Lara Croft has always been hard to handle. When you say “jump”, far from saying “how high?”, she tends to kick off at random. Now, this may be an admirable quality in a real-life feisty — if implausibly bosomed — female adventuress (though Brad Pitt may be starting to have his doubts), but in a video game it quickly becomes a pain in the amply proportioned backside.

Ten years on from the Tomb Raider debut, this latest game in the series is closer to getting it right. Crystal Dynamics, having replaced Core Design, have taken Lara back to basics, and then improved on that. Gameplay is much smoother and more athletic, and Lara gets a greatly enhanced range of accessories and a whole series of Matrix- style kicks and flips when fighting, to add to her trusty handguns.

Graphics are a step forward, even if not a giant leap. (On the Xbox 360 they certainly don’t reach full potential.) Most importantly, the puzzles are back on track. Traps, levers, pulleys, chains, chasms, secret passges, underground lakes, rotating knives — there’s a cunning solution to each, designed to keep you puzzling for just long enough to gain satisfaction in the solving, but not long enough to make you want to hurl your own internal organs at the screen.

DOMINIC WELLS