Skip to present day and Lara finds herself in the mountainous Himalayas. You have been contracted by a mysterious American, Jaqueline Natla, tasked with finding a mysterious artifact called the Scion. Your adventure will span the globe and features action packed levels from Peru, Greece, Egypt and the lost city of Atlantis (and Croft Manor to boot). The storyline for the Tomb Raider series has been a hit miss affair but TRA is an enjoyable and somewhat unpredictable affair.

Lara herself has been “enhanced” – and apparently her boobies have been reduced to a more realistic level. I say apparently because they are still a marvel to behold. Anyway she looks very pretty and during your adventures she will don a variety of costumes appropriate to her environment. An interesting feature borrowed from TRL is that when Lara emerges from water she actually looks wet – gradually drying off as she resumes the task at hand. This is similar to the Indiana Jones: Emperor’s Tomb game and adds quite a bit of reality.

Lara is amazingly athletic – a gymnast really – and she needs to be to conquer the many challenges she has to face. Not only are the well crafted environments a health hazard – a variety of enemies will attempt to thwart her efforts to retrieve the Scion. Bats, wolves, bears, velociraptors (those nasties made famous from the Jurassic Park films), the dreaded Tyrannosaurus Rex, rats, cat mummies, crocodiles, pumas, silverback gorillas, lions and more. Graphically she is amazingly animated for all sorts of back-breaking acrobatics – my favourite being a reverse back-flip from a ledge. Ouch! Your mates will be amazed at the things you can do with relatively simple controls. I’ve given my brothers a few “Wow!” moments and thought smugly (that was easy).

Combat is relatively simple. Lara is equipped with weapons like pistols, shotguns, automatics etc.The lock-on system makes aiming at targets a relatively simple affair – yet you will be jumping and rolling around to avoid some of the swifter and deadlier beasts – the T-Rex in particular. The grapple hook (for crossing chasms) is a great enhancement too.

Where TRA really shines is in the environments and puzzles. Each level is well crafted for exploration and explore you will do if you want to find all the hidden ammo, health packs, weapons and more importantly, the artifacts. Finding the latter will unlock Achievements, cheats, bonus costumes and more.

Aurally TRA is excellent. The original soundtrack by Peter Connolly has been re-recorded and re-mastered to current standards and is a highlight for those that remember the original game. Graphically it is hard to discern TRA from the former TRL but generally it looks very nice indeed. Smooth frame-rate, great water effects, smoke and fog, dynamic lighting, it looks lovely. It blows the original out of the water because CD has totally enhanced the levels for next-gen consoles and it really pays off. Try the demo with the “cog puzzle” to see what I mean.

Gameplay wise TRA is, in one word, challenging. You will often have to retry puzzles or sections of levels over and over again. One mistake can prove costly. Checkpoints are fairly frequent though thankfully.

Overall TRA is a great enhancement of a great original title. If you enjoyed TRL, TRA will certainly entertain. I pre-ordered mine and it came with a great bonus disk featuring trailers, the soundtrack and much more.

Highly recommended!

Graphics:8.0
Sound: 9.0 (music in particular)
Gameplay: 9.0
Value: 9.0
Overall: 9.0