Tomb Raider I II III Remastered

Lara Croft is back with the newly-released Tomb Raider I-III Remastered collection, reviving three classic 90s games with new improvements for a modern audience. But can these games reach far into the 21st century, or are they better as a relic of the past?

These classic games remain as ingenious, memorable and frustrating as ever.

In the end, Tomb Raider I-III Remastered brings us back to arguably the most exciting era of the franchise, allowing us to revisit with updated controls and graphics these iconic action adventure classics, while also mantaining the smart level designs, puzzles, etc. as they should be – though, for better or worse, without any real attempt to fix any of the games’ shortcomings either. While the game does indeed look and control better, there seems to be a rather heavy-handed use of AI for upscaling textures, with also various locations where the completely different lightning models used drasti...

Tomb Raider I-III Remastered finds itself in a tough spot because what it aims to do is replicate the original trilogy with all of its content on modern hardware and it does it well. The biggest problem it faces is that the new coat of paint is largely just that -- the core gameplay is still rooted in early 3D jankiness and feels awkward to play now -- and in some ways, it's harder to wrap your mind around it now since no control scheme offered up feelings as natural as anything featured in a Tomb Raider game since the PS2 days onward. The new visuals look good in theory, but have odd clipping...

Tomb Raider. What an iconic gaming franchise, one of the very few so well-known that even non-gamers know who Lara Croft is. Even though we know a good chunk of its popularity stemmed from having one of the first female protagonists in gaming history, eye candy and good marketing alone wouldn’t be able to turn a franchise into a juggernaut. The games were, for the time, groundbreaking and innovative, with huge levels to explored in a 3D environment. They suffered from the constraints of the...

Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered delivers a welcome visual overhaul to The Last Revelation, Chronicles and The Angel of Darkness with excellent character models, detailed textures and revamped lighting working together to wonderful effect. The modern control schemes across the collection are frustratingly cumbersome but some great quality-of-life improvements and the excellent photo mode features make this remaster a must for longtime fans.