Tomb Raider I-III remake, starring Lara Croft Not the neatest video game title, but at least it does let you know what you’re getting. Launching in early 2024, it collects the original Tomb Raider trilogy (developed by Core Design and released annually between 1996-98) but polishes all the corner polygons in favor of fresh graphics. Lara Croft won’t look as realistic as she did in the recent Survivor trilogy, but her appearance will be more in line with modern mobile games and spin-off games that still follow her original character design while looking a little less realistic. … shocking to the current generation.
You can still easily play the ’90s originals on PC via Steam or GOG, but this remake has a lot of appeal, even aside from the fact that these games will be coming to current- and last-generation consoles. first. For example, there will be quality of life improvements like camera locking. Even if you were good at these games before, it would be nice if you could choose to play them again without having to forget the two decades or so of muscle memory you’ve developed since tank controls stopped being the norm.
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To be honest, I’m here for the nostalgia hit. Core Design’s original Tomb Raider was the first video game I ever played that wasn’t just for kids, and their impact on me as a little girl in the ’90s cannot be overstated.
Now, what I really mean is this next part: Lara Croft is an iconic female video game protagonist—a violent, imperialist Byronic hero from the A time when women were rarely allowed. any That kind of hero – that’s very important to me. But it’s also entirely incidental that I’m excited about this particular re-release. What really excites me is that Tomb Raider II and Tomb Raider III remain some of my favorite games of all time – not because of Lara Croft, but because of the unparalleled level design that forced me to play them all over again Playing through my favorite parts of these games over and over again. Over and over again as a child.
I learned about Croft Manor from the tutorial sandbox of the original trilogy as much as I knew my own childhood home. I spent hours of my teenage years in front of the family computer mastering the trickiest, most dangerous snowmobile jumps and learning how to dodge every last-second hidden trap in a tribal village. I was happy to pull off that perfect swan dive, but at the same time, I also threw myself into that piranha-filled river just to watch one of the best death animations in the series more times than I can count. Unclear.
The thing is, I’m now in my 30s, and like many childhood joys, it’s hard to justify going back to the original Tomb Raider trilogy at this point in my life. There are plenty of other things to do and, unfortunately, even non-video game related responsibilities to take care of. There is a very real, very sad chance that I will never revisit these games in person.
But, happy days, this remaster provides the perfect excuse to include these classics in my catalog of new game releases for next year. To be honest, I think the series’ new publisher, Aspyr, is a little shrewd here. The game’s February 14th release date is in-universely significant because, as anyone really knows, that’s Lara Croft’s birthday. (According to the original timeline, she would have turned 55 in 2024, having been born on Valentine’s Day in 1969, though Crystal Dynamics may have pushed that back a bit in the recent reboot.)
But story appeal aside, a mid-February release is pretty smart if you ask me. By then, the after-effects of the holidays have virtually faded, but many people will still feel the financial after-effects, which doesn’t help if you live in the northern hemisphere, where the cold and darkness of winter pushes up regular household expenses. . Most big games won’t launch during this period unless they have the cocky confidence of a GOTY shoe like Elden Ring; this means that more modest offerings like indie games and remasters are more likely to appeal to those Attention of people who want to be entertained on a budget.
In fact, Tomb Raider I-III Remastered is priced at £25/$30 on all platforms except the Nintendo Switch in the UK, where it’s £27 for some reason. If you are British, the price in the UK will be higher. . There’s currently a 10% pre-order discount on all platforms, bringing the price down to £22.50/$27 (£24.50 on Switch in the UK). An additional 20% discount is available for PC players who own the original game via Steam or GOG and choose to purchase the remastered trilogy from the same store.
All this amounts to 60 hours of some of the best action-adventure games ever made for well under half the cost of modern AAA games. And, as a connoisseur of classic game re-releases, I can confirm that this is significantly less than what you’d pay for trilogy remasters from recent decades.
Additionally, rumors suggest that buying the latest Tomb Raider game in the 1990s cost around £30 to £35, and accounting for inflation, each game will cost around £60 by 2023. In fact, the ’90s are officially back in style, and “retro” may have marked the beginning of my first midlife crisis. But there’s at least a glimmer of hope in that I can replay some of my favorite childhood games on a modern gaming system of my choice for six times less than the retro price.
“Tomb Raider I-III Remastered” will be released on February 14, 2024 on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch.
