There hasn’t been as much talk about Tomb Raider 4-6 Remastered as there was about Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered, and that makes sense for a lot of reasons. Doing it first is always more of a novelty than doing it again, as the most obvious and memorable collection. But also, the first three games are a cohesive trilogy, while 4-6 are not. This is something that a lot of hardcore fans were happy to overlook just to get more Tomb Raider, but with general audiences, that reality has bitten.
Tomb Raider 4 (AKA The Last Revelation) is really a continuation of the trilogy, and those four games together form a complete experience. It’s by far the best game in the collection, and the most deserving of a new lease of life that last year’s remakes offered the original trilogy. If you weren’t dividing Tomb Raider up into trilogies for marketing, you’d really have the first four together. TR5, Chronicles, is a flashback game built around the original quartet, and is part of it without feeling part of it – kind of like a clip show in a sitcom. And Tomb Raider 6, well…
The New Tomb Raider Trilogy Is Not A Trilogy
Angel of Darkness most obviously did not fit this collection. It was a reboot aimed at shifting away from the same old Tomb Raider we’d seen before, and because that reboot failed critically and commercially, it went nowhere. The Legend Trilogy (also containing Anniversary and Underworld) was a more successful reboot, modernising Tomb Raider’s controls and scope while keeping the old vibes – Anniversary is even a remake of the original game.
So there’s the lack of cohesion both with the recent 1-3 Remaster and between the games themselves, but there’s also a matter of quality. Personal taste will be a factor, but most fans would say in their hearts that only TR4 can keep up with the first three games. Even then, it’s probably fourth in line. But I’m not here to bash Tomb Raider, mainly because any criticism, no matter how deserved, tends to send the game-starved fans into a frenzy despite my thoughts being aligned with theirs that what we really, really need is an actual new Tomb Raider made well in the spirit of the classics. Instead, I want to discuss Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness.
The sixth game in the series is the odd one out. There is no other game even remotely like it, and it is not canonically connected to any other games either. And yet, there was no doubt that Angel of Darkness had to be part of these modern day glow-ups when the project was announced. To suggest otherwise drew ire from the gallery. Angel of Darkness does not fit anywhere, except in the hearts of die hard Tomb Raider fans. That is an enviable place to be, and one only Rise of the Tomb Raider from the Survivor Trilogy can claim to have staked a serious claim to.
Angel Of The Darkness Is A Special Game
There’s a magic in Angel of Darkness. Some of it is simply nostalgia, and there is nothing much to be learned from that. Despite obvious evidence that the controls are ill-suited, the storyline is tired, and the clash of identity is so apparent it wrote the rulebook on What Not To Do In A Tomb Raider Game, people love it. And there is a lesson to learn from that.
Angel of Darkness was the coolest Lara ever looked. Even the game’s biggest detractors would not argue that the leather pants and sunglasses in bloodsoaked Paris wasn’t a vibe. But it’s not just a case of transplanting that look into a new Tomb Raider game. Lara was spiky then, badass and brave. She was closer to heroines like Buffy or Trinity, also often seen sporting leather, than she was to the tender-hearted explorer we’ve seen her become recently.
If there is one thing to take away from Angel of Darkness’ continued popularity despite all of its faults, it’s that something in the game’s overall aesthetic, or the feeling it generates, means something to people. Obviously ‘she’s just like Buffy!’ is also a very nostalgic thought, but the general appeal of wanting to be cool and decisive over Lara’s increasing conflict over how a tomb raider in a foreign land can possibly be a good person is clear to see. It would be asking for trouble to make an Angel of Darkness 2, but for all I’ve argued that Legend and Rise should be the blueprints for the series going forward, maybe there is still room in the Tomb Raider formula for a little bit of Angel of Darkness too.
