Review: Tomb Raider 4-6 Remastered (Xbox)

A year ago to the day, Crystal Dynamics and Aspyr launched what felt like a bit of a no-brainer in Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered – a modern Xbox collection containing some of gaming’s most iconic adventures. One year later, they’ve returned with the next phase of the Lara Croft saga, and whilst Tomb Raider 4-6 Remastered doesn’t contain quite as many iconic experiences as last year’s collection, the addition of a higher frame rate option makes this bundle worth adding to your gaming library – especially if you enjoy an old school Lara Croft romp like I do.

Before delving into that though, here’s exactly what you get with this latest Tomb Raider collection. Making their debuts on Xbox platforms, this bundle contains Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider: Chronicles and Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. The first two titles here are rooted in the PS1 era, while The Angel of Darkness marked the series’ PS2 debut – before the IP was passed from the OG devs at Core Design to current franchise custodians Crystal Dynamics.

Just by nature of this year’s collection containing those three titles, it is a bit of a drop-off from last year’s effort, particularly in terms of the source material. The Last Revelation has always been one of my favourite Tomb Raider titles of that era, and it certainly stands out in this collection as having the strongest foundations. Its broader focus on actual tomb raiding amongst some impressive Egyptian ruins makes it feel like a classic Lara Croft experience, and my opinion on it being the best of this bunch hasn’t changed – more than two decades later.

As for Chronicles and The Angel of Darkness, well, let’s say they’re slightly more experimental in their approach, although that revelation is nothing new. Chronicles plays out as a series of flashbacks to the early days of Lara’s tomb raider adventuring and feels somewhat unoriginal as a result, and while The Angel of Darkness is certainly more unique, it makes some strange design choices that don’t really push the series forward. Tomb Raider’s PS2-era debut feels like it’s stuck between two generations, and its messy controls and dodgy camera angles are only slightly helped by Aspyr’s remastering efforts.

Let’s talk about those remastering efforts, shall we? Well, the two PS1-based titles here are looking very similar to how the OG trilogy was presented in last year’s collection. You get that convenient graphics toggle à la Halo: The Master Chief Collection (letting you switch between classic and modern graphics), and the newer visual style aims to retain the personality of the originals while making their presentation look less flat and more lifelike. On the whole, I think Aspyr has done a pretty good job within this remit – The Last Revelation’s tomb architecture in particular looks really nice with a 2025 lick of paint.

However, there’s a very, very welcome bonus tucked into this year’s remastering efforts. Coming off the back of my 2024 review of Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered, one of my biggest complaints was a 30FPS-only restriction when playing the games in their ‘classic’ graphics mode. It made sticking to the original visuals feel even more dated, and was incredibly jarring when switching back and forth from the modern visuals at 60FPS. In this new collection though, Aspyr has added a ‘Retro FPS’ toggle – and when that’s switched to ‘Off’ (yes off, not on), the older visuals run at 60 frames per-second as well. For those of us that are clawing away at the chance to revisit our tomb raiding childhoods at more modern performance levels (me), this almost makes the collection worth owning outright in my opinion, even if the source material comes from a bit of a strange era for the franchise.

Speaking of strange eras, the remastering behind Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness is perhaps fittingly more barebones. Where the PS1-era games get impressive visual bumps if nothing cutting edge by modern standards, AoD looks and feels hardly any different to the original. The PS2 era started to move to higher frame rates anyway, so that bonus FPS point up above feels less poignant for this title, and the visuals here have been slightly cleaned up as opposed to fully overhauled. In fact, hit that snappy graphics toggle and you’ll see hardly any difference between the original code and the game’s modern visual presentation. That’s not too much of a miss though, given you’ll probably want to spend most of your time here with The Last Revelation and Chronicles.

Before I wrap things up, I did encounter one or two issues with the collection at large. Firstly, that same brightness issue from last year’s remasters (that made dim scenes look super dark) plagues this bundle as well – and because it applies to the modern graphics option, I’d actually recommend playing Tomb Raider 4 and 5 with their classic graphics at 60FPS. Lastly, I also encountered a few texture bugs when moving the camera around too quickly, where walls would blip out of existence before popping back into view. I’m not sure if this is just a technical hangover from these games being over 20 years old, but it was quite distracting in any case.

Conclusion
Getting to play more old-school Tomb Raider titles with the option of modern controls and modern visuals is another win from Crystal Dynamics, and I’ve had good fun revisiting these Lara Croft adventures. While The Last Revelation is the only game in here I’d consider a classic, both PS1 era games are still worth playing, especially now that Aspyr has given us the option to run through them with OG visuals at 60FPS. Despite being the newest title in here, The Angel of Darkness has aged the worst, and remains a stark reminder as to why the series moved to a new studio after this release. Tomb Raider 4-6 Remastered’s adventures might not be essential, but they’re worth adding to your library as this era of Lara Croft makes its Xbox debut.