Tomb Raider I-III Remastered PC Review

The first three Tomb Raider games are highly beloved games in the gaming community that’s created  an equally beloved franchise. Said franchise has now seen numerous sequels, spinoffs, and media adaptations. Now, Crystal Dynamics and Aspyr have remastered the first three games which date back to the nineties and sport outdated mechanics and graphics to reintroduce them to modern audiences. 

A Legacy Retold

Tomb Raider I sees Lara Croft, an adventuring archaeologist, go on a quest to uncover an ancient mysterious artifact called the Scion, buried in the tomb of Qualopec within the mountains of Peru. The story takes Lara across several locations as she navigates through perilous environments, battles wildlife, and enemies, finds hidden secrets, and solves intricate puzzles. Players explore several tombs, which are surprisingly intricately crafted even by today’s standards. The game’s emphasis on exploration and discovery and its creative 3D environments are why the title is still highly respected today.

In Tomb Raider II, Lara Croft embarks on a quest to recover the mythical Dagger of Xian, an artifact said to possess the power to turn its wielder into a dragon. The journey takes Lara across various exotic locations, including the Great Wall of China, Venice, and Tibet, as she battles rival treasure hunters and ancient guardians to uncover the dagger’s secrets.

The sequel builds upon the successful formula of its predecessor, offering players complex puzzles, intense action sequences, and a diverse range of locations to explore, each with unique challenges and hazards, from underwater caverns to snowy mountain peaks. The game also introduces new weapons, ammo, enemies, and more, making it a much more expanded and unique version of the first game.

In Tomb Raider III, Lara Croft goes on a worldwide adventure to recover mysterious artifacts that could spell doom to humanity. The quest takes her across various exotic locales, including the jungles of India, the streets of London, and the deserts of Nevada, as she uncovers the mysteries surrounding the ancient artifacts and battles against a new foe.

The overall gameplay in III does not change significantly from the previous title, but it allows players to choose their own path through multiple interconnected levels. Each level is filled with challenging puzzles, hidden secrets, and dangerous enemies, resulting in a diverse and engaging gameplay experience.

Upon starting the first game in the collection, you can instantly tell how much has changed in the remastered version. The remaster now gives players enhanced lighting both in and out of tombs, more dynamic colors, better reflections, and more detailed 3D models. The remasters also add a cool new feature that lets players switch between the old and remastered look, on the fly, with a single push of a button. This new inclusion helps players compare the new and old looks and allows returning players to stick to the old look while playing on new systems if they choose to.

Changes and Updates

This version also includes critical quality-of-life updates. This includes more stable frame rates and the all-new Modern control scheme, which lets players move more freely in whichever direction with the analog sticks. These settings are also all adjustable with button mapping and sensitivity control.

Unfortunately, hours into the games, you will likely realize that these new features don’t always work as intended. Throughout the game, players will find that they’ll have to traverse through narrow halls and tight spaces, which can be a nightmare due to the shaky, unreliable camera. Trying to turn corners or leap from ledge to ledge can feel like pulling teeth if they are too close together. Moreover, the game can be incomprehensibly stiff and loose in the most awkward moments. 

One of these moments is trying to get on the dreaded zip lines, which are a nightmare to get on as you have to be right in front of them and as close to them as possible, or you won’t be able to latch on to them. As such, if you aren’t already a seasoned player, you could spend hours trying to get onto zip lines, most likely falling to your death many times in the process. Additionally, no amount of adjusting the sensitivity helped with this, as increasing or decreasing it only seemed to have made the whole ordeal take longer.

The Blatant Issues

Another odd thing the remaster excludes but really needs is a tutorial mode or at the very least, on-screen instructions. What makes this especially egregious is that the game starts you with the outdated Tank controls, which utilize directional buttons to move Lara forward and backward. And if you’ve never played the original games, you might be very confused. One of the only two ways of learning the game’s controls is by heading to the menu, swapping it to Modern settings, and then checking what they are by navigating to the button mapping option. 

The other much simpler way is to head to Lara’s home in the first game (which the game doesn’t tell you to do, by the way) and play the actual tutorial. Even then, it won’t tell you the actual buttons for Jumping, shooting, rolling, and more.

However, it’s not all bad, as each entry improves on the last with slight new additions to gameplay. For example, In Tomb Raider I, players have to run up to a ledge, jump, and then hold a button to grab onto it in order to climb it. In subsequent games, however, players only need to jump up, and Lara will automatically grab the ledge, which is great. Tomb Raider III also adds crawling into the game, which lets players crawl through narrow spaces and adds more variety to gameplay.

Besides that, the remaster comes included with the DLCs attached to each game. The DLCs are less narrative-focused and shorter but feature much longer levels, new secrets, puzzles, and more. Additionally, because of the way each level is structured, players can traverse levels with many options. All these make the DLCs more challenging and fun to play.

Final Thoughts 

Performance-wise the game runs smoothly on PC. While I faced some frame rate issues now and then, they’ve since been patched out with updates. Additionally, the PC version offers a lot more customisation options than in other versions making it one of the best platforms to play the bundle on. Overall, Tomb Raider I-III Remastered has several issues that cant be ignored but still offers a great nostalgic experience that both series lovers and new players can enjoy thanks to its well crafted features.