Remaster and port studio Aspyr has partnered with Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics to release another trilogy remaster. This one will feature entries from the second trilogy, which includes arguably the series’ worst game, The Angel of Darkness.
Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered, announced on Friday, will include The Last Revelation, Chronicles, and the aforementioned The Angel of Darkness. All three will be getting upgrades, with better graphics, the ability to switch between classic and modern control schemes, and more than 150 new trophies for achievement hunters. The photo mode included in Tomb Raider I-III Remastered will also make an appearance. Finally, players will get some boss health bars.
This trilogy marked a very strange time in the history of the franchise. Core Design, Tomb Raider’s original developers, received a mandate from publisher Eidos Interactive to release a new Tomb Raider game every year after the massive success of the original. The burnout led the team to try to kill off Lara Croft, albeit unsuccessfully. The Last Revelation had her die at the end, but of course the game was a big hit, so she lived on. Chronicles came out the following year, but it didn’t sell that well. It was considered the biggest failure in the series — until The Angel of Darkness came along.
The final act in the trilogy was plagued with a lot of problems. Not only was Core done with Eidos’ mandate to release a new game every year, but it was the first Tomb Raider title developed for the PlayStation 2, and featured a lot of technical issues. Regardless of what players thought of the game itself (it sold really well), it proved that the series needed a reboot.
So if you want to play the games that capped off the first era of Tomb Raider, and hopefully with The Angel of Darkness fixed, you can do so on February 14, 2025, for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC for $30.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.