A review by an Amazon.com Customer - 2 out of 5 stars

Lara's latest adventure plays more like a Resident Evil Game than a Tomb Raider Game. No, Cancel that, The Resident Evil Series is far more playable. One of the beauties of the original games was the gameplay, the crisp ,the responsive controls..nearly glitch free. After playing the original games for a few hours, everything became intuitive, the control scheme, gameplay (jumps,running, sliding, climbing), what Lara could and couldn't do. So what do we have with this game? Rubbery controls, a floating Camera that is truly annoying. I found my self centering the Camera behind Lara everytime I turned her, or jumped on a crate..tons of needless button mashing! and Glitches , Glitches, glitches, (e.g. sometimes Lara will not climb onto a crate for some reason, or she will get pinned against a wall, and can't move etc...) The Stealth component is just silly as is the "Body part" power ups...("I feel Stronger"). Note to Eidos...Play Metal Gear to see how a true stealth game is made...and leave it out of the next game!!! Lara is NOT A Navy SEAL, she is an Archaeologist...!! The Premise of the game is good, and I liked that aspect, very much, but as usual with Eidos..they get "wowed" by their own cleverness in the graphics department and overkill it (See TR III's dynamic lighting effects)...so much so that the most important aspect suffers...gameplay! We can only hope that the next game returns us to what we were expecting in this one..an actual Tomb Raider game! with GOOD Gameplay and Tight Crisp Controls.

Well, I must say that I agree with him on most of his views. I only need to add some things. So, let's write down some quick facts:

Positive Points

• Stunning Graphics
• Interesting Storyline

Negative Points

• Lots of Bugs and Glitches
• Stupid Controls and Camera
• Mediocre to bad gameplay
• Lack of this "mystical" atmosphere every true fan is fond of

If you are a tomb raider fan, the most disappointing thing will be by far the gameplay. It's dead easy, the enemies get killed without effort and the bosses are a joke. The tricky parts have stupid solutions and the puzzles are just lame. The only thing that makes the game a bit difficult are the oh, yeah "flawless" they said(?) controls and the fact that you don't have unlimited ammo, unless you cheat. Even if you have a superb PC, you are bound to run into glitches - not that the previous games didn't have any, but they're far more noticeable this time. I was very disappointed to see that the environments are not realistic any more. I've been to Prague and what I think is that the levels in Prague showed a really different city - Moscow perhaps, I don't know. In fact, I have never seen a city look less like Prague. The only things that are good are the graphics and the storyline, which is more interesting and more complicated than the ones in the previous Tomb Raider games.

So, my recommendation? Don't buy the full game, just rent it or buy a used one. It's not worth the money and you can quote me on that. And neither is it worth the wait and the hype.