Releasing in February 14th, 2024 - Tomb Raider I-III Remastered is heading to Steam thanks to Aspyr Media. The remasters were announced today for various consoles, with it also appearing for pre-order now on Steam. Time to replay a bit of history!
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Direct Link
From the Steam page:
Discover Lara Croft’s Original Adventures, Lovingly Restored
Play the Original Three Tomb Raider Adventures: For the first time ever, play the complete experience with all expansions and secret levels on modern platforms in this definitive collection.
Included Game Titles
- Tomb Raider I + The Unfinished Business Expansion
- Tomb Raider II + The Gold Mask Expansion
- Tomb Raider III + The Lost Artifact Expansion
Key Features
Solve Ancient Mysteries: Uncover treasures of the ancient world by solving puzzles and unraveling mysteries lost to the ravages of time.
Globe-trotting Adventure: Follow Lara Croft around the world and face off against deadly foes and dangerous myths.
Lovingly Restored: Experience the classics boasting upgraded graphics, with the option to switch to the original polygon look at any time.
While they won't have a Native Linux version, no doubt they will run well in Proton. With full controller support, they could be great games for the Steam Deck too. Nice to see more classic games getting updated properly for modern platforms without completely remaking them.
You can pre-order on Steam. Together they will be £24.99 at release with a 10% discount if you pre-order.
Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: PhlebiacMaybe there's still a chance they will do cross-platform in the end, like they did for Fahrenheit, Total War: Rome, and KOTOR2.That is odd, Aspyr is a porting house... did they shift to an enhancement house?
I guess you missed the other remastered games I listed? They have been doing a little bit of everything for a while now: mobile games, publishing for third parties, remasters, maybe even still the occasional macOS port? I believe Civ6 (and DLC) was their last Linux port.
Quoting: SetaQuoting: pbIn the meanwhile, which one is better, OpenLara of CroftEngine?
Neither.Tomb1Main
In all seriousness, OpenLara's scope includes supporting tons of devices, so outside of TR1 its progress seems rather slow.
CroftEngine looks like pure eye-candy.
So either of those three will work for TR1. I don't see other ports outside of these for the rest, though:
TR2Main
tomb3
TOMB4
TOMB5
One question is, which ones of these work with Luxtorpeda? Luxtorpeda https://luxtorpeda.gitlab.io/ changes the game engine to open native in Steam for example when enabling it from ProtonUp https://flathub.org/apps/net.davidotek.pupgui2
Quoting: clatterfordslimNice to see they have Angelina Jolie's face back as Lara.
I'm sure Jolie was chosen for the role because she looked like the character, but I think five Tomb Raider games had come out before they made the first movie. Did they actually use her face in some sequel?
Quoting: PhlebiacYeah, seems to me they stopped being a porting house, and became a publisher instead. I don't think they've been supporting their Mac Ports as much as they used to either.Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: PhlebiacMaybe there's still a chance they will do cross-platform in the end, like they did for Fahrenheit, Total War: Rome, and KOTOR2.That is odd, Aspyr is a porting house... did they shift to an enhancement house?
I guess you missed the other remastered games I listed? They have been doing a little bit of everything for a while now: mobile games, publishing for third parties, remasters, maybe even still the occasional macOS port? I believe Civ6 (and DLC) was their last Linux port.
Quoting: clatterfordslimNice to see they have Angelina Jolie's face back as Lara. I will be buying these games next year.Ha, there is a story online that Lara was modeled after one of the developers at CORE's sister's. The story said that the dude was pissed that they used her sister in such a way and made her chest huge.
Damned if I can find said article now though... They definitely didn't model it after Angelina Jolie, but she definitely fit the character very well!
Quoting: LoftyQuoting: elmapulQuoting: LoftyEven though i have some of the older Tomb raider games on PC, there's still something charming about playing the originals on PS1 just as i remember them, i guess i just like the retro aesthetic. I might pick these up on a bigger sale eventually, after all you can pretty much remaster a lot of retro games yourself now with Ai texture packs and 4k resolution.i think its not just nostalgia, i often prefer retro graphics even for games i never played, i have a few theories for that:
first blurry textures like on n64 make more sense when we are looking at fiction, i mean if something is low poly it might as well have an blurry texture, even if it dont we can hide the flaws of an texture in the fact that we cant see the full details.
another thing to consider is the abstract aspect of it, such as when you see 3 simbols that form an triangle , despite it not being there:
when we dont have many details our brain fill in the extra details.
not to mention i grew playing nes games among others even older i never saw an problem in playing with abstract forms.
ohh i agree. The more realistic or true to life the graphics become the less imagination i feel you need to piece it back together again. In fact, isn't part of the appeal of video game graphics that they are an abstract or sorts ? Escapism is more likely to be realized from something that makes your mind share the visual workload than it just being presented to you with no effort. For instance, a dream is not a perfect representation of reality but it allows for you to explore sometimes difficult concepts or move into a different space which is different from the everyday 'reality'.
Im not against hyper real graphics, they have a place.
speaking of your blurry N64 textures it reminded me of how older technology was used to assist the graphics such as the 3-point filtering the N64 used in order to make stairs look on some games, so if you emulate with bi-linear filtering it stops the stairs looking like stairs.
other things about older graphics is that there was a kind of comfy cartoony appeal that a modern day game will fail to emulate due to it having incredible sharp textures as a comparison. Or perhaps the use of fog for draw distance that is not needed anymore that actually created an unintentional certain atmosphere to a game, like on Turok for instance.
anyways im rambling now. Basically modern games miss a lot of things that older games did through hardware limitation and so this leaves true retro games having a unique appeal that makes them worth playing today.
You can always put grease on your eyes and enjoy new games, same as those crt filters that make me wanna puke, and my first console was an spectrum then nes, I like pixel looks but just for old games, that thing about pixel art while I'm sure same people things 4k means better graphics, and the rtx marketing well, I don't think is very coherent, but to each his own, just sharing my opinion. 👍
Quoting: salamanderrakeCrystal Dynamics already remastered Tomb Raider I, its called Tomb Raider: Anniversary https://store.steampowered.com/app/8000/Tomb_Raider_Anniversary/Yeah, they simplified a lot of it, and cut some stuff out. I had fun with it, I've beaten Anniversary, I have not completed the original game...
Last edited by Nod on 10 October 2023 at 6:48 am UTC
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