Tomb Raider Anniversary
Eidos
PlayStation 2
It's been a tumultuous decade for Lara Croft. Ten years ago, she took the world by storm in Tomb Raider for the original PlayStation. Critics praised the game for inventing a new genre, the "Third-person action/adventure," while applauding the introduction of a female protagonist, virtually unheard of in the day.
Fortunately, like any good down-but-not-out story, Lara is staging a comeback with Tomb Raider Anniversary. The genre itself has devolved and fractured and become saturated with sameness. Ten years is a ripe time to return and remind everybody what all the hoopla was about in the first place.
Tomb Raider Anniversary does several things right, all of them key. First, it's a retelling of the original Tomb Raider game - a "re-imagining," in fact, which uses the same storyline and general locales of the first game, except thoroughly overhauled to appear more natural, organic, huge and shapely - and ornery. Likewise, Lara has never looked better, intimating muscle in those long, athletic legs; the same excessive bosom now actually heaves expressively under a skin-tight top; a well-formed face suggests a sentient twinkle behind big brown eyes - Angelina Jolie's plush bottom lip seems to have worked its way in there, too.
Tomb Raider Anniversary comes with a small set of inconsequential graphical and technical flaws, which are totally tolerable. In fact, the game steers convincingly toward perfection, falling short - quite short - in just one large way, and that is the camera work.
No Tomb Raider game has ever managed to shake the bizarre camera view that will follow Lara around.
To assuage this infuriating flaw is a manual override of the camera's meandering angles using the right analog thumbstick, which makes the whole game more playable, but only through trial and error.
The title's low price befits its shortcomings - to some extent, anyway.
Shadowrun
Microsoft
Windows Vista PC, Xbox 360
It's no coincidence that Microsoft Games Studio's new Shadowrun has been released simultaneously for both PC (Windows Vista required) and Xbox 360. The game's key feature is its cross-platform multiplayer compatibility, in which Xbox 360 players can go online and kill (or heal) online Windows Vista players - and vice versa - thanks to the spiffy technology of Xbox Live and the new Windows Live.
Dual-system compatibility is not a new feature, but it marks the first time it has been done in this generation. Sadly, it's not done with any degree of sophistication, as it was most likely created from a high degree of anxiety to catch up with the Vista/Live hype. Duality Live will most likely be a common feature in future games, but with more elegance, one would hope.
Shadowrun looks acceptably pretty on both platforms - neither dazzling nor "new gen" in the slightest - and technically, its controls are familiar. Nevertheless, it's a bit cumbersome getting a grip on the whole shooter/RPG hybridization thing. It's as much a game of buying the right spells, powers, weapons, ammunition and enhancements in a few scant seconds at the start of each round as it is a game of point-and-shoot proficiency.
As for those actual shooting bits, though most ardent PC gamers will insist their keyboard and mouse are far superior to a console's skimpy gamepad and thumbsticks, you wouldn't know it while playing. Aiming has been handicapped so extremely and the weapons so wimped out that shooting straight is ridiculously difficult for everyone. A solid shot to the chest does little damage.
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