Total Conversion:
Tomb Raider vs. Tomb Raider Anniversary

The welcoming committee to Midas' palace hasn't changed: In 1996 as in 2007, Lara is greeted by a bunch of angry gorillas.

What has changed is the overall structure of the palace, though. There used to be a big room with a switch puzzle that required reading and imitating the symbol patterns on several doors to get in the different rooms, which has been excised completely.

The crucible used to be a fairly simple row of torches that would go off in regular intervals, but demanded perfect timing and exact steps to avoid getting burned, which made it one of the hardest rooms so far into the game, even Lara could save herself from burning to death immediately by jumping into the water below. The remake features a far more elaborate series of turning pillars, flames shooting from the walls and other mechanisms, but is ultimately a lot less harsh.

This room requires pulling several switches that raise the pillars, allowing Lara to reach an alcove in the upper part of the wall. In both games the first switch is discovered by pulling a block from next to a set of stairs, but the challenge itself was changed: In Anniversary, the switch is timed, and after a few seconds the pillars start lowering again. Swift players not only reach the necessary brick, but also fetch some optional artifacts.

The last of the three bricks is gained beyond this room, which doesn't look like much of a challenge first. However, Lara's actions cause the floor to break down, transforming it into yet another platforming challenge. In the original, this happens just by pulling a block from under a wall, but in the remake, Lara has to actively destroy a time-worn pillar in the floor beneath using her grappling hook.

Two areas that were simply excised from the remake: An aqueduct in dizzying height, and the gardens. None of them offered much aside from the sights and some standard items, so it's easy to see why they got removed.

In the original game, the statue of Midas is hidden away in a room deep within the palace, and all that's left of it are the legs and a severed hand. In the remake the statue was moved to the center hall for everyone to see, and it's in much better shape. The hand is still severed, though, and in both versions its used to turn the bricks into gold.

Should Lara be so foolish as to step on the hand of Midas, she herself is transformed into gold, resulting in a game over. The old game made her look more like a sand sculpture, though. Anniversary manages to create a decent metallic look, but for some reason her weapons resist the change.

The sockets for the gold bars that open the door to the next stage used to be in another faraway chamber, now they're found around the statue itself.

In order to gain entry to the cistern in either version, Lara has to move a block to reach a switch mounted high up on the wall while being attacked by rats.

The Cistern is the most significantly changed area in the whole game: It simply ceases to exist as a stage on its own, leaving merely the central hall as part of the Tomb of Tihocan stage. Both times it revolves all around raising and lowering the water level.

In the original, this leads to a hunt for a bunch of keys in several side chambers, with fights against rats and Pierre, while the remake relies mostly on the climbing and grappling hook mechanics.

While Anniversary directly leads to the cave with Tihocan's tomb after that, the many locked doors in the 1996 release open into a hall with a chessboard floor, where lions attack, and another easy switch puzzle.

What follows is a narrow path through all kinds of deathtraps, from guillotines to Prince of Persia-inspired spiked doors - but only in the original.

The final part of the original cistern is a room where Lara has to push a stone block on floor plates with writing on them, to open more rooms with more traps and more enemies and more keys. While some of them have nice surprising "gotcha" moments, the exercise as a whole feels arbitrary and won't be missed much.

At this point the Tomb of Tihocan level in the old game starts. The next few steps are once again very similar: Lara dives through some flooded caves to flip switches, and finally reaches the tomb itself on an island.

As she approaches the building, one of the two giant centaur statues at the entrance comes to life and attacks her - at least it used to back in the day. This scene was changed so both would come to life after Lara had entered and left the building, to make the encounter more of a climax. This for one has been greatly improved over the original: Instead of fighting just another, particularly strong enemy, Lara has to annoy the beasts, fling off one of their shields with the grappling hook, then pick it up and reflect the petrifying beam they shoot out of their heads. Only in this temporary statue state can they really be damaged.

The final encounter with Pierre is handled much differently, too: In the original Lara first has to gun him down, before the scion can be picked up and trigger an exposition monolog by the long dead ruler. In the remake, he surprises her from behind, takes the Scion and exits the building, where he is killed off by the centaurs, leading to the aforementioned boss fight.

As Lara puts the two pieces of the scion together, it triggers the same scene of the two Atlantean rulers condemning and punishing a third one. The buildup has once again been tuned to be more impressive, with Lara falling through the collapsing floor into nothingness, and witnessing the event hovering next to the supersized kings.