It looked so good, and was a good introduction (for me) into the PC's world of Lara Croft. But the controls... yikes.

Other than the half-second delay between pressing a button and watching the resulting action, I couldn't decide which was worse: the hyper-sensitive mouse steering, or the glacial-speed keyboard steering.

That decision was rendered pointless after the "walkthrough incident of 2008." Ascending a flight of stairs in an apartment building, I encountered heavy debris blocking my way. The solution: pull a box towards the edge of a landing, and use its given height to serve as a elevated jumping point from which I could grab the next floor's landing. Only, it didn't work. No matter where I position the box, or Lara, my character was blocked by an invisible wall that prevented me from grabbing aforementioned ledge. Reviewing a walkthrough online (which warned me of several bugs and major "grid" level problems that described an exclusive golden spot from which Lara could bypass a problem), I affirmed that this was indeed the correct solution to this puzzle. So I jumped back in-game, and tried again. And again. And again. An hour or so later, I gave up and uninstalled the game. Whether a control problem or a bug, I dind't care. The gameplay absolutely soured the visuals.

...that's because Lara is as likely to defeat evil as she is fall off a FREAKING LEDGE because she wasn't standing on the "golden spot" from which a succesful jump could be accomplished.

And she looked SO HOT in her jeans.

My Score: D