My utter disdain for the latest Tomb Raider reboot is no secret. Sure, they are competently made AAA adventure games that fully meet all the requirements and gameplay clichés in vogue during the previous generation.
But as someone who grew up with the originals on the PS1, there's little of what for me was the series' biggest draw: the unrivaled sense of exploration. Tomb Raider doesn't need to be a cinematic adventure, no. Tomb Raider is about throwing Lara Croft on a huge map and telling her to “fix yourself.” Boom. Why fix what isn't broken.
It didn't help to mitigate this feeling when I saw how many people claimed that the first Core Design games “aged poorly.” If I have spent hours, days entires, arguing that those games aged like a fine wine, that the tank controls were just a matter of getting used to, that the way the games are designed needed those controls. That what killed that first era of tomb Raider -and finally to Core Design- was saturation, and releasing one installment per year for five years in a row inevitably decreased the quality of the games and with this the public's interest. They called me crazy (?
I give play to Tomb Raider I-III Remastered with a hint of fear What if all these people had a point? It's been over a decade since I revisited these three games after all, what if I'm really blinded by nostalgia?
Hahaha no. They would like to. The first three tomb Raider They keep breaking it.
Developed by Aspyr under the supervision of Crystal Dynamics, these remasters of tomb Raider They bring a variety of improvements to Lara's first three adventures.
To start, the graphics have been remastered in HD with a visual style extremely faithful to the original. Modern lighting effects and the addition of additional geometric detail (only in the non-interactable parts, a very wise decision) do an excellent job of giving these games that are already almost three decades old a more than necessary facelift. In addition, by simply tapping Options on PS5 we can return to the original graphics at any time, although the framerate also changes to 30 fps. Clearly any magic they are doing with the graphics is running on the original logic of the game that is still locked at that framerate, as we already saw happen with the remaster of Diablo II For example. This also works during cutscenes and while using photo mode by the way, which allowed me to make this nice comparison:
Truly the sexiest woman of 1996.
Not all aspects of the collection benefited from these graphical changes equally: Some areas have visibility problems that were not present in the original versions, almost always being too dark to see well from a distance. Some key items are also harder to find, as their huge 2D sprites have been replaced by more scale-correct 3D models, but this also makes them difficult to see among the new textures and lighting. This also happens with some levers or switches hidden in the shadows, when in the original PS1 it was never a problem.
After a while I felt almost an obligation to switch back to the original graphics while doing research to make sure I wasn't missing something, which is less than ideal. Possibly because of this, all interactable objects in this remaster have an exclamation point that appears when you approach them, but it feels more like a patch than a real solution. I also saw some glitched textures, and at least one area where they directly messed up the texture and the one that clearly belongs to a vase was stretched over an entire wall. Anyway, except for the hard-to-see items, these are minor problems and overall the collection looks fantastic.
Also, and for the first time, the expansions for each game are finally available on console. Having been exclusive to the PC versions all this time, Unfinished Business, golden mask and The Lost Artifact They are included in the collection and can be played at any time, although it is recommended to only play them after completing the corresponding base game because they represent a significant jump in difficulty.
The collection also includes the option to play with “modern” controls, aka using the left stick for multi-directional movement and the right stick to rotate the camera.
These controls seem to have been added just to satisfy those who complain about the original controls and, to me at least, make the gameplay actively worse. For those who for any reason are not aware, tomb Raider Classic has tank controls for a reason. Let me explain: The levels in tomb Raider They are designed like giant grids, and Lara's movements are designed to travel an exact distance on this grid. So, for example, jumping forward covers one space in the air, while running before jumping allows us to cover two. Holding down the jump button while approaching an edge causes us to automatically jump when we reach it, so the distance traveled will always be exact. What many unfairly call “old” or “archaic” controls are actually, in my opinion, one of the most precise systems ever seen in a 3D platformer.
Games like Super Mario 64 They are credited with having “perfected” movement in 3D platforms, but I beg to differ. The controls in tomb Raider They weren't worse, they were just different, and they worked perfectly for what the series aimed to do. This control scheme works much better with the d-pad than with analog movement, and by switching to “modern” controls we simply lose the precision necessary to execute some sequences.
If you are newcomers to the series, don't worry: the classic controls only take a few minutes to adapt, and once you click the gameplay you won't be able to imagine any other way, since absolutely everything in this series is designed around this movement system.
At the level of difficulty, the games continue to offer the same challenge as in the nineties, with each installment raising the stakes with respect to the previous one, which is understandable because not many games since then have imitated the Core Design formula.
Of course, it is clear that for Tomb Raider 3 The devs were aware that the players already knew all the tricks in the book and directly began to abuse the hidden traps and instant deaths, resulting in a much more bizarre game than the previous ones. Another tip for newcomers: when it's your turn to choose a level in Tomb Raider 3, choose Nevada first. Listen to me, thank me later.
Speaking of tricks: I am DELIGHTED to be able to report that all the tricks for the PS1 versions were included and work exactly the same as they do in those. The first thing I did when booting the collection was go directly to Tomb Raider 3 to see if the cheat for all the weapons worked, and the smile that made me see that it did lasted all day.
What would have raised points for the collection for me? That they redid the pre-rendered cinematics instead of upscaling them and that's it, because not only were they much darker but the graphics now literally look worse than during the gameplay. Going a little further, they would include The Last Revelation and Chronicles. I understand that the latter got a pretty lukewarm reception when it originally came out but The Last Revelation is one of the most celebrated installments in the series, so its absence feels particularly strange. Hopefully this collection does well enough to appear as DLC later on, or even as a separate future compilation.
Tomb Raider I-III Remastered It is what all remasters should be: complete, faithful to the original, without unnecessary changes, and with the possibility of playing with the original look if you want. Although perhaps that same adherence to the past is enough to dissuade some potential buyer who expected a greater modernization, for as I said at the beginning, why fix what is not broken.
THE BEST
- A faithful and complete collection of Lara's first three adventures
- Modernized graphics just enough and necessary, maintaining the spirit of the original look
- The inclusion of expansions on console for the first time
WORST
- Visual clarity issues introduced by new graphics
- Tomb Raider 3 is still pretty bad