Video game number two hundred and forty eight: Lara Croft Tomb Raider Anniversary

Video game review number two hundred and forty eight in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Lara Croft Tomb Raider Anniversary"

This will be my second Tomb Raider game so far this weekend (and my third so far this week). So far, the prospect of trying to play all of the ones I could find available for the Xbox has been a little more interesting than actually playing them.

Actually, that's not true...the first one was awesome.

These second two on the other hand, have been..... not so awesome.

I suppose I should start off this review by saying something nice, only...I am having a hard time thinking of something to say. I suppose I must complement the graphics on this one. Lara Croft is looking much less "blocky" than she did in the previous game (or the PC games before that one).

I set out on my adventure, only to realize that it's a lot more jumping (nothing but as a matter of fact), and is basically a clone of everything I hated about the last game. I wondered how the hell I was going to get an achievement in this game for my challenge, as they all involve collecting ALL of the artifacts for a level (not happening), or beating the game (no way). I decided to play Croft Manor, because I read that you could get an achievement for beating all the challenges there. How hard could it be to find all the artifacts in a mansion?

Pretty hard.

First of all, you have to run to every single room about twice. Each room has a jumping puzzle, and some of them are so annoying, I was actually cursing at the TV a bit. There's this one room with some statues in it, and I must have tried to the same jump 5 or 6 times before I finally made it. Another room (the gym) had a jump combined with a grappling hook launch that took me at least 6 times (and one death) to navigate.

I hear that later, you can get achievements for doing "time trials" of these incredibly lame jumps. Fuck that noise.

I finished the level (in what I think took a pretty long time)...and got my stupid achievement. I don't plan to play this again.

Overall Score? 4/10. While this one improved upon the last game graphically, and fixed the annoying cameras a bit, it's still just a damn jumping puzzle game at heart, and I hate these. I didn't enjoy any of my time playing this. I spent almost 2 hours playing before I realized I wasn't going to get any achievements that way, and when I switched to the manor, I didn't enjoy any of that either. Sorry Lara, this game is not my cup of tea.

Here's my one stupid achievement: