Let me state first off that I liked Tomb Raider: Legend. It was the first game in the series (in a good long while) that wasn't a total embarassment, and outside of some sketchy gunplay it controlled well and was fun to play.

I picked up Anniversary the other week, which I meant to play back when it launched. Still, the wait sure dropped the price of the game, which (combined with Mass Effect and Burnout Revenge) set me back about $40.

First impressions were not favourable. The game looks like a PS2 game - 480p upscaled and everything, and I have a feeling it might even be interlaced, as I'm getting a bit of ghosting with it on my TV and it only does that with some old Gamecube and PS2 games that don't support progressive scan. The framerate is also chunky, which is just sad given how low resolution everything is. Lazy PS2 port? Check.

The controls are also less responsive than Legend, and Lara has a disturbing tendency to grab onto the wrong ledge or no ledge at all. Wall jumping becomes extremely awkward as the direction you need to pull before hitting jump seems to change depending on the camera angle as well as...something. Even if the camera stays the same often you'll pull left to jump off a wall you're running on, and sometimes you have to pull down. It's not consistent, which can lead to some frustrating moments.

Lara will also grab the wrong side of a ledge on more than one occasion, which is the first of several annoying bugs. Usually this results in her clipping right through the scenery and completely unable to pull herself up on a ledge or do anything but drop down and try again. There's one spot in the mansion level where (unless you disable automatic grabs and jump at an angle) you'll never be able to make the jump the developers intended as Lara will fall through the platform every time you leap off the rope.

The mansion is also bugged in that the relic counter doesn't display properly. Actually, the entire level statistics screen was locked to Peru's second level when I played through it and the corresponding achievement (and unlocks) didn't register once I'd completed the mansion. It's still stuck that way, which is just plain weird, and it also means I can't run the mansion time trial as the game is convinced I haven't finished the level yet.

Other than that, though, the gunplay is improved over the previous games, the gimmicky slow-motion attack you get it fun to use (if too easy to pull off) and most of the levels are well designed, if overly complicated and annoying in spots. Apparently no one learned from Ocarina of Time that levels where you have to repeatedly raise and lower water in order to progress a puzzle are not fun. At all.

As for the other games, Mass Effect is more fun than I remembered it and definitely benefits from taking it slowly, and Burnout Revenge is a better game than Burnout Paradise, even if its achievements are utterly ridiculous and the online servers are about as packed as an A&W outlet.