Tomb Raider: Anniversary (PSP)

• First ever video game based on the urban phenomenon of parkour (the art of movement)
• Participants, known as Free Runners or Traceurs, view the environment and its obstacles as a series of challenges to overcome
• The concrete jungle becomes your urban playground as you run, vault, jump or climb over obstacles in a fluid and flowing manner
• To be crowned King of Parkour, you must master over 50 moves, tricks and stunts
• Retrace Lara Croft`s original adventure - a globe-trotting pursuit of the legendary Scion artifact.
• The graphics, technology and physics bring the adventure up to today`s technology standards.
• The game delivers an intense combat, and an enhanced and clarified original story.
  
  
  

Although the game does feature the same basic settings and levels as the original, this isn't just the same game with better graphics. Most of the levels are larger, with many new paths and areas to explore. They're also much more interactive, with Lara using many of the same moves and gadgets she demonstrated in Tomb Raider: Legend, including a grappling hook and a greater variety of weapons. The story has been expanded too, but it does keep the same basic structure with more animal enemies than the later games, including the infamous encounter with a tyrannosaurs rex. Instead of just running straight at you mindlessly, the enemies have also been given much better artificial intelligence than previously.

The new graphics are still the most obvious change but the new fluid movement of Lara is a world away from the awkward grid based system used in the old games. Indeed this should be the first video game remake to actually prove itself as something more than just a cheap cash-in.
HARRISON DENT