Again, however, small touches are reminiscent of the classic Tomb Raider. During menus, the spinning ring user interface is the same as the old games. The Peru cave looks like how players should remember it, but of course, it's had a big facelift. According to Crystal, the idea was to create an updated experience based on TR, but with modern aesthetics and feel, such as when Lara gets out of water and she's wet. During the PlayStation generation, it was more difficult to accurately portray a wet character. In TRA, Lara gets out of water, and her leotard is darkly soaked.
One of the other touches that they've added is puzzles reminiscent of TRL. The developers specifically mentioned that they want to ground puzzles in a realistic context. In TRL, Lara could shoot out a rope that would release wood planks or boulders that would clear paths or create stepping stones. The team behind TRA also wants to create a feel of being able to alter the classic environment in the same way. To demonstrate this ideal, Wood had Lara shoot out suspended rods to create a swingable path, a la Legend, since TRA uses the grapple that was introduced in this most recent installment. Although we couldn't play it, it truly seemed as though a lot of the gripes that gamers have had with TR's jump system have been fixed. It feels more like Legend, which felt more like Prince of Persia than past Tomb Raider titles.
Shimmying and context-sensitive moments, introduced in TRL, are also included here. Pacing was also mentioned as an important focus. Since Lara's character model moves some four times faster than the original game, and the dev team fielded complaints that TRL was entirely too short, paths needed to be denser and more interesting to make up for speed difference in new and improved Lara. Most importantly, the demo closed with the Lost Valley level, in which Lady Croft tangoes with some vicious velociraptors. The visual quality, considering that it's running on the aging PS2 hardware, is fairly impressive.
Overall, while we didn't get to play Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary, we've gotten a good look at what it will offer. We're imagining that at some point in the next few months, we'll get our hands-on demo, but in the meantime, color us intrigued. PlayStation-era games haven't aged well in the visuals department, so remakes aren't always frowned upon, especially when we have the jonesin' to refresh ourselves with a classic franchise. Crystal Dynamics consider it an introduction for people who didn't play the PlayStation/PC game. They've made the comparison to Peter Jackson's King Kong versus the original game. We'll see how the comparison holds up with Tomb Raider: Anniversary drops in Spring 2007.