Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered

There's a somewhat pretentious Tomb Raider lover in me who would love to try and make the case that the magic, charm, and charisma of this game series began to wane by a significant margin after Tomb Raider II, but that's not true. I was of this simple opinion until last year when, in the absence of a willing freelancer, I revisited all three games in the previous collection, and realised relatively quickly that all three games were, and are, of a relatively high standard. I remember the third game in particular as downright bad but would today class it as clearly approvable while the first adventure stands as one of the most remarkable games of all-time.

I also remember how tired I was of the same old formula once Core Design and Eidos rolled out the fourth game in the series, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation. By then, three years after the debut of the original adventure, I'd had my fill of the same kind of exploration, the same kind of environment-based puzzles, and the same kind of rigid game controls. That said, The Last Revelation (1999) was never bad and, reliving it now, it has struck me how underrated it is after all. The theme here is astrology and how the stars ruled the ancient Egyptians in particular and it's a well-written and sensibly structured story with well crafted manoeuvres and a lot of really clever puzzles, which we get here. This is despite the fact that the development team by this point (The Last Revelation was being created at the same time as Tomb Raider III, meaning that Core Design's main team had been split down the middle and was working twice as hard, on twice the amount of games) was completely exhausted.

The fifth game in this hyper-popular game series is Tomb Raider: Chronicles (2000), and when the adventure begins, Lara Croft is believed to be dead after the events of The Last Revelation. We get to play through "Lost Levels" from Tomb Raider III and The Last Revelation via arbitrary flashbacks in an adventure that feels all over the place. Quickly cobbled together cut scenes from previous games that were milked to the last drop because Eidos demanded Core Design deliver one fully-fledged game a year, give or take. Sure, there are puzzles that are cleverly planned, and sure, there's some exploration that went unnoticed by me on previous occasions, which I now appreciate rather than avoid, but on the whole, it's pretty clear that Core Design was tired of Lara Croft by this point and that their imagination was largely exhausted.

The third game in this collection is nothing less than the downright laughable Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, which we here at Gamereactor rewarded with a weak four back in October 2003, and in all honesty, we were pretty damn generous, I would say. Because this is a really miserable game that doesn't do much other than frustrate. Core Design worked in parallel on Tomb Raider III, The Last Revelation, Chronicles, and The Angel of Darkness because this adventure was based on a completely new version of their own game engine, now optimised for PlayStation 2 instead of PlayStation, and with a different focus in terms of gameplay. Lara was now a Solid Snake wannabe, able to sneak up, attack enemies from behind, and strangle them without giving away her position, and instead of catacombs and huge cave systems, many of the levels were indoor environments in London, which didn't work in any way or form. The Angel of Darkness was completely devoid of that Lara charm almost 22 years ago... and it's even worse today.

And that's where I find myself when it comes to this collection of games, which was not the case with Tomb Raider I-III Remastered. These three games are nowhere near as good as the first three, if I had to compare the two collections. That said, it's easy to see all the improvements Aspyr has made in terms of the porting work itself. You can still jump freely between the old graphics and the new, polished ones. The refresh rate stutters and stumbles a lot less this time around when making these jumps and the switch between "Modern controls" and "Tank controls" (the original) flows even more smoothly as do the two new animations added to aid Lara's climbing. Photo Mode has been expanded too and is absolutely superb this time around.

Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered is thus a job well done in terms of Aspyr's effort, but the original games that have been given modern treatment are not quite up to scratch, which means that the overall rating lands at a five. This is certainly a piece of gaming history, but considering how mediocre Chronicles is and how bad The Angel of Darkness is, I have a hard time seeing how this can be a blockbuster.