Back in the day I sort of enjoyed this one, and it was the first Tomb Raider game I was ever able to get into, because I can't deal with the control system of the older games. Playing it in 2018 though, I just... See things differently, to put it kindly.
The combat isn't very enjoyable. You lock onto enemies and fire while dodging, and when you get hit by anything more powerful than a peashooter you'll get knocked to the ground, ruining the flow. There are a small selection of weapons to use, and although they all sound quite beefy, they don't really pack a punch because all of the enemies are annoying bulletsponges. The bosses are naturally the biggest bulletsponges in the game, and all the boss fights are very long, drawn-out and irritating. There are a couple of set-pieces, like slightly awkward driving sections, and it's an action game from 2006, so of course there are some quick time events too. That's about as deep as things get, and it always feels slightly janky and really lacks any satisfaction.
Like many games from the time of its release, it's very excited to have a physics engine and loves to show it off. I find that kind of cute and quaint now. But this means that most of the puzzles devolve into pulling things around with your grappling hook, or moving crates and giant balls to weigh down pressure pads. The puzzles are usually very simplistic and easily solved, and platforming isn't much better. For traversing the environment, the grappling hook is relied on way too much. I kind of wish they'd never included it, because the level design, the puzzles, and the exploration would have all been hugely different (and better) without it.
I get that it's supposed to be a campy series (or at least, it was in 2006), and I can appreciate that as much as anyone, but there are too many cringey one-liners and poor attempts at humour in this entry. The dialogue just isn't very good, doesn't make me fond of any of the supporting characters (who never shut up), and the story is bad.
It's an awful PC port, and the "Next Generation Content" graphics option is severely bugged, resulting in misaligned ropes and vines (which can cause you to fall to your death as it makes it more difficult to catch them at the right angle), missing and messed-up water effects, as well as flickering textures and broken level geometry. I ended up disabling this option, which makes it look more like a PS2-era game, but it also looks more visually consistent and professional rather than totally broken. Even with the option disabled though, there are still issues on some levels where parts of the map are completely missing, showing the void behind it.
So, to summarise... The combat is very simplistic, and the bulletsponge enemies and irritating boss fights suck any potential fun out of it. The game relies on too many gimmicks like QTEs and exploiting the physics engine, and there isn't much depth to the puzzles or the platforming. It's a very restrictive cinematic videogame, that wishes it was an action movie, but has the kind of story that would be laughed out of any cinema. On top of all that, it's a pretty terrible PC port that is partially broken, which drags it down to below mediocrity.