Aspyr’s remasters of Tomb Raiders 1-3 had been nicely acquired after they launched final 12 months, giving Core Design’s foundational 3D action-adventures a graphical spit ‘n’ polish and a modernised suite of controls. However for the upcoming remaster of Tomb Raiders 4-6, Aspyr goes additional, bringing again a number of options that had been lower from the ultimate sport in that trilogy: Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.
Revealed in a weblog put up on the Tomb Raider web site (by way of Eurogamer) These restorations cowl a number of totally different areas of the sport. For starters, Aspyr’s remaster restores a weapon wielded by Kurtis Trent, the second playable character in The Angel of Darkness. Named the Chirugai, this can be a melee weapon that resembles the Glaive in middling eighties sci-fi movie Krull, a steel disc with blades protruding the circumference.
Alongside this new(ish) toy, the remaster empowers Kurtis with the flexibility to “mission a psychic defend round his physique” and permits him to “dash like Lara and shoot round corners whereas in stealth mode.” These latter modifications seem like Asypr’s personal additions moderately than restored content material, aimed toward making Kurtis extra helpful and enjoyable. They appear like smart tweaks, although I query Aspyr’s characterisation of Kurtis as having “immense untapped potential”.
In addition to a lower weapon, Aspyr’s remaster introduces an space of the sport chopped previous to launch. That is an “unfinished coaching space” that was speculated to be positioned within the Parisian Again Streets stage, designed to show the commando crawl capability. This has been reinstated within the remaster, with Aspyr including that gamers can “select whether or not they wish to take this route or the one from the unique sport.”
Different restored content material contains unused voice traces for each Lara and Kurtis, an up to date model of Werner Von Croy’s pocket book, and a number of other stock objects. Furthermore, whereas not strictly a restoration, two in-game shops, Rennes’ pawnshop and the herbalist, have been reworked to be really helpful, promoting objects like a silencer and laser sight that gamers should purchase by gathering Euros.
For those who by no means performed The Angel of Darkness, and are interested by why Aspyr is displaying it this additional love, it is as a result of the sport was an notorious stinker when it slopped onto PCs again in 2003. Richard Cobbett wrote at size concerning the sport’s many failings, describing it as “arguably one of many worst sequels ever” in his Crapshoot column. “Even when The Angel of Darkness had been launched in its supposed state, as a substitute of the buggy, half-finished mess that was ultimately thrown on the cabinets, it will have been terrible. Because it was, it was each terrible and barely playable—as if Core had by no means performed Tomb Raider, by no means thoughts created it.”
Hopefully, Aspyr can go some option to fixing the “barely playable” half. These restorations actually appear geared towards making The Angel of Darkness much less damaged. However its flaws ran far deeper than iffy controls and lacking options, and given Aspyr’s replace is a remaster moderately than a remake, I would not anticipate a miracle when Tomb Raider 4-6 Remastered launched on February 14.
