22) Tomb Raider Anniversary Edition (Xbox Series X Backwards Compatibility)
Rating: C
23) Tomb Raider Legend (Xbox Series X Backwards Compatibility)
Rating B-
24) Tomb Raider Legend DLC: Tomb Raider Anniversary Edition Campaign (This is the full game of the Anniversary Edition purchasable as 360 Legend's DLC, and I will explain below why I am separating this version and giving it an A+)
Rating: A+
25) Tomb Raider Underworld
Rating: C-
I never actually played the 360 era of Tomb Raider, so I decided to give them all a shot.
Tomb Raider Anniversary (The standalone purchasable title) is a game with good promise:
+Great level design
+Fun puzzles
+Manual grab option
+Thanks to manual grab, improvised and creative jumps are a thing.
+Good combat scenarios
+Good beginner's adventure story
However, the standalone release is
broken. What do I mean by this? Failed inputs, glitchy jumps, slips to death after landing a jump, and at times the game not making Lara jump in the proper direction you're pushing towards. What that leads to is a platformer puzzler where I can't trust the platforming, ending in an entirely frustrating experience for a well designed game. Other than this very glaring issue, there are only four negatives I can give the game:
-The Egypt level is a bit too long
-Lara's run speed is a bit too slow
-There is a 'dual' boss that is slightly buggy and frustrating to play against in this version of the game
-The bloom, brightness, and darkness levels are all off. This game is the only one without a torch or flashlight as far as I'm aware.
So I came away from it disappointed and moved on to
Tomb Raider Legend. This game decides to ramp up the action over the platforming as it's the new star of the show. Fine I guess, and I forgive it because this game technically released before Uncharted even existed. The problem is that the platforming is slightly more automated now, no option for manual grabbing anymore, but she can still fail jumps if not lined up properly which is still a good sign.
+Storytelling improvements over previous TR games (now there's a history and characters from Anniversary and this who will not only be mentioned but also appear in Underworld, Lara has a team now who provides some context to situations albeit a bit chatty at times)
+Lara feels very smooth and snappy to control when moving around and platforming
+On a Tomb Raider lock-on combat scale, the action scenarios are technically better and there are now human-sized boss fights
+The variety of locales is great since Lara beyong TR 1 became more like James Bond
Now the problems:
-Platforming took a hit and is easier, as mentioned above.
-Lara's villain actually makes a good point and the game paints younger Lara as kind of an idiot or even an asshole for not doing a specific thing that people would do when faced with tragic events.
-There is not much strategy to the shooting. You dodge with B and shoot with the trigger and you will take hits along the way since there's no actual type of cover system. You're going to spam through heals because of this.
There's not much else to be said. It was a nice game and it was fun, but nothing super remarkable and a bit short-lived of an experience. I'm going to put the
Tomb Raider Underworld review here because even though I played it last I want to end on a good note. So after playing an A+ title, I went and finally decided to end things with the game that wraps every story thread up, Tomb Raider Underworld. This is what I have to say about this game:
+Storytelling even better than Legend. Well made cutscenes and direction.
+You can see the clear graphical mid-gen leap that Tomb Raider really needed at the time compared to other games blazing past it during this generation. The game looks great. It shows in the hair movement, cloth textures, animations, water and sweat effects, and lastly their ambitious lighting system where they tried to emulate actual ray traced bounced lighting (so your flashlight/torch wasn't just a simple cone or circle, it was actually illuminating subtle areas all around you to lighten areas nearby that should technically be lit if light bounced correctly
+Shooting is better for TR standards at least, but still
+The first DLC is fun
Now, what made Underworld a C- is this:
-The animation blending is absolutely atrocious. Lara will feel just as stiff as her character moves because of this. There is a pause between every single action you do as the character model has to reset and then animate the next thing you're trying to do. It makes the platforming feel awful and sometimes it looks like Lara wants to T-pose even though she'll finally snap into animation right before this happens
-Speaking of platforming, this is the most magnetic-feeling Lara has ever been. She will sometimes jump 15 ft to make a ledge that she should not have made, because she is already magnetizing to it in mid air before even nearing the ledge. It adds to this feeling of the controls and character being too stiff because this leads to moments where I want to jump somewhere and potentially improvise, but you can't because you'll magnetize to what the game tells you to
-Lock on combat and a bit basic/janky for a game that came out after Uncharted. Eventually, the game just hands you a super weapon halfway through and says 'have fun' because I think they even realized how basic/janky it is.
-Game froze on me about 5 times. It's enough to make it a negative because after freezing you will lose progress.
-The second DLC makes you play through an entire short level twice, forwards and backwards.
Underworld is a game with graphical ambition, but also a game where you can see the age start to set in on the franchise's gameplay. I do not blame them for going back to the drawing board after this, especially after the competition only got better and better with each iteration.
Before I had even played Underworld though, I had noticed that TR Legend had an Anniversary DLC section after completion. It was the entire game of Anniversary, split up into 2 purchasable 'Episodes'. Intriguing, I thought, as I said to myself 'Why do this, and why like this?'
I haven't seen something like this since hearing about White Knight Chronicles 2, or maybe some would argue Sonic Generations ripping out the good parts of Unleashed and putting it into that game instead (with these examples I think you see where I'm going). I had a hunch and did some research, because when first looking it up everyone will simply say 'It's the same game but buyable within Legend' and not much more. This
isn't fully true. It's actually one of the biggest secret little lies of gaming, because what you actually get here is an absolute gem of an experience.
Tomb Raider Anniversary, the Legend version of it, fixes everything wrong with the original Anniversary (well except for Egypt still being a bit too long
).
-Lara's run speed is a bit too slow
-There is a 'dual' boss that is slightly buggy and frustrating to play against in this version of the game
-The bloom, brightness, and darkness levels are all off. This game is the only one without a torch or flashlight as far as I'm aware.
Bam, all fixed. Somehow, someway,
this version is a patched version of the disc version of Anniversary, frankensteined together with Tomb Raider Legend's model, running speed, and smooth and snappy movement system but with the manual grab system of Anniversary. Remember what I said above about putting Sonic Unleashed levels Sonic Generations and they felt better? Well, what does this combination of TR games end up doing? Well,
it created the perfect formula for a game that reminded me of the best moments of games like Mirror's Edge 1 and Prince of Persia Sands of Time. They have also made slight changes to each level and slightly, slightly shortened a few dragged areas on top of this, 97% same game otherwise.
Suddenly, I'm nailing every jump imaginable with ease, combo-ing into other jumps and into slides into another jump landing on a roll to run to the next obstacle. It all feels difficult/challenging and rewarding and yes, I would fail at times, but it was
my fault. Those of you who have played great platformers know this feeling well: It's called
the flow. This game has it, and it has it all put together perfectly. That's also why this version of the game has
time trials. It instantly made the game an A+, and this A+ experience was good enough to make me want to not only beat the entire game again, but also do the time trials on top of that after playing Underworld (which is essentially finishing this game a third time).
If anyone here is curious and ever decides to pick up Tomb Raider Anniversary, I beg of you and highly recommend that you please pick up
this version of the game...Wow what an experience. Probably my favorite Tomb Raider game now.
For such a specific version of the game to go unnoticed feels really bad, because I know that some people bought the full edition of Anniversary on 360 only to be met with some or all of the issues I listed above, when they could be having a blast with the Legend version.
