Tomb Raider: Anniversary

Picked this game up for 98 cents. Great game if you can get it to run on modern systems. Game shouldnt be sold in this condition to the consumer. After searching GOG forums and googling was finally able to get it to work. Had issues with crashing after the intro cutscenes and also game wouldnt save my progress. Took me over an hour to figure it all out. I was close just to returning it. Game is easily a 3 or 4 stars once It works. But can't recomend this for the casual person who just expects something to work that they paid for without having to troubleshoot it.

It's not a bad game by itself but it's not a good remake, it's way too streamlined and it often feel like you're moving around movie props than actual environment and tombs compared to the first (what with the hagning poles everywhere???). Ironic considering the original had greater technical limitations. If you like the universe/concept of the franchise but feel like the gameplay of the original games is too dated then get this. If you wanted something faithful to TR1 but better looking then get the remaster instead. 4/5 as standalone game 2/5 as remake of TR1.

Pros: - The number of puzzles, and the complexity of the puzzles - The quick time events. Now, I've heard that many dislike the quick time events replacing the old boss levels from the original game, but I find them pretty enjoyable here as they make the encounters more realistic (bosses won't withstand hundreds of shots before dying). And I also appreciate that the devs decided to make the final two bosses stay as an actual boss fight rather than a quick time event (except for the finishing part) - Soundtracks Decent: - Story Cons: - I hate how you need to be really precise with the jumping or else Lara won't be able to grab on the ledge that she's trying to jump to. I've never played the original game, but it can get really annoying when you had to die several times before getting it right. There was even a time when I began to question myself whether the reason I couldn't make the jump is because that was not the path I was supposed to be taking, but turned out I was supposed to get there after a few more tries. It's annoying - The camera. In tight spaces, it can get pretty obnoxious trying to look around Lara for any possible ledges that she can use as for some reason the movement of the camera just became restricted - Save game bug (Autosave damaged) where you won't be able to load the game from your previous save. This happened to me once, and upon looking for a fix, I found out that this bug would happen when you try to play a cutscene from the main menu. A fix for this that worked for me was to head over to the save file folder location of the game and rename one of your manual TRASave files into an autosave.TRASave. Open the game back and you should be able to continue your game like before Despite the autosave bug, restricted camera, and imprecise grabs, overall I still enjoy my experience playing this game. I guess what saved the game for me was the complex puzzles and cutscenes (including the quick time events).

Now I have a demo version CD that I kept since childhood and bought this full version from GOG. The demo version of this game works flawlessly on modern computer. However GOG version is nowhere close to the original game... - The enemy AI after first attack starts randomly running into wall making the combat too easy. - The dionsaur boss fight was completely ruined as it was a very long, tiring and boring shooting at a boss which spent 10 minutes running into wall instead of attacking me. + The game maps, puzzles, everything unrelated to combat seems to work fine. I really like this game, but not from GOG vendor. This was my very first purchase on GOG and I would have rather paid a higher price for fully functional original product than this.

Playing this game after the reboot trilogy is a breath of fresh air and it reminds me of what Tomb Raider used to be about. The atmosphere, the sense of isolation and figuring out well crafted puzzles are all here and it's a joy to play. The story they added is B movie action nonsense but it's amusing enough and doesn't really take itself too seriously. You shouldn't really be playing Tomb Raider for the story though lol.