Tomb Raider 4–6 Remastered Review: Same Remaster, Worse Games By Gaming Gacor

Gaming Gacor — I’ve never been a big Tomb Raider fan. My intro to the series was the mediocre Alicia Vikander movie, which is hardly a great jumping on point. It did inspire me to try the second game, the original PC version of Tomb Raider 2, but after being thrown into a cave with a hungry tiger, I spent more time as prey than I did exploring old ruins. So I gave up pretty quickly. Tomb Raider was before my time, and the Survivor trilogy designed to bring in newcomers like me was overshadowed by Uncharted. Born too early to explore tombs, born too late to explore tombs.

Then came the remastered trilogy last year, and the stars finally aligned. With built-in Steam Deck support, I was able to laze about on the sofa with Lara Croft. The first game was a brilliant introduction that eased me into the controls, thankfully without a tiger chomping at my ankles, and I found myself enamoured with the platforming that turned every tomb into a giant jigsaw puzzle.

Finally, I was a Tomb Raider fan, so this review comes from someone who wanted to like these games, but had never played them. Will I, looking back with a fresh pair of eyes — and without the sheer anticipation Tomb Raider fans from decades past felt — see Angel of Darkness as the masterpiece it truly is? No, no I will not. It’s still bad.

Angel Of Darkness Is As Bad As People Say

here have been some tweaks to movement, bug fixes, and restored cut content to Angel of Darkness. I don’t know firsthand what the original game was like, but the movement in the remaster feels closer to the last trilogy. It still takes some getting used to the awkward tank controls as you shimmy against ledges to perfectly line a jump, but it’s not noticeably worse (or better) than The Last Revelation and Chronicles. It’s old-school Tomb Raider.

The movement in the remaster feels closer to the last trilogy.

• Well, sort of. It still has a few unique mechanics that make the whole experience fundamentally flawed. The strength meter feels out of place in a platformer and obnoxiously superficial, as you’re forced to crash through a door to get stronger so that you can push a… tiny crate? Lara Croft has fought dinosaurs, come on now. The stealth segments are incredibly simple, and slow the pace down to a crawl. The semi-open world with branching, RPG-style dialogue sees you stumble through unending loading screens so that you can talk to generic NPCs.
• I have a hard time believing cut content or even better movement could’ve ever saved this game — the foundations are shaky at best. That’s plain to see even as a newcomer, and I suspect the nostalgia will wear off quickly for seasoned fans. Its inclusion here makes 4–6 an undeniably worse bundle than the last. Frankly, after playing through a few hours of each game, I can’t fathom why Aspyr didn’t just release The Last Revelation as part of the first collection and call it a quadrilogy.

The Last Revelation Is The Only One I’m Motivated To Play

Tomb Raider 4, AKA The Last Revelation, continues the superb form of the original trilogy (of which it should be considered part), paying homage to the first game in all the ways that matter. It’s less action-oriented, the intricate puzzles are once again satisfying to master, and platforming takes centre stage. There are some slight annoyances, like the tedious rope swings, while the Egyptian setting gets a bit tired after a while, but on the whole, it’s up there with the best and feels right at home with the original trilogy.

I was worried when the game opened with a painfully on-a-rails tutorial that saw Lara Croft’s mentor literally spell out game mechanics in what were the most jarring cutscenes in the series, but once Tomb Raider 4 gets going, it’s a treat. In just a week, while also chipping away at the other two games, I managed to get over halfway through, and I’m desperate to load up my Steam Deck and dive back in as I sit here writing this. It’s the same fervour I felt for the first two games and would’ve been an incredible way to cap off the original story.