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By Brad Cook

Sometimes when you tread the same ground twice, you unearth new ways of looking at the world around you. That’s what the development team at Crystal Dynamics discovered when they set out to revisit Lara Croft’s original adventure for Tomb Raider Anniversary. Creative director Jason Botta promises in his Note to the Fans — found in the game’s Rewards menu — that this is “not just a remake, but something more.”

He adds: “We strove hard to find the right balance of nostalgia and freshness and to create an experience that captured the sense of isolation so prevalent in the original.”

Tomb Raider Anniversary

A Tale Twice-Told

As in the original, Tomb Raider Anniversary’s story opens in Los Alamos, New Mexico in the year 1945. The mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb test frees a strange winged creature. Fast-forward fifty-one years to a scene in Calcutta, India: A wealthy businesswoman named Jacqueline Natla approaches Lara with an assignment: Retrieve one of the three pieces of the Atlantean Scion, which Natla has located in the lost Peruvian city of Vilcabamba.

Knowing how much the search for that ancient artifact meant to her missing father, Lara quickly accepts the job, not realizing Natla’s true intentions. The Atlantean Scion was a powerful amulet created by Atlantis’ three rulers, who split it among them after discovering the widespread death and destruction caused by the Scion’s incredible power. Lara soon finds herself in Peru, where the death of her guide forces her to travel alone as she explores Vilcabamba’s Tomb of Qualopec, who was one of those rulers.

Lara’s adventure later takes her to Peru’s Lost Valley, where dinosaurs still roam, to various locations in Greece and Egypt, and finally to the lost island where Atlantis’ Great Pyramid sits. If you want to get warmed up before you begin the quest, try exploring Croft Manor, which is available any time from the main menu as a separate level. Solve puzzles to uncover artifacts hidden inside and outside the mansion, all the while practicing many of Lara’s moves, such as using a grappling hook to swing to a hard-to-reach spot, perching on small platforms and jumping to another location, grabbing onto ledges and shimmying along them, and more.

Better All Around

Lara is also capable of other moves that come in handy during her travels: swan diving off rocks into water, tumbling and flipping, evoking adrenaline dodges in response to enemies’ enraged attacks, and more. Of course, she always carries her trademark dual pistols with unlimited ammo, and during the game she gets the chance to swap them out for more powerful pistols, a shotgun, and dual mini submachine guns. They’ll come in handy against wolves, a T-Rex, black panthers, and even flying mutants.

During Lara’s journey, she can also collect various artifacts and relics that unlock lots of stuff, including character biographies, cheats (infinite health comes in handy, for example), music tracks, new outfits, art galleries, commentaries similar to the ones you find on DVDs, and more. Make sure you don’t just follow the path of least resistance while exploring each level; there are plenty of hidden areas you can access, if you use Lara’s moves properly.

Even if you played the original game to the end, keep an eye out for new puzzles and other features that take advantage of technology that wasn’t available over a decade ago. No matter how familiar the terrain seems, we guarantee that you’ll come away with a fresh perspective on this groundbreaking adventure. So play it again, Lara.

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Lara croft at the ready.

Tomb Raider 2.0. An improved Lara Croft begins her quest.

Lara shooting a mummy.

Intruder Alert. You’ll encounter all kinds of menacing creatures.

Lara balancing on a pedestal.

Pedestal Jumping. Lara shows off one of her signature moves.

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Lara Croft.

Adventures Over a Decade in the Making

The first Tomb Raider title debuted in 1996, introducing the world to a heroine worthy of competing with the likes of Indiana Jones and Batman. Gamers with Macs, PCs, Sony PlayStation consoles, and other systems thrilled to her adventures, buying several million copies in total. The excitement continued in 1997 and 1998 with the release of Tomb Raider II and Tomb Raider III, respectively. Both were available for the Mac, as have all entries in the series with the exception of 2006’s Tomb Raider: Legend.

Lara is the 11th Countess of Abbingdon, the latest member of a lineage that stretches back to 1547. Her parents, who are both deceased, were Lady Amelia and Lord Richard Henshingly Croft. She inherited from them Croft Manor, a mansion located in Surrey, England. In addition to great wealth, Lara possesses a keen intellect honed at Britain’s finest schools, including the ability to speak many languages, as well as finely-tuned physical skills.

With the release of Tomb Raider: Legend, Lara’s back story received a few tweaks. The accepted version of the tale now says that at the age of nine, she and her mother were the only survivors when an executive jet crashed in the Himalayas. They took shelter in the ruins of an ancient temple, where Lara accidentally activated an ancient artifact that caused her mother to vanish.

Lady Amelia Croft was presumed dead, the same fate that befell Lara’s father when he disappeared in Cambodia nine years later. During the intervening years, Lord Croft took his daughter on many archeology expeditions around the world, fostering Lara’s interest in the subject. Today, Lara hopes her adventures will help her learn more about what happened to her parents; she already discovered the truth of her mother’s fate in Tomb Raider: Legend.

The Adventures Continue

The success of the Tomb Raider games inspired a pair of movies: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003). Angelina Jolie played the title character in both films and is expected to return for a third, if it happens. The movies changed Lara’s background from the original games, such as giving her father the first name Richard (which was adopted in later videogames) and stating that he died at the hands of the Illuminati secret society several years earlier.

Spin-off comic books and novels also started appearing in 1999 and 2003, respectively. Top Cow published 50 comics in the ongoing Lara Croft series, which ended in 2004, along with a 12-issue series called “Journeys” (2001) and a variety of one-shots. The three novels published by Ballantine Books have filled in the continuity of the videogames’ stories.

In 2007, the GameTap web site launched “Re\Visioned: Tomb Raider,” a 10-part animated series starring Minnie Driver as the voice of Lara Croft. The six-minute episodes cover a variety of adventures, with some of the stories split into multiple parts.

 
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