I found myself both loving and hating this title.
Just days before I began playing this title I finished playing through Tomb Raider Anniversary, which was awesome. At that point I had high expectations for this title and was excited about playing it from the moment that I slipped it into my PSP, but disappointments began at the title-screen intro that looked as though it belonged in a 007 movie. After that, it got to the title-screen itself, resembling the one from TR: Anniversary that had excellent tribal theme music.
I then began the game watching an interesting prologue, but after that I see Lara is recklessly climbing a cliff without a safety rope in order to, I don't know, be cool? It became extremely noticeable when Lara's side-kicks point it out and she replies with a smart-@$$ comment. I found that to be a little cliché for my taste, especially after Tomb Raider Anniversary and how smart and cautious she was in that one. Expect this type of thing to occur more than once in this game.
About half way through the first level I confronted the first enemies; rebel soldiers who looked as though they were dressed for a low budget sci-fi film. These are the only standard enemies that you confront other than wild-cats (lions, tigers, cougars, etc.). To make matters worse, the combat was rather bland and not really Tomb Raider style. Both Lara and her enemies can take WAY too many hits: 15-20. Needless to say, this makes gun fights rather boring.
By the end of stage one you will be getting shot at by a helicopter. As cool as that sounds, they did a rather poor job with it, making the .50 caliber gatling gun rounds inflict about as much damage to Lara as a pellet gun would in reality, and the gunners' accuracy equal to that of a blind man.
Level 2 begins in some abandoned 3rd world village where she get's attacked by a militia. The setting felt more like the movie Desperado than a Tomb Raider game. After killing all of the militia in town Lara jumps on her motorcycle to undergo a chase/battle with militia while driving. As cool as it sounds, it was actually quite disappointing. The control sucks and shooting at numerous mindless soldiers on motorcycles who can't aim worth a darn ruins much of the thrill (at least it did for me). The end of the stage however reveals Lara's past, which makes the story even more intriguing and left me curious to see what happens next.
Stage 3 had to be the biggest disappointment. Lara goes to Japan in order to make a deal with some mafia leader. She arrives dressed as a high cost prostitute. I understand that Lara Croft is meant to be sexy, but they were really pushing it here. She then gets into a cheesy gun fight with about 8 mobsters in the room, all of whom can't aim, but need to be shot about 15 times in order to die. Also, what's she doing in Japan fighting the mafia? Isn't this called TOMB RAIDER? Where are the tombs?
At this point I had most of my judgment for this game figured out, as things were pretty much the same from here on. Levels mainly consisted of moving from point A to point B, which greatly weakens the quality of puzzles in this game when they did occur. The levels were full of extra artifacts, most of which were simply stuck in a corner as opposed to actually requiring puzzle solving to access. About half of the levels had a great tomb setting as the other half felt like they didn't belong in this game. About half of the cut-scenes and dialogue were cliché and somewhat annoying, the other half were very intriguing and full of emotion. As Lara's confrontations with her old friend/new enemy were very well developed, the confrontations with all other "enemies?" seemed rather pointless. I greatly feel that if the developers performed one more walk-through to touch up the game before releasing it the game would have turned out much better. The ending however was awesome, so if you are curious enough to see what happens--like I was--it is worth playing, just don't expect to feel anxious to play it again.