Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered Review

After the successful release of last year’s Tomb Raider I-II-III Remastered package, Aspyr is back this time around with Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered which contains Tomb Raider The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider Chronicles and Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness. First released on the PS1, The Last Revelation brings Lara to Egypt where she accidentally unleashes Egyptian God Set and fulfilling a prophecy. Chronicles has Lara’s friend retell stories of the heroines as she’s presumed dead following the events of The Last Revelation. And finally, in Angel of Darkness, Lara Croft, who’s clearly not dead, is a fugitive on the run after being framed for murder.

The Tomb Raider games are 3D action adventure games, where players as Lara Croft, will run, jump, shoot, walk, shimmy and solve puzzles in exotic locales. The game also has an emphasis on exploration as levels have a handful of hidden treasures hidden through the various areas and more importantly key items to help you progress forward. It is key to progress as nothing is more irritating than reaching a door and having to backtrack to find the key.

The games rely heavily on exploration and using your environments to progress forward. Platforming is, and will always be, a big part of the Tomb Raider franchise. It’s also very iffy and requires pixel perfect movements in order to progress. You’ll climb ladders, ledges, swim underwater; giving players a lot of variety of gameplay mechanics, which one of this series’ strong points.

The game obviously also includes combat. Lara will need to defend herself against dangerous animals and any human looking to impede her progress. The combat does show its age though and it makes you appreciate the benefit of auto-targeting. You can aim and shoot, but without any auto-targeting, if you don’t flail around trying to aim at the incoming threats, you’ll always end up waste bullets.

Aspyr added a few additional perks to make players’ experience (whether it be your first or not) with this trilogy a bit easier. Modern controls are a welcomed addition as it makes exploration a bit easier as opposed to the original schemes. There’s also a nifty save anywhere feature meaning making regular saves, will avoid the pain of constantly backtracking and having to redo the same sequences over and over.

While The Last Revelation and Chronicles follow the normal pattern of the previous entries, Angel of Darkness features a new mechanic for our favorite heroine where Lara can improve her stats. This time around she has a stamina meter; meaning you can’t hang on a ledge forever. The more she performs certain actions, the “tougher” she becomes allowing her to hang on to ledges for longer for example.

Aspyr did a great job with the remastering of these games in terms of visuals. Everything looks brighter and crisper; each environments feels like it’s been given a new lease on life so to speak. The developer also added an easy way to switch between the original and updated visuals; so if you’re looking to replay the original experience, Aspyr wanted to give that option. The camera will work against you more often than not. If you use modern controls, some areas with fixed cameras make it frustrating. On the audio side of things, there’s nothing inherently wrong; although the voice acting shows its age; it sounds emotionless and dry. The soundtracks are pretty barebone; which explains why they are not as revered as the games themselves.

While, they implemented modern controls, it’s not perfect. The games are ass-backwards in the sense that in some more recent games, you walk by default and need to press or hold a button in order to run. Here, it’s the order way around; you need to press X in order to walk. It’s a bit annoying because you have to resort it in order to line yourself up, especially for extremely precise platforming. The other issue is the Action button; in all three games, the Action button works when it wants.

While it does seem to work 100% of the time when it comes to pick up items or opening doors, for other types of activities like grabbing a ledge, it doesn’t work at all. A clear example, in The Last Revelation, I was in a body of water and the tutorial said to press the Action button to grab a ledge and get out. It never worked. I magically got out of the water by pressing the LB button. Also, Angel of Darkness. What a waste of potential. I’m burned out on remakes, but AoD would’ve benefited more from a remake rather a simple remaster.

Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered is a nice nostalgia package for those who grew up with the original Tomb Raider games. Aspyr added a few interesting perks here and there across all three games, especially for Angel of Darkness where they added cut content and improved the story telling; among other perks. While these are more approachable than the previous remastered trilogy, they still show their age. Players with the patience and curious about exploring Lara Croft’s past, Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered is a good option.