The New Tomb Raider Sounds Very Interesting Indeed.

That's because Crystal Dynamics has spent the past few years creating a brand new Tomb Raider adventure, one which hopefully propels the franchise back to its former glory.

The game was officially announced yesterday as part of GameInformer's cover reveal, but now eagle-eyed NeoGAF users have etched out some more information about the game. Most importantly, how old is the new Lara Croft? She's 21 according to the magazine, though it's not like she'll be staying fresh faced for very long. Apparently there'll be custom animations for every death situation in the game — think Dead Space but with less necromorphs and more errant boulders.

The new Tomb Raider will also do away with the franchise's trademark auto-lock mechanic. Apparently the new game will have a shooting mechanic on par with any other game — a nod towards Naughty Dog's Uncharted perhaps?

Most exciting is the game's environment. The plot sees Lara shipwrecked on an island, which appears to be open-world. Lara can use camps to fast-travel around the world, and as the game progresses she'll scavenge new items which will open up areas of the island to her. Crystal Dynamics are promising a seamless open-world environment, which could be a cool concept when coupled with Lara's acrobatic abilities.

What's most intriguing to us is that Lara will have to manage her food and water reserves, which sounds both frustrating and amazing. We're looking forward to observing how that pans out.

We're excited about this new Tomb Raider game. Perhaps most interesting is how different this sounds from anything else being put out there at the moment. A relatively ordinary female protagonist stranded in an open-world setting which looks set to mix shooting, platforming and survival horror components? Count us in.

Make sure you pick up the latest issue of GameInformer magazine for the full story.