Tomb Raider I-III Remastered - Review

When the Tomb Raider games first started to appear on PlayStation, I was never able to play them through to completion as I did not own the console, so I only played them in spurts at a friends house. I then saw the series when working in retail selling the PlayStation 2 games, so it wasn’t until the recent reboot trilogy that I was able to play any game in full. With that history to the series, I wasn’t sure what I would like or not like about the games coming in, so the question is, did it live up to the year of hype?

With any remaster, there is always the question about just how much is different compared to the originals, clearly a visual change was done, but what else. As it turns out, there really isn’t much done to the game, outside of a few quality of life additions and a secondary control scheme. Now it has been 28 years since the first game released and while Lara Croft has scaled the heights to the movie screen and 2 additional trilogies of games, there are those who state the originals are the best. After booting into the first game and visiting Croft Manor, as that is where you get the instructions on how to play the game, it was time to begin my quest. Part of me was tempted to just play the game with the original control scheme, but then I remembered that it was made for a controller without an analogue control stick, so I opted for the new modern scheme. The problem that I found was that they didn’t feel that different, yes I was using a stick instead of the d-pad, but the rest of the actions still felt the same, but I pushed on.

After a few levels, I decided to swap back to the classic controls, branded tank and see how I faired with those and it turns out, nothing really changed. When you look at the control settings, its mostly just actions moved to different buttons, for example the old school way of action is B on the Switch Pro Controller, but modern its Y. Getting your gun out to shoot required you to press Y in the old school and then X, but in the modern you simple pull the ZL trigger and then ZR to fire. This lack of actual updating highlighted that the game is not a remaster, but rather a re-issued experience and for some that might be good enough, but I was wanting more. Nothing else in the games design has changed, the level layout is the same, item placement is the same and even enemies act the same, I was comparing my playthrough to some YouTube videos of the original release to validate this.

Yes the game has a new look and we will get to that, but beyond that nothing else feels modern. Lara’s most annoying thing for me originally was how she could flip in any direction at the press of a button, but when it came to clearing a small gap, she would either never jump far enough or she would jump to far. The game has not done anything here to rectify that behaviour, even in the earlier levels, I often found myself missing jumps for either reason, or the best one, jumping only to then slide off the platform. The game also offers nothing else for modern gamers, now I really did enjoy the wandering around trying to work out where to go and discovering any secrets, it was how I gamed growing up. Modern day players, basically anyone since the PlayStation 3, will never get a game that feels like that, as modern games are all about hints, maps and waypoints. I am not saying that this game needed to be flooded with all of those elements, but simply including a map would have made things feel fresh and welcoming.

One of the most delightful elements is of course the games ability to swap between the old and new visuals, something that always makes me smile. Not only is it a great way to see just how far games have come between the first release and the remaster or remake, its funny to see just how clunky things were back in the day. Tomb Raider, like most PlayStation titles, has the distinct displeasure of being a 3D game that has not aged all that well. Some titles do look fine to this day, but those are the rare treat compared to the number that don’t. Seeing the game, including the menu screens in the clunky PlayStation look feels weird, but seeing the new looks, feels odd at times. The developers have managed to balance the feeling of the old, whilst embracing some of the new, including a much less pointy version of Lara. This juxtaposition of designs often competes against itself, as you are seeing flat and boxy elements, sprinkled with new and fancy at times.

The games do look great when you have them on the new visual style, the amount of extra detail in the textures alone makes it worth playing that way. If there was a complaint about the texture work, it would be that some of them are just so poorly aligned to their surrounding ones, that they stand out like you wouldn’t believe. But it’s not just more detail, the levels look more believable, perhaps none more so when you enter a room and see light beaming into it from outside, while the parts of the room not bathed in light look dark and ominous. The games updates to objects are also done quite well, each item fits in and feels like it was always that way, swapping back and getting the Doom item effect feels wrong now. The quality of life touches like health bars for bosses is great, but it is only a small amount of what was needed.

On the audio side of things the game sounds fine, there are some clear music choices that have been made, with the hard cuts to encounter music, but there is nothing wrong with that per say. I did notice at times that the dialogue sounded hissy, but those are rare instances, the rest of the time its nice and clean on the ears.

Tomb Raider I-III Remastered is not going to be for everyone, for those gamers who grew up with the titles originally, revisiting them after more than 25 years will be a true delight. The problem is that for any modern gamer, there is just not enough of an upgrade to most of the elements for it to make sense. The updated visuals are striking and do look incredible, but looking good is not enough, as everything underneath is still as clunky as it was on the original PlayStation. If you are willing to learn how games used to be, there is a lot of fun to had here, but with so much of the game being a relic from the videogames of yesteryear, this is one that should go into a museum.

The Score

7.0

Review code provided by Aspyr Media

The Pros

Updated visuals are wonderful and manage to keep the original feeling alive

There is a lot of content here with three main games and their expansions

The Cons

The controls, in either scheme are not that great and end up being an anchor around the game

There are not enough touches to the game that welcomes in new players