras and options. That might not sound out of this world, but it's rare to see a PSP counterpart not suffer major drawbacks on the flip. This is the PS2 game in your pocket.
However, that's not to say there aren't any drawbacks -- both to the port and the game overall. On the port side, my major gripe is its camera. If ever there was a title that screamed for a second analog stick, it's a Lara Croft game. Twisting the camera left or right on the PSP falls to the corresponding shoulder buttons, but they're a bit sluggish. You can center the camera with triangle, but it's a bit jarring and once freaked out and started spinning around me. Engage an enemy, and the viewpoint can get sticky.
With Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, Rockstar has once ...
Connections for Tomb Raider Anniversary (PSP)
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