Oh my God this game is awful.
Lara get stucks into the wall, every jump is a pain because if you change your direction a bit Lara
will fall to die.
You can't even recognize which part of the scenario is interactive and which not!
Oh, and the combat system? This is the worst thing I ever seen in the past decade.
You simply shoot, the shoot you, even if you jump you get hit, you can't avoid this. The AI is
simply idiot, and why can I kill a guard with two kick but if I shot him it will require six bullet
of my gun?
Even the camera sucks, too often I must jump without seeing where I land!
I'm at the second level of this game but Anniversary and Legend are two masterpieces in confront
of this garbage :\

What? I found it pretty intuitive and I fell to my death much less than in any previous Tomb Raider game before.

It's one of my fav TR games.

I'm hating it :(

Older TR games were great, the lack of any music except in sparse "dramatic" moments, the large maps with some free-roaming in them, the brutal environmental puzzles, traps and pitfalls.

Seeing the series decline into a third-person shooter with ultra-streamlined delineated series of maps, was disappointing.

Yeah I played old TR (the first one, at least, on Sega Saturn) and they were DIFFICULT as hell.
I was 11 and I hadn't an internet connection at the time, so I was stuck in a level with a lot of water, I never managed to beat that game, but it was much more interesting of Underworld.

Tomb Raider 3 and 4 are the best :P

I really didn't like the third one, loved the fourth one, and i hate the fifth with a passion. I think i like all the other equally.

ON topic: I like Underworld (not as good as legend and anniversary but liked it none the less) but didn't experience any of the troubles OP mentioned. played it on xbox 360 though.

I liked TLR mostly for to the ancient Egyptian levels, as I remember the first game only had two Egypt levels and they weren't very good

The end boss (Seth) in TLR was rubbish though

I thought Tomb Raider Underworld was great. I just purchased a second copy over the holidays to get it DRM-free.

My only gripe is that it didn't have any real boss fights. :/

edit:
I didn't run into any glitches or other problems.

See I have to admit, this is why I like Tomb Raider 1 2 3 for not these more linear action games.

And I don't know if I am the only one, but I love how Lara controls and feels in this game, she feels like she has weight every jump feels heavy when you land not like most platformers where they are all light as a feather, closest thing to come close to old Tomb Raiders was Mirror's Edge.

Played it on 360, I thought it was great, some of the maps were pretty awesome scale-wise as well.

You should try Angel of Darkness ;-).

yes it is... can't forget bouncing stoneblocks from switches, lara freezing in midjump in T-pose or instadeath from jumping from 1m height. The other's nextgen TR's actually are very fun to play and dont have such problems.
Underworld and angel are the worst part's of the series.

I quite enjoyed it and I didnt have any glitches or problems.

A TR junkie will play all of them and love all of them, that being said I found Angel of Darkness was hands down the hardest to push through. It was playable, but it's clunky as hell. I havn't played Underworld, but I've never heard it was that bad.