6 classic Tomb Raider games are 'free' this week, but they do have some glaring issues

2024's Tomb Raider I-III Remastered is now available for free for PS Plus subscribers throughout April – but back in March, I wouldn’t have recommended buying or playing it. On March 12, developer Aspyr released Patch 5, which, in addition to introducing a new ‘Challenge Mode’, also brought a slew of issues.

This included the title music continuously playing when entering a level, wrong sound effects on different enemies, traps not working as they should, and lots more. More concerning was a new company taking charge of this ‘Challenge Mode’ patch, instead of a team of Tomb Raider community members who created this remastered collection, complete with remade textures.

The fan community was in uproar. So much so, Aspyr announced on March 18 an initiative for players to submit issues to be fixed in a future patch. The first one came out on March 31, fixing many issues, but others remain. Fans have gotten in touch with this writer, highlighting how Lara’s braid in photo mode still moves, and the ninja enemies toward the end of Tomb Raider II either throw Tiger heads or nothing instead of daggers.

It’s a disappointing fall from grace for a collection released to huge acclaim in February 2024, thanks to its faithful recreation of the original games, but with photo mode, new textures, and the three expansion packs. But it’s also telling how quickly this first fix was rolled out – perhaps because Tomb Raider I-III Remastered is now available for PS Plus subscribers. Despite a few bugs still present around all six games, here’s why they’re still worth playing.

Back to the Croft

Having written the book on the first two Tomb Raider games, as well as a follow-up coming later this year, which goes up to 2000’s Tomb Raider: Chronicles, I’ve got plenty of experience in playing every one of these games over the past 30 years.

But first, a little history. The first Tomb Raider set a benchmark for how a fully-3D adventure could look and play for a whole new audience. Inspired by the Indiana Jones movies, it became a huge success, leading to the team at Core Design starting work on a sequel just a few weeks after Tomb Raider came out on the PlayStation in November 1996.

The James Bond movies more inspired Tomb Raider II, no doubt with the then-upcoming Tomorrow Never Dies set to come out at the end of 1997, just like Tomb Raider’s sequel. With Croft able to climb, roll in mid-air, and use vehicles like the boat in Venice and the Skidoo in Tibet, it improved upon the first game in various ways.

However, with a deal made for a game in the series to be released on the PlayStation by 2000, the team was instantly under pressure to look at a third entry. Initially planned for the PlayStation 2 as an open-world game set on an island, the higher-ups at Core Design instead put their foot down for a straight-up sequel to be made on the PlayStation 1 for autumn 1998.

A mostly-new team took up the mantle, with those previously involved either leaving Core Design or moving on to work on the underrated Project Eden, which came out on the PlayStation 2 in 2001. Tomb Raider III is known by fans to have the most cut content due to time constraints. A Knife was planned, as well as a drivable boat in the first South Pacific level, and much more. The game was a success, but players began to get bored with the series, despite the title still getting rave reviews from many sites and magazines at the time.

However, before the release of Tomb Raider I-III Remastered, playing these games was difficult, especially the expansions. If you had a PC or a Steam Deck, it was a challenge to get these titles to work using community patches and apps that would make the games work on modern operating systems. But the expansions were even harder, as they weren’t available on any storefront.

For those unaware, three expansions were released between 1998 and 2000 that extended the first three Tomb Raider games in some way, but they were developed by a team at Eidos Interactive, instead of Core Design. Unfinished Business expanded upon the ending of Tomb Raider 1, showing players what happened after Lara slid down at the end of the game. Tomb Raider II: Golden Mask is set some time after the sequel, but with a bizarre yet fun level based on Vegas. Finally, Tomb Raider III: Lost Artefact reveals a fifth meteorite artefact that leads to a showdown with a returning boss.

All of these brought their own challenges with fun traps and different levels to play, but with no new weapons or music. However, you could only play these if you managed to find the original copies in places like a garage sale or in a friend’s Tomb Raider collection.

It’s thanks to Tomb Raider I-III Remastered that you can now play these three expansions, as well as the mainline three games. You’re essentially getting six games in one at no cost if you’re a PS Plus subscriber.

It’s also a win for game preservation and for Tomb Raider as a whole. But this is where Tomb Raider I-III Remastered comes in, for better or worse.

Choosing your Buggy Adventure

Nostalgia is a powerful feeling, especially for games. It can make players remember certain times in their childhood when they first controlled Lara Croft during the PS1 era. But the danger can be when these remasters don’t reflect the original titles, or stray too far from what made the games iconic.

The Challenge Mode patch is a great example of this. Instead of shooting and dodging ninjas in Tomb Raider II’s Dragon’s Lair level, players have to risk it with invisible attacks. Or hearing different sounds that don’t line up with their cherished memories of playing the games in their youth. Or a ‘Challanges’ typo. Or random enemies spawning all in one area, as the above image shows. These bugs can leave a sour taste, and Magic Media, responsible for this new mode, should have known better, as well as Aspyr Media and Crystal Dynamics.

The Tomb Raider community is a passionate group, and they will help as best they can when needed. But they’ll also be brutally honest when it counts, as the series’ subreddit repeatedly shows. At the time of writing, members are highlighting bugs still present in the remaster. With Aspyr confirming that more patches are on their way, it’s hard not to feel that this could have been completely avoided if the original team at Saber Interactive were in charge.

Nevertheless, ‘Challenge Mode Patch 1’ at least resolves some of the biggest issues from before, which avoids corrupting those nostalgic memories of Tomb Raider I-III and the expansions. But there’s still a long way to go before they’re at the standard they were before Patch 5.

Playing these for free if you’re a PS Plus subscriber is a fantastic entry point if you’re new to the series, or if you haven’t played them since the 1990s, but go in with tempered expectations. If you come across something that doesn’t look or sound right, do let them know at the bottom of this linked page.

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