Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Chuck Greer

Lara Croft. Edios brought her to us on the PC over 10 years ago. And what an amazing experience she (the game) was. Never before was there a game that gave you such control over the lead character and the locales were amazing. I can still remember playing it for the first time and thinking how amazing it looked. It has been 11 years since we first played Tomb Raider, since then we've had no less than 56 different variations over every platform, along with 2 movies. And while there were some pretty rough games, (and movies), in between at times, the past year has made up for them, first with Legend, and now with Anniversary. Although not quite suited for the PSP, Anniversary is still a pretty good experience and will remind you of fond times you may have had with Lara in the past. I have a definite love hate relationship with the graphics in Anniversary. While the character models and scenery look pretty good for a portable game, you can see the jagged edges on everything. Some of the areas look absolutely breathtaking- 6 years ago. This game honestly reminds me of the first couple of Tomb Raider games on the pc. Not that that is a bad thing, once again, this is a portable game. Maybe my expectations are kind of high. But after playing games like Daxter and the like, I tend to expect just a bit more. I tend to feel that the only bad music and sound effects are the ones that you notice are bad, and the good ones make you want to turn up the sound. This game is the latter.  There isn’t a whole lot of music during game play, but the sound effects are very nicely done and add quite a bit to your adventure. I found myself turning up the volume and turning off TV’s and the like to better hear what was going on around me. Controls are also a mixed bag. This type of game just screams for a second directional pad. You can tell this game is a console port. The game does the best it can with what you got, but is defiantly lacking from other versions of the game. You can remap pretty much everything to your hearts content, and once you get use to the control scheme it does get easier to play. First as usual your d-pad controls Laura and you control the camera with the L and R shoulder buttons. The menu system shouldn't be too hard to pick up using the arrow keys but during all my time playing I never got used to it and it always gave me fits. Also, luckily, during gameplay you can turn hints on so when say you get to a spot to use a grappling hook, it will tell you what button to use. Once you get used to the controls you can turn this feature off, but I never did.

When you start out you have your choice to either play the game, or play Croft Manor. Croft Manor is a sort of tutorial/ place to get used to the controls, and is a short game in itself that I enjoyed playing through. I defiantly recommend playing through the area. After that you start the standard game, and those that have played the original Tomb Raider will know what to expect.

To the games credit, it is almost exactly like its big brothers on the consoles. But that is where some of the problems derive from. First, the camera can get hard to manage on such a small screen. The left and right trigger buttons control the camera, and you better get used to moving it around, a lot. It also feels sometimes like your field of view is limited. I again am spoiled by PC games and think this is just my bias but it feels like I am playing with blinders on and the camera sure doesn’t help.

The field of view gets to be detrimental when looking for hidden objects or secret areas. You just can’t see enough of your environment. The best example of this is walking up to a ledge. You will fall off more times, mostly due to your field of vision. I found myself stopping, entering target mode and looking down to see how close I was. After you fall off a couple times and have to stop on ledges to look down, it starts to wear on you a bit. And you will fall. Good thing about that is after your 15th or so time though said level you will get the hang of it.

After you get used to the controls and the camera though, for fans of Tomb Raider, you will enjoy the ride. Like I said before, this is almost an exact port from the consoles, so expect the same jumping, climbing, puzzles, and exotic places you have come to love in handheld form. The same great cut scenes happen at the right times, the story, while rehashed, is excellent again. You move from point to point, solving puzzles from find the object, to flip the switch, to use every move in your arsenal to get to point b. It just never seems to get boring.

NOTE: Some other users have noted there are some performance issues, and I did notice extremely long load times in between levels and after you die. Towards the end of my game play I purchased the new PSP slim and my load times were halved. I did not run into the performance issues they were seeing.

While the game is very linear, there is a lot of replay to be had here due to the use of rewards. You will want to go back and find every secret area and item, and there are a lot of them. You can unlock everything from new items and cheats to new clothes to wear. There is a lot to like in this game. You can tell sacrifices in controls and visuals are made to port this to the PSP, but if you can get past the few issues, the same excellent game we had on consoles a couple months ago can be taken on the road quite easily.

Gaming Trend Score

78

1. Graphics: 75
2. Audio: 90
3. Controls: 75
4. Gameplay: 75
5. Value/Replay: 80
6. OVERALL:78