Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered - PlayStation/Xbox/PC/Steam Deck/Switch - Digital Foundry Tech Review

The original trilogy has returned! Revisit Lara Croft's origins with developer Aspyr's carefully measured remasters, which offer a combination of OG visuals along with brand new visuals, hot-swappable with the press of a button. John Linneman returns to the roots of the original games, checking them out on various retro systems and seeing how they compare to Aspyr's new versions. Meanwhile, there's commentary on the games themselves and the efforts to modernise elements like the tank controls.

00:00 - Introduction
01:35 - Tomb Raider's active community
02:30 - The Remastered Version Arrives
03:28 - Texture Upgrades
05:45 - There's More Than Just Textures!
07:12 - Lighting Upgrades
08:13 - Comparison to the Originals
11:41 - Remastered Console Comparisons
13:09 - What's up with the Classic Performance?
14:34 - There's an issue with the PC Version - Solve it Here!
16:47 - It Runs Great on Steam Deck
17:32 - How Does it Hold up Today?

[kyos]

When the original Tomb Raider released, my friend and I didn’t have a memory card. We couldn’t save our progress, so we would restart from the beginning every day. We got so good at the first 2-8hrs of the game.

[danielwareking]

The ability to flip back and forth between the original visuals and the remastered visuals is a nice addition that I wish more of these remasters would do.

[secondsrule]

It’s astounding how this remastered version looks like I remember the original games - it only shows how your brain can fill in the missing details and why most modern games look and feel exactly the same as each other. I miss the old times in gaming so much.

[Saladin-gcpy]

I'm always relieved when games I want to see an analysis of are analyzed by John. You can feel his passion for the medium in every video and he always points out little details that I wouldn't normally think about, but definitely impact the overall experience. Keep up the great work, John.

[darkx]

Dang it, got a couple labels wrong. Wish we could upload a new version in place. At least it’s extremely obvious! Sorry about that. 😢

[LucasPatricio]

“We dive into the world of Tomb Raider” follow by an ingame dive. That’s cinema!

[angrymikko]

I’m the weirdo who’s nostalgic for the jittery look of ps1 era. Great video never thought I’d be interested in this collection but the way you spoke about the old game design when it comes to platform jumping and exploration made me want to play this.

[CristianLopez-xirt]

11:26 Tomb Raider Classic Mode looks like Tomb Raider PS1 Emulated and enhanced to 4K, Disabled Dithering, and removal of banding. Love it, Great Job!

[grahamt]

The sense of isolation is what sold these games for me. I always felt I was actually deep underground or in a tomb somewhere far from civilization. Modern versions just don't get it.

[Uralth]

4:10 Original and Remastered graphics seem to be swapped.

[liublanka]

I think we will never forgot when we first played tomb raider. Before all the tomb raider mania. Really felt like the ps1 showed why it was next gen.

[xenofalcon]

This is a slap in the face for the metal gear collection.

[gameovercharly]

Tomb Raider 1 was indeed the reason why I bought a PS1 in 1996 back in the days, when I was 16! I was too poor to even afford a memory card, so I used to play non-stop without being able to save. We experienced frequent power outages, which meant I had to restart the game all over again. Those were truly the best days of my childhood! 😊🎮

[techsamurai]

Holy Cr*p - it's been 6 years since the last Tomb Raider? That's wild. Hard to believe we haven't seen an Uncharted title either in that span.

[bs_blackscout]

Rockstar should use this as a case study on how to remaster old titles. Great stuff!

[Silvergun_Raven]

First played Tomb Raider when I got my PlayStation for Christmas in 1997 and it was a hell of a great time! Ended up getting II and III afterwards and had many great memories! So excited to revisit them with this remastered collection!

[vincentvoillot]

The main menu music slap me 25 years back. This was an era of wonders filled with powerful runes such as 3DFX, Trinitron, MMX printed only on the most costly builds.

[ReelFilm]

I remember getting this game on the PS1 just after its release. I couldn’t afford to buy it alone, being just a simple paperboy. But my pal, also a paperboy, went halves with me. We were blown away with the game.

[Cacapouletpipichocolat]

Happy to see Aspyr did a good job with these classics. Bought on Steam deck and looking forward to going back to these childhood memories.

[IronHorse]

I'm glad that they didn't just increase view distance to infinity and kept a bit of a fog effect in some of the levels. While the black fog was present pretty much purely due to a technical limitation, I feel like in some levels it did have a side effect of adding some atmosphere to exploring, you had to move forward to see what was ahead, you couldn't always see into the next room. It added a little bit of mystery when you were trying to reach an open archway or something but couldn't get a proper good look at what was past it until you got there.
It seems like they did go a long way to preserving the atmosphere of the original games, which was my biggest concern and I'm glad it doesn't appear to be just a soulless lazy AI upscale like the GTA "remasters" were.