There’s no doubt that sometimes the thrill of playing a game from your past, whether in the form of a remaster or just a straight-up port, can be wonderful. It seems that publishers have absolutely discovered this in the past generation, with loads of titles from just about every generation getting some sort of glow-up treatment or being included in some collection. Of course, depending on the game and the specific generation they came from, modern reintroductions can vary wildly in how well they’ve held up, with those from the early polygon-based eras tending to fare the most poorly.

Knowing this, the remasters of the Tomb Raider series have been a mixed proposition at best. While it seems most fans of the franchise have a particular love for the earlier titles, with the remasters of the first 3 games feeling at least somewhat well-received, I’d seen less sparkling things said about the latter 3, which are a part of this collection. For the record, since outside of the rebooted version from the last generation I’ve never been much of a fan, I’ll at least say that for me while I enjoyed the first 3 a bit better than these, I’ll also acknowledge that playing them so close together gave me a serious sense of Croft Fatigue. 

If you were a true fan, and have fond memories though, you may absolutely get something out of this collection. If you somehow still don’t mind the tank-style controls (which I hate with a passion, whether in this or the original Resident Evil titles), you’ll be happy to know they’re still intact. If you’re not a fan though, and were hoping for some more sensible modern controls, you’re in luck… but only sort of. While I applaud the inclusion of modern controls in principle, I’ll absolutely say that in overall execution they’re a pretty sore spot for me. While I can forgive the scripted instructions still applying only to the original scheme, the utter lack of any help at all explaining them for the modern ones early on is pretty hard to forgive. Worse, at a later point, when I was trying to swing on a rope, they did then have on-screen help displaying which buttons to use. That makes it a shame that when I wasted a fair amount of the time out of the gate simply trying to understand what button to use to grab a ledge (which I question there needing to be a different button for in the first place anyway) no such help was available. This lack of support completely undermines the whole point of having modern controls in the first place, sadly, for people who could just decide to give up before they’ve even gotten started.

If you’re a fan of the series, and would love to revisit earlier times, there may absolutely still be some appeal to this package, as it manages to give the classic titles a bit of a visual tune-up which is nice. If you don’t mind the cumbersome original controls, or are willing to take the time to get up to speed with the modern ones, there’s still plenty of gameplay here to be enjoyed. That said, there have been numerous titles since those days that have taken the action and exploration ball and run with it far better, including this series' own reboot trilogy which are better by a few orders of magnitude. Still, from a preservationist standpoint it’s nice to see an opportunity for a new generation to have a chance to get to know the series as it was originally, as well as for the sake of those who have remained fans over the years and have been looking forward to a reunion with it.