Now that Tomb Raider: Anniversary is already on shelves (the Wii version's heading to Europe soon), a recent trademark filing by Eidos Interactive seems to shed at least some light on Lara Croft's next adventure. Find out more about the rumored eighth Tomb Raider game at the  full article.

Here's the first few minutes of Tomb Raider Anniversary from Eidos Interactive. In this clip, we see Lady Lara Croft and his companion going up an ancient ruin. But being the resourceful gal that she is, not having a rope is not a problem at all as Lady Croft can always cling on to walls and perform acrobatic jumps and grappling.

Tomb Raider Anniversary is actually a re-mastery of the video game that appeared more than ten years ago. Much of the gameplay elements were retained alongside all the other features that made the original game a success. The developer, Crystal Dynamics, used an enhanced version of TR: Legend game engine on this remake.

Tomb Raider Anniversary has already been released in North America and Europe earlier this month.

 

Dan Arey, a 17-year game industry veteran and former creative lead for Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, will take his rightful place at the helm of Creative Director for Ready At Dawn Studios. The official announcement made today also coincided with the studios' creation of a new intellectual property, already in development.

"Getting someone of Dan's caliber is obviously a huge deal for us," said president and co-founder Didier Malenfant. In any case, the developer who shifted from Electronic Arts, Accolade, Sega of America, Crystal Dynamics, Sony, to Pandemic, and many other studios, was happy to accompany Ru Weerasuriya, VP of Creative Development, in the studio's first attempt at an original IP.

The developers of God of War: Chains of Olympus may also be hinting the near release of the PSP title, since they are already shifting focus to their new IP. In fact, the release via press wire explicitly stated, "Ready At Dawn Studios is currently putting the finishing touches to the most anticipated PSP game of 2007, God of War: Chains of Olympus," and it's got us particularly confused.

Video game title Tomb Raider: Anniversary should arrive in North America in just a couple of days from now, or at least the versions for the PlayStation Portable, PS2, and Games for Windows platforms. Eidos Interactive did announce a Wii version of the remake but is still not quite ready to furnish any details.

Anyway, online site Gamasutra recently got hold of Crystal Dynamics Producer Lulu LaMer and discussed the game's development. The producer shared that one of the most daunting task in revisiting Lady Lara Croft's past was to create a game that triggered players' memories while maintaining a fresh and different feel to it. LaMer added that constraints in design somewhat helped them,

I'm in favor of constraints in design, they can really force creativity. We had a lot of creative freedom. We started with our hot list of important "nostalgia points" we needed to re-create, and we synched with Eidos early on to make sure all expectations were set appropriately.

Prior to this, Lulu LaMer was also the producer for PS2 title Tomb Raider: Legend and the experience she got there really helped in this project. The producer added that co-developer Buzz Monkey really knew what they were doing in terms of making the game for the PSP but that somehow was at odds with Crystal's plans of really pushing the PS2's capabilities. LaMer explained,

The problem was just that we were pushing the PS2 to its limits making massive, beautifully-detailed spaces with all the bells and whistles we could afford. Those goals were strictly at odds with what we knew would work for PSP, but we decided that the impact of an all-out PS2 version was worth the pain of PSP conversion.

After all is said and done, the collaborative effort between Eidos Interactive, Crystal Dynamics, and Buzz Monkey will be graded by the fans of the aging and resilient Tomb Raider franchise. But for what it's worth, Lulu Lamer shared that they had a blast making this game,

Our development approach (get things playable, iterate, collaborate) was entirely based around what we learned worked (or didn't work) on Legend. To be frank, the TR:A team is a bunch of opinionated, mouthy bastards, so it was a pleasure to get the opportunity to test our opinions. We had a good time doing it too!

Lady Lara Croft is on a mission yet again and we, as always, can't help but be mesmerized by her beauty and finesse. This particular gameplay video for Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition involves Croft trying to evade and shoot down extinct cousin-of-hen creatures better known as dinosaurs.

The video game is being developed by Crystal Dynamics and will be published by Eidos Interactive. Anniversary Edition is actually a remake of the title that appeared 10 years ago. Anyway, the two companies finally released an official statement regarding Tomb Raider's release date - May 25 in UK and June 5 in North America.

Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition will be available on the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, and Games for Windows platform.

While Eidos Interactive has clocked the UK street date (i.e. release date) for Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition (PSP, PS2, PC) to May 25, archaeologists, cryptologists, and gamers in the United States are kept in suspended animation. Trailing a few days after its UK release, the tomb crashing game developed by Crystal Dynamics will be released in North America on June 5.

From the same press release with this announcement from Eidos, Robert Lindsey of said video game publisher had this to say:

Tomb Raider: Anniversary offers Lara fans something highly original, but also offers gamers who are new to Lara, a completely fresh and new action adventure game.

Focusing on going back to the franchise's Tomb Raider roots, this remake of the original game will not only be a trek through the ancient ruins of Peru, Greece, Egypt, and, err, Atlantis - but it's also going to be a trek through your original experience with Lara Croft.

If major UK retailers are to be believed, Lady Lara Croft will come in all her glory to the PlayStation Portable (PSP), PlayStation 2 (PS2), and PC platforms this May 25. It's just funny to think how Tomb Raider: Anniversary slipped to the 11th year when it was originally scheduled on the 10th.

We also checked the title's official site and it mentioned that Tomb Raider: Anniversary will indeed come out this May.

Anyway, Eidos Interactive wouldn't commit on a concrete release date when gaming site Eurogamer asked the publisher earlier today. However, Eidos did mention that the game will be out next month.

It should be remembered that developer Crystal Dynamics confirmed the rumors back in January about an April release. Also, fans are eager to see whether the PS2 version of the title will be compatible with Sony's newest console PlayStation 3 (PS3).

But for what it's worth, Eidos and Crystal Dynamics have promised that Tomb Raider: Anniversary will be teeming with "caves full of new thrills", all wrapped up in the engine used for last year's Tomb Raider Legend.

The title is actually a remake of the video game that first appeared 10 years ago. In that version of the game, Lady Croft was hired by a syndicate to retrieve a mythical object known as the Scion. However, Croft learned that she is just being used as a pawn for a bigger scheme.

Our favorite heroine is certainly in for a challenge in Tomb Raider: Anniversary. We're sure she can handle it though; she HAS woken up a number of undead opponents before.

Anyway, here's another trailer for Tomb Raider: Anniversary from Eidos Interactive and Crystal Dynamics. It shows good old Lady Croft in a Egyptian setting and waking the mummified uglies there. Are bandaged creatures enough to discourage our heroine? Of course not.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary is set for release in June for the PC and PSP. So while waiting, check out the trailer.

Today we managed to score some updates on the upcoming title Tomb Raider: Anniversary, courtesy of GamesRadar.

According to an interview with Crystal Dynamics game designer Jason Botta, the redesigned Egypt level for Tomb Raider: Anniversary is actually quite similar to the original in terms of the puzzles, the scope, and the layout. The developers took a "go back, play look through" method in discerning which of the elements in the original areas worked and which didn't.

Says Botta, the Tomb Raider: Anniversary team "looked at them and we analyzed are they good, do they work, do we need to add more architecture or realign things to give them a more believable spin, do we layer on extra layering and complexity of the puzzles...."

The two biggest changes made to the Egypt level were to the open areas that players see when they first enter Egypt. According to Botta, he and the other developers "kept all of the elements that were there and then we spatially laid them out in a way that made more sense around being like the real Egyptian culture and how they laid out the designs for their environments and what-not and just made it feel more grounded in a realistic environment."

And how long would it take gamers to complete the level? Botta says that it's pretty long ("I think it takes most people around 5-6 hours to get through."). As for the whole game itself, current estimates put the gameplay to be around 15 hours. "It's definitely longer than Legend was. [In the original Tomb Raider] you had to deal with the fact that Lara moved a lot slower and the save system wasn't as convenient as ours is, so it's definitely not going to be as long as the original."

If you're hankering for more information on Tomb Raider: Anniversary's Egypt level, click on the "Read" link below.

Lara is going back to her roots with the release of Tomb Raider: Anniversary. Ten whole years have passed since the world first got introduced to the videogame character that Angelina Jolie further immortalized in the movies. But, with the previous release of Tomb Raider Legends, how good will this remake be?

GamesRadar had a little sit-down with Crystal Dynamics game designer Jason Botta. Today, they published the first part of the interview, and one of the interesting topics they talked about involves how the developers wanted to once again bring out the feeling of solitude that the original game had.

The original game had a feeling of solitude - do you think the new version has a similar feeling?

Yeah it does - that's one of the things that we really noted from the original when we started out to make this remake of sorts, was the fact that the original one had a sense of solitude of Lara in these environments. It was just her for long periods of time with no music and just sort of her exploring and then she would come upon animals in her environment that she'd take out, there'd be another period of no combat, no music, just her ambient sound effects, exploration - we really wanted to recapture that mood and it's definitely become one of the things that we stuck to when we were redesigning the game.

Come to think of it, he's right. Throughout the Tomb Raider franchise, Lara sort of got into a whole mix of things, and had to encounter automatic-rifle'd baddies in the strangest places. In the first game, I do remember walking through whole levels in silence. For some reason, the franchise had slightly veered away from the tomb raiding aspect and focused more on some urban action. Good thing they decided to bring Lara back to her "explorer roots."

You can click the "Read" link below to head on over to GamesRadar's interview.