The Tomb Raider series has now sold more than 100 million copies over its three decade history, so three more Lara Croft adventures are getting a much-deserved, and much-needed, glow-up.
This year, series stewards Crystal Dynamics and remasterers Aspyr Media updated Tomb Raider 1-3 with modern sensibilities. The pair are now giving more Lara Croft games the same treatment with Tomb Raider 4-6 Remastered, which repackages the late PS1 games The Last Revelation and Chronicles, together with the series' first PS2 outing Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.
The remastered pack gives each game a nice visual overhaul to beautify characters, environments, spiky traps, and ancient artefacts - the trailer below even boasts of some really nice looking shadow work. It also includes my favorite feature from the first set of remasters: the ability to toggle between the new and old graphics on-the-fly.
Updated modern controls, classic tank controls, a photo mode, quality-of-life features, and achievement support should make this the ideal way to play through the early noughties adventures when Tomb Raider 4-6 Remastered comes to PC, Xbox, PS5, PS4, and Nintendo Switch next Valentine's Day, February 14, 2025, for $29.99.
Tomb Raider 4-6 Remastered is somehow more and less exciting than the first batch, especially because it includes arguably the worst game in the series. 2003's Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness is currently the worst-reviewed game in the entire series, according to Metacritic's aggregate score, and Chronicles doesn't fall too far behind.
I suppose problematic games are more worth revisiting than already-good ones, though. Angel of Darkness came under fire at the time for its wonky controls and awkward level layouts that made simply navigating a chore, along with some questionable stealth sections, so we'll see how they play once the remasters come out next Valentine's Day.
Regardless, confirmation that Lara's second trilogy is being revisited opens the door to further remasters in the future, too. (Fingers crossed for modern ports of Legends, Anniversary, and Underworld.)
