A game that actually made me like Lara Croft? How the heck did this happen?!
What I did like? All the rest... duh. But here goes:
Graphics: superb. The world, the characters, the lighting, everything. And it moves smoothly at MAX settings on my 5 year old computer. Great job.
Combat: again, superb. You have melee done right with a simple dodge mechanic and quick time event. The weapons upgrades makes them fun. This has to be the only game where I actually used weapons logically. Arrow for first kill, then Assault Rifle for the first wave, then pistol when ammo ran out, then shotgun for close combat, combined with melee for those pesky guys behind. I guess this is the most combat oriented Tombraider to date. So it's great to have combat done better than in Farcry3, or Crysis 3 for that matter.
Puzzles and platform: well, not so much. They are quite simple and fast flowing (which is a plus). But what they lack in the difficulty of some earlier games, they sure as hell make up in architecture and level design. There are just too many 3'd person platform games that have unbelievable level designs. Just compare the freedom of Assassin's Creed with the stupid "temple goes down, leaves exactly the bits of columns for you to save the world" levels of the older Prince of Persia games. This Tombraider falls right in the middle. The levels are linear but believable. This is a hard trick to pull, so kudos for that.
Controls: best I've seen in a long time. Consider this... I had my gamepad connected to my PC. Every time I touched a button, the controls would switch silently to show XBOX controller hints. Everytime I touched the keyboard, the game would swtich back to mouse and keyboard hints and stopped the controller vibration. For a multimple platform game, this has to be the first PC version to have such nice flow. Lara moves naturally and believable. There is no crouch or run button. After a while you just forget about what you press.
Tombraider stuff: I played the original TR when it came out. I've also played a few other titles but never finished any of them. It just wasn't my cup of cake. Silly story, silly levels, an annoying Lara.. the list goes on. This game made me like Lara so much that I can't wait for the next game (although I'm not gonna restart any of the old ones). Some fans of the series might dislike the game for the exact same reasons... but... sucks to be them I guess.
Oh, and did I mention the gore? Goriest game I've played in a long time. I actually felt sorry for the poor girl at times. Before, I enjoyed smashing her face on rocks. Not here.
In conclusion, I'd probably have gave the game a clean 9.0. But I feel that Gamespot has robbed it of a correct score while giving crap ports like Dragon's Souls an undeserved attention. So 9.5 it is.