Review | Tomb Raider I-III Remastered

Győző "FairyEmpire" BakiFebruary 13, 2024Last Updated: February 13, 2024

0 2,273 9 minutes read

Since its beginning in the 1990’s, the Tomb Raider franchise has always been a behemoth in terms of critical acclaim, sales, and of course the iconic protagonist Lara Croft went above and beyond the gaming sphere in many ways. With about a dozen mainline games and countless other projects, it’s time to go back to the origins, back to 1996 to 1998 when the first 3 titles of the franchise were released. It’s time to check out Tomb Raider I-III Remastered!

90’s revival

The development of the original Tomb Raider game is a well documented and intriguing one, and one I absolutely encourage looking into yourselves. It’s a story of incredible creativity, innovative tech and bold decisions, with its makers eventually growing to hate Lara Croft’s adventures due to having to crunch non-stop and deliver one massive game every single year on multiple platforms. This had all kinds of major consequences later on, with the original developer, British studio Core Design ending up killing Lara Croft in the storyline at the end of the 4th installment to force their publisher to stop – only to have to rush out a fifth game anyway. And lastly and most infamously, the proverbial feces hitting the fan with the 6th episode, Angel of Darkness, launching on the 6th generation of consoles after a disastrous development and to a horrible reception, ending with the studio closing and the development of the franchise moving to another team, Crystal Dynamics, who then essentially rebooted the franchise twice since then – quite successfully, in fact. Depending on who you ask, out of the original 5 games run of the franchise, some will tell you only the first 2 games are worth revisiting, others like me would tell you to play at least until the 4th episode. This remaster, done by Aspyr, sits in the middle and fully remasters the first 3 games, comprehensive of extra missions and expansions that were released in various forms later on. A blast from the past, and unlike many other games from the 1990’s, these haven’t ever received a proper remaster officially before.

The game’s menu is essentially 3 menus in one, and it’s one hell of a nostalgia wave, as the old style of Tomb Raider menus was thankfully kept. Rotating between the 3D inventory of a passport with the options, a walkman for the sound options and so on – it never gets old, and by going up and down on this screen we can immediately jump into any of the campaigns of the 3 games. One thing I would have loved to see, given these games’ notable length and difficulty, is a level select option unlocked from the start – no such thing is available, unfortunately, bar from being able to start from the bonus levels in each title. At least the classic cheat codes can all be used, including the all weapons and ammo cheat, the exploding Lara one from the sequels, and most relevantly the level skip. But aside from cheating, we can take a detour and explore Lara’s Home, full of secrets, extended tutorials and funny minigames of sorts – yes, you can still close the butler in the freezer, just like you surely did back in the day. But as we begin the real campaign, the extent of the remastering work immediately becomes obvious. First of all, the cutscenes seem to be the same as old, no change in graphics or visual quality – it’s the same low resolution stuff you’d find on your PS1 disc back in the day. The audio, too, has seemingly not been touched at all, with the iconic sounds and musics fortunately remaining, while other, less impressive sounds like the helicopter from the opening level of Tomb Raider 2 still sounding as off as it did all those years ago. Bit of a shame, given how poorly some of that content aged, but things immediately take a brighter turn once we actually play. Well, for the most part.

Tank or no tank?

First of all, let’s tackle the biggest argument here: the controls. I’m a huge fan of the classic Tomb Raider games, having spent countless hours in each and every installment, but one thing has to be said about the way they are played: their controls are absolutely archaic by now. Old school Resident Evil games became (in)famous for their tank controls, but Tomb Raider is even more extreme. As one of the very first action adventure games in 3D, one heavily relying on precise platforming, pixel perfect timed runs and more, perhaps the main opponent to perfect runs has always been these precise, but also painfully sluggish and punishing controls. For each and every precise jump, the player has to line up correctly by rotating and side-stepping in separate movements, making sure to have the right amount of steps necessary to make the jump. It can be awfully tedious and it sure ain’t Super Mario 64. A lot of fans still enjoy these controls somehow, but fortunately Aspyr found a way to accomodate everyone: both the classic control scheme remains and an updated, so called “Modern Controls” option is also available. At its core, the philosophy remains, but the player no longer has to finetune their movement, being able to correctly position themselves via the use of the two analog sticks like in any modern game. Various other adjustments have been made for this new scheme, and while it still relies on the old “block-based” level design of the classic games, it’s a smart improvement that also lowers the general difficulty a good bunch, by making the controls infinitely more accessible.

On a first glance, the graphical update the three Tomb Raider games received is quite stellar. Every texture has been “blown up” in terms of detail, new lightning models and shadows turn formerly flat areas into dynamic environments. Vegetation is a lot more lush, many of the 2D elements such as smaller statues or health pick-ups have seen their old rotating 2D models are recreated in proper 3D – even the original games’ console versions’ dodgy framerate has been visibly upped, making this the most crisp and sharp these classics have ever been – barring mods, anyhow. The level geometries stay the same, which means the same cube-based structure of the areas remains noticeale, but a lot of elements feel somehow smoother, despite the sharp edges, especially items in the background that don’t require interaction. In darker caves, various inaccessible areas such as certain ceilings have been removed or tweaked, giving extra light sources and details not seen before. The difference can be seen absolutely on the spot, anywhere you are: at the press of a single button, in an instant without any loading whatsoever, players can change between the classic and modern look, even during actions as the in-game logic remains the same. Lara’s model, too, is very noticeably improved – gone are the rough edges of her body of the various games (with her iconic triangle-shaped chest from the first game), with everything feeling slighty more modern but not too much. Her face design, for example, isn’t reminiscent of the newest games but of the previous trilogy from the late 2000’s, Anniversary in particular. So all in all the initial impressions of the way the game looks are certainly positive, with a smart mixture of classic and modern to create a high resolution, smooth and polished version of the “blocky” good old Tomb Raider games. All this at a fancy 4K 120fps on Xbox Series X, no less.

Artificial Imperfections

Yet, many textures feel a bit off, a little too clean. Even the various loading screens seem like a straight-up resolution boosted version of what we had before, with never seen before extra detail that feels a bit too precise of a 1:1 recreation. Well, I think I have the easy explanation: the game seems to have used AI extensively on the game’s many textures. While a lot of details are obviously refined by artists themselves, there’s a staggering amount of parts that have that distinct “AI style” to them, with various examples where it’s painfully and annoyingly evident even. One may not necessarily hate the use of artificial intelligence in this context per se, but then you find instances where an original texture had some artifacts caused by the low resolution, with these artifacts “cleanly” recreated in the new texture as well. The clearest example is the underground segment in the Aldwych level of Tomb Raider 3, where the signs on the wall with the name of the tube stop show some white lines that make no sense whatsoever in context. They only do when compared to blurry low-res original version where, due to the compression, it looks like there’s lines there. In the very same area, we can find a dark little opening on the wall, with a barely visible texture in the back that should presumably be a barred up window. Well, it’s too dark to tell, so now the game has a literal black square instead of it – I guess even the AI failed to understand what the hell that was. These texture mishaps stand out a lot, especially because the levels’ lightning system is often very wrong: with dark tunnels, caves, corridors, etc. having a lot more light coming out of nowhere compared to the original game. Whereas in these areas the player was pretty much forced to use a flair or the light of the gunshots to progress, here these spots are just brighter to a point that they change the gameplay and atmosphere alike. Again, this feels like something a rushed, semi-automated system would do, instead of artists who are trying to recreate the magic of the classics. To the title’s defense, the daylight areas look generally fine, with the textures of vegetation, desert, rocks, etc. feeling in line with the expectations.

Indeed, other than these graphical updates, not a lot else was done to the game either. Studios like Nightdive absolutely spoiled us with certain game remakes lately, restoring cut content, adding new gameplay and accessibility options, a billion graphics settings and a lot more. Aspyr’s title takes a much more minimalistic approach, only restoring the 3 games’ original levels and the shortly after released bonus missions. Aside from the two different graphics modes and control methods and a few barely noticeable gameplay tweaks (such as an optional exclamation mark appearing over interactive objects such as switches and collectibles), not much else has been done. No in-development material to consult, no in-game guides, no flashback or replay systems, no chance to tweak individual graphics settings like the field of view or camera distance, no new levels in either game, and so on. The games are restored with very little ambition or desire to expand or improve the experience, aside from the visual flair and some control changes. And while recreating the 3 games on a 1:1 basis is a great idea, it’s also true that some of the games’ elements haven’t aged that gracefully – namely the combat model, some of the sadistic level designs in Tomb Raider 3 or the somewhat jankier action sequences of 2. By reproposing them to the player without any tweak whatsoever, players can play a rather faithful version of the classics, while also having to put up with some of their less impressive aspects.

Still quite the classics

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 drastically alter the atmosphere – often for the worse. There’s also no real new content or updates, making it feel like we’re playing a slightly modded version of the originals. Which, for a Tomb Raider aficionado like me, is absolutely fine – these games still hold up for the most part, even though some of the action-packed sequences and convoluted puzzles of 2 and 3 are a bit over the top. At the same time, there’s been plenty of more ambitious and content-packed remasters lately – take for example Quake 2, which received a whole new campaign, features cut content, tons of in-development documents, brand new gameplay and accessibility features and so on. Aspyr’s remasters of these classic Lara Croft adventures play it safer and don’t really add much to the overall experience, but still a bloody fun time for those who want to revisit these awesome classics – even with their flaws.