The Tomb Raider Trilogy is exclusive to the PS3 and features remastered versions of Legend and Anniversary in 720p, and a repackage of Underworld. It features some bonuses such as a theme, some avatars for PlayStation Home and a 30 minute video.
Tomb Raider: Legend
Tomb Raider: Legend was originally for the PS2 and represents the first in a new continuity at the time developed by Crystal Dynamics. The game is an action platformer with a bigger emphasis on platforming. Starring Lara Croft, she is able to climb ledges, swing from ropes, shimmy along ledges and climb chains. She has a few tools at her disposal, including a grappling hook to pull down objects from afar, her own light source for dark places, a set of binoculars which doubles up as a hint system and health packs to restore health. During exploration, Lara will come across puzzles from time to time and they start off simple although the solutions are quite clever. For example, an early one requires you to pull blocks onto a seesaw type contraption, and then have Lara jump on one end in order to flip the block onto a higher level. A lot of the puzzles require you to find some way to the lever or button and make it stay in place. Other gimmicks during levels include traps and obstacles, quick time events and vehicular segments.
Lara will encounter enemies throughout it all, mostly being mercenaries but you'll be facing non-humans as well. Her default weapons are dual pistols and the game uses an auto-targeting system which works well. You still need to constantly move and jump around to avoid gunfire. Dying via dropping from height or losing all your health puts you back at the last checkpoint which is evenly spaced. Lara can take weapons from defeated enemies although these weapons have limited ammo, her own pistols on the other hand have unlimited ammo. The great thing about this game is that it doesn't get bogged down by combat (unlike Prince of Persia where combat is weak but you're forced to repeatedly go into fights again and again). There is plenty of combat but not enough for it to get stale or be tedious. It knows its strengths are the platforming and puzzle solving.
Scattered around the levels are plenty of collectibles but some are hidden quite well. There are eight levels in total and you're able to easily finish the game within 7-12 hours. There are time trials for each level, and once you're familiar with the puzzles, you can easily finish the game within 2 hours. Each level is set in a different part of the world and provides a great sense of variety. Lara will go from the jungles of Ghana to the skyscrapers of Tokyo. Level designs are excellent and the numerous set pieces enhance the story being told. The music is appropriate and quite epic at times. There is an additional level called Croft Manor which has no enemies. The aim is to solve the puzzles within and search out all the secrets that are hiding some collectibles.
The plot stars Lara Croft, an archaeologist. A few flashbacks later and we find out that she lost her mum when she was little to a supernatural event resulting from an artifact. Jumping forward a few years and in an exploration trip gone wrong, her expedition team all perished including her best friend Amanda. Later on, Lara finds one piece of an ancient sword that reminds her of the artifact that took her mother away from her. A mysterious enemy is gathering these pieces for some reason and thus it becomes a race to gather all the pieces, resulting in a globetrotting adventure. The ending has a massive sequel hook too. It is obvious that this is a PS2 game since the character models are angular and lacking some details compared to PS3 games. However, the touch up and higher resolution still allows everything to look crisp and clear. Overall, Tomb Raider: Legend is a fantastic game. The platforming is great fun, the combat doesn't bog you down and it has a solid story. Even replaying the levels through the time trials are fun.
Tomb Raider: Anniversary
Tomb Raider: Anniversary was also originally for the PS2 and is itself a remake of the first game and not a true sequel to Legend, although they take place in the same rebooted world. The game uses the same engine as Legend so all her abilities from that game are available to Lara. She can climb, shimmy along ledges, use her grappling hook to swing around and perform acrobatic feats. An additional ability in this game is that Lara can jump and balance on top of poles. However, the platforming seems a little bit off compared to Legend. Whereas in Legend, you rarely get confused on where to go or Lara missing her jumps, it's more frequent in Anniversary. The camera angles have a tendency to not show you the correct way until you are in the spot just right, leading to a lot of deaths.
Not only are the camera angles unhelpful, but even when you know where to go, the camera angle is at such an awkward spot that it will cause Lara to jump just slightly to the left or right and missing completely, leading to her death. Lara also seems to randomly miss her jumps or not grip the ledge you were aiming for. After the stellar tight controls and level design of Legend, Anniversary doesn't feel as great. There is a tendency for the ledges that Lara is aiming for usually a tad bit too far unless you jump right at the edge of the edge, which feels annoying when Lara misses it and you have to climb all the way up again or you die. Levels mainly involve solving puzzles with a little bit of story interspersed here and there. Puzzles are always involving traversing the environments to pull a lever and find a number of items to open the door.
The level design has a heavy reliance on a central puzzle room with two to four paths leading to other smaller puzzle rooms that Lara must progressively solve to gain items or pull a lever. This means you will go to the puzzle rooms, solve it and then backtrack to the central area and climb your way to the next. While it adds a little bit of non-linearity, it is a lot more tedious and even though the backtracking isn't a huge deal (unlike Prince of Persia: Warrior Within where 70% of the game was backtracking), it's still noticeable and slows down the pacing a lot. There are a lot of collectibles to collect once again and these unlock outfits and other bonuses. To extend the game, there are time trials as well.
The combat hasn't changed too much. It involves Lara using her dual pistols, or any other weapons that she finds, to shoot enemies. She has unlimited ammo with her default pistols and the game uses an auto-targeting system. A new feature is if you shoot enemies enough and enrage them, they will charge at Lara and when they do this, Lara can dodge and activate Adrenaline Dodge and two reticules will appear. When the reticules line up, Lara can perform a headshot which instantly kills normal enemies or do significant damage to the bosses. Enemies are animals and beasts this time around such as wolves and bears. There are more supernatural and fantasy elements later on in the game. If you've played Legends first, then you would have gotten used to the humorous and entertaining dialogue from your companions. Lara is alone in this game and thus the silence is a lot more noticeable.
The story stars Lara Croft, an archaeologist who is approached by Larson, representing his employer Natla. Natla hires Lara to help in obtaining a piece of an artifact called the Scion, which is located in Peru. Naturally, once Lara obtains the piece, things spiral out of control and she must end up collecting the rest of the pieces of the Scion. Lara will travel around various places in the world and scale ruins within the environments being much bigger than in Legend. There are a total of 14 levels in the game, spread across four countries and will take you 10-20 hours to finish, depending on how fast you can figure out the puzzles. They can be a bit obtuse at times. Once you know your way, you can easily finish the game sub-10 hours. Overall, Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a fun game for the most part. The puzzles and platforming can get annoying, especially after the more action orientated Legend. There are not enough story elements to keep players interested in that so the game is really only worthwhile if you enjoy solving fairly involved puzzles.
Tomb Raider: Underworld
Unlike the other two games, this was originally released on the PS3, therefore it is not remastered but rather just included to round out the package. Being on a new generation of hardware compared to the other two games, the graphics are a huge step up. Environments are brimming with textures and details, with better lighting effects. The downside is that sometimes the ledges that Lara can jump upon are not as obvious (although they are still a different color to the surroundings which helps). That being said, the character models in comparison feel like they could do with more detail, especially Lara who seems to be lacking textures around her face on close up. The platforming is the main focus of the game with combat coming a distant second. Lara has all her abilities from the previous two games such as jumping, climbing, shimmying, swinging from grapples and balance on top of poles. New moves include being able to wall jump and sprinting.
Environments are big, giving it a bit of non-linearity. The game starts off in an impressive underwater level which is beautiful and gives an illusion of a huge amount of freedom. The rest of the first level is much more linear but this means that unlike Anniversary, you won't be stuck ages upon ages trying to figure out which path you need to go next to pull a lever in order to backtrack and go via another path. However, the camera angles are not the best. You need to get Lara to the exact right spot for the camera to pan and show you the way. Most of the time though, you end up jumping blindly and hoping that Lara clutches onto the ledge or pole you were aiming for. There were plenty of instances while platforming where you had to wrestle the camera since it refused to look ahead of Lara.
Scattered around each level are collectibles and Underworld falls into the trap of games where there are too many pointless collectibles. Some are annoying to get since they are timed or a particularly nasty one is if you die, you end up having to either replay the whole level or reload a save because it undid some of the steps and there is no way to redo them by backtracking. The combat is tweaked as well but remains familiar to annoying who had played the previous games. Underworld retains the auto-targeting but Lara can now shoot at two enemies at the same time. Shooting enemies charges up a bar and once that is full, she can execute a special attack where it slows down time, two reticules appear and once you manually line them up, she can execute a headshot which kills the enemy immediately. Lara also have additional melee moves so gone are the days where you had to repeatedly jump back to get the enemy out of your face such that you can shoot them.
The story continues straight after Legend and as a huge surprise, it has some links to Anniversary as well. After finding out from Amanda that Lara's mother may not have perished, Lara sets out to find a way to Avalon. The story takes a huge inspiration from Norse mythology and spins the legends into reality pretty well. Lara has to collect artifacts that once belonged to the legendary Thor in order to open the way. Story cutscenes are limited though and thus the story isn't told as nicely as Legend. There are long breaks between each cutscene where platforming and puzzles occur, thus breaking the pacing of the story pretty badly. However, there are some neat story twists and is decent overall.
Underworld isn't as polished as you would hope as there are plenty of glitches, including game-breaking ones where you cannot proceed if you end up accidentally doing stuff in a different order and die. This is because checkpoints are really frequent and it may just respawn you to death in an infinite loop. You may also have difficulty in getting Lara to grab hold of something when she's jumping, which will lead to plenty of accidental deaths. The framerate can drop heavily during motorcycle segments and in areas where too many things happen such as the combination of weather effects and numerous enemies.
The game isn't as short as Legends but since the puzzles are easier than Anniversary, it's not as long as that game either. It'll take around 10 hours to finish the first time around, depending on how proficient you are and whether you collect everything. If you've played it already and don't want to collect the treasures, then you can finish in around 5 hours. However, the game is a lot of fun. There is DLC which gives additional levels and story but unfortunately, it is exclusive to the Xbox 360. Overall, Tomb Raider: Underworld is a solid and fun game. The platforming is faster paced, there's more action and the puzzles are designed to not suck as much time as Anniversary (which you may or may not like). If it weren't for the lack of polish which is really evident in some sections, then this would have been a game as great as Legend.
Overall
Like other PS3 remastered collections, The Tomb Raider Trilogy presents heaps of value. You get three games (two of which are remastered PS3 games and one is a repackaged PS3 game), three sets of Trophies and some little bonuses such as a theme. The game themselves have aged pretty well and remain fun to this day.
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