I am in love with this game!

I've been playing the dickens out of the demo, and I've been enjoying every minute of it. This is, quite simply, Tomb Raider given the kind of quality makeover and update that a game of this calibre has been longing for.

Graphics are, in a word, beautiful. The engine Crystal Dynamics has used to build this game is remarkable: it works even on low-end systems, and is just as gorgeous as the current crop of next-generation engines. Light filters in through holes in the ceiling, water falls and ripples, and the textures gleam and glisten. Lara herself animates beautifully, having received a slight makeover since Tomb Raider Legend and learned a few new tricks, the greatest of which is her Adrenaline Dodge. This technique allows you to Matrix-out against a lone enemy and achieve a one-shot kill with enough skill. After locking on to an enemy and firing at them several times, you'll see an orange flash and the enemy will charge at you. Pressing the Dodge/Roll button at this time will slow the game down as Lara focuses on the lone enemy, and a pair of crosshairs slowly glide towards one another on the screen. Hitting Fire when they are lined up and overlapped performs the headshot which kills nearly anything in the game with a single hit. This is a slightly tweaked version of the "slow-motion, flip over them and shoot them a lot" mechanic used in Legend. It takes practice, but once you get good at it, you can clear a room in almost no time flat. Without learning this technique, you'll be expending a lot more ammo. For comparitive purposes, the bear that attacks Lara in the demo can be offed from a safe distance by pumping around 45 rounds into it. Using the Adrenaline Dodge, it takes about 7-8 shots to get its "attention," and one more for the headshot to drop it. Risk vs. reward, but the rewards are great indeed. Lara receives some additional combat upgrades in the form of slamming the Jump button to recover faster from being knocked down, and moving the direction keys back and forth to shake off an enemy that has grabbed onto you (something I suspect is slightly easier on the console version with its analog sticks).

The levels themselves are gorgeously rendered, and everything you remember from the original game is there, just done slightly differently. For example, in the original Lost Valley level, the goal was to fix a giant machine by fitting three cogs together in order to drain the waterfall and proceed through the level. Until you found all three cogs, though, the machine didn't work.

In Anniversary, the goal is still to find three cogs, but each one fits to a different place in the level and each one activates a different part of the machine which may be required to get to the area where the next cog can be found. It's a new twist on an old theme, and makes for a great example of the differences to be found between the original and Anniversary.

Naturally, Crystal Dynamics has also altered the structures of certain levels so to better incorporate the mechanics they introduced in Legend: swinging around horizontal bars like a gymnast, using her magnetic grapple to fly across otherwise-incrossable chasms, shooting out and knocking down bits of the environment to create new routes, playing Tarzan on dangling ropes, climbing poles and, Lara's newest bit of environmental trickery, the hops from small platform to small platform, regaining her balance as necessary each step of the way.

The secrets are there still, though CD has added two new categories to the list in addition to the standard medpacks and ammo caches from the original game. Now, there are both Artifacts and Relics hidden in each level, with each one found giving Lara something special or unlocking some bonus content (the demo includes one of these, but it does not unlock anything when you find it since you cannot save your game). These are always hidden in out-of-the-way places and require some degree of creative maneuvering and thinking in order to acquire. They take the place of the Gold, Silver and Bronze secrets from Legend.

The demo is only about the first 1/3 of the Lost Valley level, and it ends on perhaps the meanest cliffhanger I've ever seen a demo end on. If there was ever a time when I had played a demo and been longing to keep going long after I was stopped from doing so, it was then. So naturally, once it was over, I merely re-started the demo and played through it again. It's a cruel, cruel wait for the first of June before I can get my hands on this game. I'm one of the original's biggest fans, but Crystal Dynamics has yet again made a believer out of me and not only preserved but recaptured that feeling of solitude and exploration that made the original game one of my all-time favorites.

This girl cannot wait to see more.