Well all I can say is tht people can still reach different conclusions looking at exactly the same things. Anyways you seem pretty intent on presenting your point of view of what makes a good game as the correct one --- and you are well within your rights on doing so, but keep in mind people might harbor the same feelings about the games or other kind of media you prefer. 

No, I'm just trying to say that THIS particular game is not a good Tomb Raider game, because it retains almost nothing that actually makes a game a TR game. It might be average, or even good (depending on taste) "Adventures of Laura Daft, distant cousin of Lara Croft" game, just not good TR game. ;)

You are once again stating opinion as fact =/

Pray tell, what makes you particularly appropriate to judge exactly what a TR game should consist, and in which way your criticisms are actually valid objective standards we should rate games from? 

Why, thank you. You are a great poster too.

As for TR I think there's a fine line between dumbing down and genuinely having to make a game simpler due to people increasingly having less time to play them and 3D assets becoming more expensive. As you surely know, there was way more stuff in old strategy and RPG games than on modern ones. So... yeah.

I think the new TR is more of the later than the former. It isn't like former TR games, much like Fallout 3 isn't Fallout 2, but it delivers what it offers, an interesting action game with a few puzzle and open-world elements to spice things up, and a few hidden depths. That's way more than 95% of the games being released nowadays so props to Eidos for that.

It could be better here and there, yes, but so Assassin's Creed and Drake's Fortune could - it's the same kind of minor flaws of design and gameplay that properly fixed could deliver a generation's finest game next time around.