I’ve been on a classics kick for the past couple of months. This is largely in part due to games like Dino Crisis coming back, and Nightdive’s excellent remastering of the flawed, but charming adaptation of John Carpenter’s The Thing. So it feels appropriate that Aspyr are continuing their own trend of excellent remasters with probably one of their most exciting projects, the Tomb Raider Collection: IV to VI Remastered Collection, which includes: The Last Revelation, Chronicles, and the infamous Angel of Darkness.

Each game has its own story and characters to meet, however, the gist remains the same throughout all the games. As archaeologist Lara Croft, you will be travelling the world to uncover ancient artefacts with powers. The stories are straightforward and often just simply entertaining, with great characters to meet throughout all three games. Naturally, they all feature the iconic Lara Croft in the lead role.

The Last Revelations and Chronicles are, for the most part, still pretty solid games, with fantastic puzzles and an emphasis on exploration. As before, all games in this collection see a massive visual upgrade, quality-of-life features, and enhanced controls. This makes them much more accessible than before, all without compromising the sometimes unforgiving nature of the games, complete with one-hit kill traps, clunky combat, and an almost complete lack of handholding. Outside of a few cutscenes hinting where to go it often leaves you alone to figure things out. It’s a classic set of games in every sense of the word, and its uncompromising presentation often works to Tomb Raider Collection: IV to VI Remastered‘s strengths.

The new modern control scheme isn’t perfect, and you will still have those awkward moments where the game is battling you for control. Especially in those moments where the camera will switch to a fixed perspective, that feels much more designed for tank controls than it does a modern scheme. It would have been great to have a way to seamlessly switch between modern and tank-style controls to combat this.

 

Angel of Darkness is the highlight of this package, and has an interesting history that is arguably more interesting than the game itself. Being one of the lowest-rated games in the franchise, it was plagued with poor design decisions, bugs, and countless other issues that led to a brief, but possibly necessary, hiatus for the franchise. Remastering this one was a gargantuan task, and the good news is that Aspyr did it justice. Don’t get me wrong, this still isn’t a great game per se, but a lot of work has been done to improve the very core experience.

The majority of my time in this collection was spent in Angel of Darkenss, and I have to admit, I had a somewhat good time with it.  It’s a charming and fun adventure, with plenty of variety and good ideas that just weren’t fully implemented. However, it is also let down by some questionable level design, with Lara’s abilities being a sort of reset after the events of Last Revelation, she has to regain her strength and won’t be able to progress through areas unless you complete some smaller puzzles scattered around. A good idea in theory, but kept grinding the game to a halt.

Angel of Darkness switches out the more traditional tomb raiding experience for a more action-style adventure through Paris. Lara escapes the city streets with chase sequences, as well as a stamina system to make climbing more intense. One of the standouts was replacing a giant traditional tomb with a modern museum level, complete with laser grids and roaming guards that you can sneak by. Angel of Darkness was an incredibly ambitious title that dared to refresh the formula five games in, and given more time originally could have been something so much better. Still, fans of this game (there are some out there) will be pleased to see some restored content.

 

The other games are much more straightforward and faithful remasters of traditional Tomb Raider adventures. These are, for the most part, just as you remembered them, mostly with a fresh coat of paint. As a whole, and much like the previous collection, this is well worth your time and money. Despite some issues, these games are a piece of video game history and Aspyr has done a great job of making them much more accessible, running beautifully on modern hardware without a hitch. It also includes ultrawide support for gameplay, and even a bulk of the in-engine cutscenes, which is a huge treat.

Much like before (and also with the excellent Halo Reach Master Chief Collection) you are able to swap between the lower quality original graphic settings and the new remastered settings on the fly. And as you can tell by these screenshots, there is a massive difference. Both The Last Revelation and Chronicles look like they have been completely remade from the ground up, with fantastic new lighting and textures that really add to the atmosphere and tone of the games. Any time I entered a new area, I would swap between them to compare the difference.

Where The Last Revelation and Chronicles got the bulk of the improvements to the visuals, Angel of Darkness once again lives as the outlier in this collection, where the visual upgrades feel more like a cleanup than a complete overhaul. Regardless, there is still a blatant and quite frankly impressive improvement here. Character models still retain their top-tier design, but look a little more natural, whilst higher resolution textures better showcase graffiti on the streets Paris and cutscenes looks so much cleaner as a result. Aspyr did a great job remastering these games.

 

Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered Collection does exactly what the previous collection did; bundles together a couple of beloved (and one not as much beloved) classics, exactly how they were years ago. With the option to play in much higher fidelity and modernised control schemes, or how it was designed originally. It’s not a perfect collection and these aren’t my favourites in the series, but it’s still nice to have more games being updated, preserved, and accessible. If you’re a long-time fan, or just experiencing the series for the first time, this is well worth your money.

 

Graphics: 7.5 Retaining the original graphics, the new remastered collection adds an entirely new layer to the visual design.	Gameplay: 7.5 Same classic Tomb Raider experience. Not my favourite games in the franchise, but some great ones, regardless.
Sound: 9.0 The same iconic voice acting is still here, completely untouched.	Fun Factor: 8.0 Aspyr have done a great job bringing these games to modern systems without compromising on the original designs.
Final Verdict: 8.0

Tomb Raider Collection: IV – VI Remastered is available now on PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4/5, and Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on PC.

A copy of Tomb Raider Collection: IV – VI Remastered was provided by the publisher.