Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered

[Maf]

I have a small soft spot for Angel of Darkness. Me and my friend never got very far because we didn’t understand how to play, but we had a lot of laughs getting stoned and throwing Lara to her death off many, many cliffs 

[one-armed dwarf]

Angel of Darkness is the only 'classic' Tomb Raider I've completed. It has lots of strange issues and seemed to really want to implement every new design trend into itself, like you had this sort of hub world type thing in Paris and Prague which vaguely resembled Deus Ex with NPCs you interact with and dialogue choices. You had a stealth mechanic which becomes redundant after a lot of the France stuff, used in a Louvre section which featured a lot in preview material but hardly used afterwards. You had this pointless RPG stat progression mechanic but the thing to increase it was always so close by and it was only used to gatekeep the next bit of progress, so that it never meant much really. You had lots of strange bugs, like ammo would clone. So you get the tranquiliser gun during part one of the game and you never run out of ammo and can one shot everything. On the guns, you could never even get Laura's dual pistols as they weren't accessible in game despite the cover showing her wielding them, you had to use a gameshark to unlock

 

For nostalgia purposes I recommend that they release the game with all of these bugs intact. Maybe give an option to play a glitch free copy, but bugs for authenticity

 

The storyline was also very noir, they were setting up this mythology and you had a new character and it was supposed to go all these different places in subsequent installments. From what I recall reading Core were kinda sick of Lara at this point and their heart wasn't in doing a new one, so I guess they really tried hard to redefine things with AoD but it didn't get enough time to cook. There were some cool tombs when the game got going, and it wasn't all a pile of shite. It just seemed too raw

[HandsomeDead]

I got Chronicles when it came out but I never finished that one because there was something obtuse about the level design.  I played the heck out of the first three games so I did have a good understanding of how these games are put together but something about the levels felt aimless and wrong.

 

I rented Last Revelation later, the Dreamcast version actually and I really liked it and regretted skipping it. I intended to buy it so I could finish it but I never really got the opportunity.

 

I've never played Angel of Darkness but I'd be up for it, just out of curiosity.

 

So I'd actually be interested to go back to these games and see them all through.  A lot of unfinished business here.

[Maf]

Trailer

 

Wonder if they’ll do anything for the trilogy after this. That’s where I got in to Tomb Raider 

[one-armed dwarf]

I don't think there'd be as much appeal tbh, it's sort of the perfect point to re-release the Core Design era of games cause they've hit that nostalgia sweet spot with them, I think. Early 3D era is in, like how 16bit was in a while back. Albeit AOD isn't early 3D, but the footage of it in that trailer doesn't look that changed to me anyway. Notably the only one that doesn't have a screen-wipe showing before and after, maybe not much to see

 

The in-between Crystal Dynamics stuff doesn't even look that different to this trailer. Here's a playthrough of Legend

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Maf]

I suppose. But I think it would be cool to have those games available on newer consoles with better performance. Even if it isn’t the graphics overhaul like these remasters.

 

Do they change the controls in these remasters? Because I tried playing TR4 on PC last year and it reminded me why I never liked those games in the beginning 

[Maryokutai]

That's really cool and they're going to release it on the exact same day as they did the first collection (Valentine's day, 'coincidentally' also Lara's birthday).

 

I also have a soft spot for AOD but I actually did play it normally. It's famously unfinished and even by today's standards of some glitchy and buggy releases it would absolutely stand out. So this is a great opportunity to iron out any leftover issues it still has to this day (on PC at least, I think the PS2 version was better, but I never played that one). It still has some weird ideas that aren't really fully explored, like dwarf says, but fundamentally it's a solid game I think that never got a chance because it released in such a horrible state. I also think it does kind of look like the PC version in this trailer but that might just be memory playing tricks on me. I never actually played Last Revelation and Chronicles so that will be two firsts. Also crossing my fingers that they release the physical version alongside the digital one this time.

 

As for Legend and its sequels, I wouldn't be against those, but it would be a bit of an odd situation because they retroactively integrated the Remake of TR1 (Anniversary) into the chronology of that trilogy, so you'd have basically three different versions of that game throughout these remasters. On the other hand, Underworld was also rather undercooked, though not quite as severely as AOD, so that would be another good one to revisit and polish a bit. Though I expect if those do follow there won't be any before/after switch because they'd be more simple ports (higher resolution + framerate).