I'm on the side of those TR fans that enjoyed it despite all its flaws. The graphics are quite nice and a huge improvement over the previous games, and the scenarios are quite nice too. There is a good level of exploration involved, and quite a lot of shooting, and that made it enough to make it at least enjoyable to me. That said, let's go with the bads. The story is a mess, and the most clear indication that this game was not finished. Characters are just not being introduced into the story, they just show up, and you should know who they are, and the biggest WTF for me was the end boss. When it revels it's true identity, Lara pronounces his name like they already met before, which never happened!!. It's just impossible to follow, and the RPG element, full of silly dialogues, don't make it easier. More often than not, it just makes you waste your time. But story telling was never the strong point of any TR for me, but complex level design and tight controls. As I said, the levels are pretty cool, although for a game called Tomb Raider, there should be some more tombs... but I guess that was the idea of the game, to change scenarios a little bit. Controls on the other hands ARE NOT!!. Lara now runs so slow that feels like she is jogging, and is very hard to calculate the appropriate distance for a long jump. Let alone the fact that the same Lara Croft that was able to move blocks 10 times her weight, now can't hang from a rope or wall for more than a few seconds. It feels very different, but still feels like a TR games. But paying 9.99 bucks for this game alone, is just a scam. If it were included with LR and Chronicles, it would be different story, but standalone, I wouldn't pay more than 1 buck for it.
Developers obviously didn't have enough time to finish it. You can tell that by the fact your only enemies are skeletons and bats, and the "big bosses" are just two repeated a couple of times. That makes it quite repetitive and boring, but the worst part is that basically you get to an area with a couple of skeletons, and you kill them, then 2 or 3 more spawn, you kill them too, 2 more spawn, kill them, repeat that about 9 or 10 times and then you can move on. Also they don't have much IA, which is to be expected from skeletons but it also means that you can locate a safe position and smash every skeleton as they get close. Also the "hit detection" system is VERY ANNOYING as you get hit when you wasn't really touched. Because of that, is quite complicated to avoid hits when you are rounded, and worst thing here, is that if you get a bunch of skeletons near a revive point, and you die there, you characters will revive in that exact point with minimum energy and lots of skeletons around, only to die instantly with a single hit because apart from the knight, the other 2 characters have absolutely no defense. So you basically die, die, die until the game makes your go back to the last checkpoint. However, thanks to the great graphics and some cool physic puzzles, is still enjoyable.
Pure shooting FPS, that what it is! And that's fine, there are more than enough fps out there were you spend more time solving puzzles, finding keys, completing mission, and that sort of things. It sounds repetitive, and it is for moments, but the level design is what keeps you interested. You always wonder "how is the next arena?". On the technical side, the game works flawlessly on my Windows 7 x64
