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Growing up, one series of games that I had always wanted to play were the original Tomb Raider games. For one reason or another, these titles seemed out of reach. Granted, they did come out when I was much younger, and the only way for me to play T or M-rated games was by playing them via their inclusion on a demo disc.
Luckily for myself and many other women who missed out on playing these back in the day, the original three Tomb Raider games have been brought back to life through Aspyr’s latest release, Tomb Raider I-III Remastered. It’s the first three games that started it all, but with better visuals and controls to bring them to a modern gaming landscape. And they’re exactly what I wanted to see released in 2024.
Gameplay
The coolest part about this new remastered collection of Tomb Raider is the fact that it pays so much love back to them. In this collection, players are able to play the games either with their original tank controls or with a modern suite of controls to make things feel a bit more fluid. Honestly, bouncing between the two was quite a night-and-day scenario.
The new controls are definitely the best choice, but I preferred the way the tank controls felt when it came to how Lara could maneuver against enemies. It’s certainly something players are going to have to play around with, and luckily, buttons are re-mappable as well.
Another big part of this remaster is the inclusion of all of the expansions that players had gotten way back when. It offers players even more incentive to pick this collection up and play these beautiful classics again. Aspyr really went the distance on this remaster, and it sets a pretty big expectation for them going forward, especially with just how well this game runs.
Graphics
A favorite feature of mine in this remastered collection is the fact that you can swap between the original more jagged graphics and the new polished visuals. It’s kind of crazy to see the differences between the two and how far things have come since these games were originally released.
To be completely honest though, the newer visuals aren’t all that amazing by today’s standards though. But in defense of the dev team, this is a remaster and not a remake. So honestly, these look pretty amazing comparing them to what the originals looked like. Hard to imagine that we all used to think those visuals were realistic back then. Yikes.
Conclusion
If you’re a fan of adventure games, the old Lara Croft adventures, or are just interested in PlayStation classics, then you have to get Tomb Raider I-III Remastered. I personally have been playing it on the Nintendo Switch, because I think that’s where it fits perfectly. The visuals look clean and it runs extremely well. But no matter the platform you play it on, you can’t go wrong with Lara Croft.
