The reason I call this game a perfect introduction to the series is because unlike other platformers out there that make you want to eat your controller/keyboard, it never quite gets on your nerves (well almost) but rewards you with intelligent puzzles that really exert the grey matter. TRA will take Lara through familiar locales like Peru, Greece, Egypt etc. as she strives to find the Scion of Atlantis but this time round she’s got an all new repertoire of moves, courtesy of Tomb Raider Legend which makes Anniversary one enjoyable and not to mention good looking game. As compared to other Tomb Raider games, TRA does concentrate a lot more on puzzles but from time to time you'll encounter hostile animals like wolves, crocodiles, bats, bears, apes and much more that can be disposed off with your arsenal comprising of pistols, shotguns and machine guns. Boss fights can get a bit painful and the only way to significantly affect their health is by shooting at them while successfully dodging their attacks in slow motion. Besides, fighting gigantic beasts and pissed off dinosaurs, you’ll also go one on one with certain human foes using context sensitive actions during which you're prompted to press the corresponding keys on screen; now I really enjoyed this bit in Tomb Raider Legend but they’ve over simplified it way too much taking away the tension that was created in games like Resident Evil 4 and God of War 2.


While TRA does do a lot of things right, this game is not without its screw ups and some of them can even hamper the entire game for you. Controlling Lara with a mouse and keyboard is surprisingly easy and fluid but once she’s hanging from a ledge it’s impossible to maneuver the camera around so unless you know exactly where you’re going to land, you’ll probably end up dying... a lot! This weird irresponsive camera issue kicks in while you're battling enemies as well and it can frustrate the crap out of you when you're up against a gigantic T-Rex armed with nothing but dual pistols. Next up is the enemy AI which more often than not comes across as brain dead and fighting wave after wave of such brain dead foes is nothing but an exercise in boredom and repetition. And perhaps the biggest problem of them all is the need to constantly backtrack in some of the larger levels and without any sort of map or objective indicator you’ll mostly end up running around in circles. Oh and I almost forgot; the game does allow you to save anywhere (don’t get too happy yet) BUT it doesn’t make a difference since if you die, you will only re-spawn at a previous checkpoint making the save anywhere feature pretty freaking useless. Now if you can look past these minor (yet extremely significant) obstacles you’re home free since apart from the above mentioned flaws the game's a total blast to play.