Hands On: The Tomb Raider Returns To A Nintendo System In A Promising Package

It’s been a bit of a barren six years or thereabouts for Switch-owning Tomb Raider fans, without so much as a remastered golden oldie or even (mercifully, perhaps) a quickie cloud version of one of the new-fangled reboots to enjoy on Nintendo’s platform. However, all of that is just about to change with the imminent arrival of The Lara Croft Collection, which hits the eShop on the 29th June.

Not to be confused with The Tomb Raider Collection, which gave lucky PC players a massive 13 games from across this hallowed franchise to dig into, this much slighter package comes courtesy of Feral Interactive (Alien Isolation, GRID Autosport) and contains 2010’s Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light and its follow-up, 2014’s Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris. On the one hand, it’s perhaps a little disappointing that we don’t get to have any of the old Tomb Raider classics involved here but, on the other, what we are getting is two surprisingly great isometric spin-offs from the mains series that do a fantastic job of delivering the thrills and spills of the franchise proper in a portable-friendly form.

Kicking off with Guardian of Light, and we vividly remember being pretty blown away by this one when it originally launched back on Xbox Arcade some 13 years ago. Indeed, this is a game that raked in superb scores upon its release, and any concerns we had about the new isometric style or smaller scale of the project being a negative factor were immediately dismissed as soon as we got to grips with what is a thoroughly enthralling Lara Croft adventure.

Diving back into this game in 2023, it’s also immediately obvious that Crystal Dynamics' team was very clever with how they designed this one. They embraced the limitations that the style of the game imposed, ditching superfluous bombast and honing in on Lara’s tricksy platforming and problem-solving abilities to produce intricately detailed puzzle-box levels that require just the right amount of focus to figure out and pass through.

There’s a surprising amount of manoeuvrability involved here, Lara can create platforms using her spear, climb up scenery, and rappel around in order to navigate environments that are packed full of collectibles, secrets, and challenges for you to collect and complete. There are also plenty of delightful rolling action sequences that see you need to quickly combine all of your skills to run gauntlets of moving platforms and other obstacles.

The combat side of things is compacted into a slick twin-stick setup, giving you access to a bunch of weapons on your D-pad and allowing to you aim through 360 degrees via the right stick. It felt – and still feels – great, and enabled the devs to punctuate the classic Tomb Raider puzzling with just enough combat to keep everyone happy.

On Switch, all of this stuff looks and feels just as we remember, and so far it's an experience that feels right at home on the platform with nice smooth gameplay, tight controls, and nothing in the way of visual issues or performance problems to speak of this far. None of this should be a surprise with regards to Guardian of Light, a title that's been ported to handheld devices already, but the sequel is another matter, as it's a notable step up in terms of its graphical prowess.

Indeed, as far as Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris goes, it's a classic case of a sequel making everything that little bit bigger and louder. Featuring flashier action than its predecessor, it's a game that ups the cooperative ante, too, raising the player count from two to four people whilst expanding on the puzzles and platforming elements of Guardian. Unfortunately, this follow-up did have a few issues when it first launched back in 2014, with a fair few bugs and instability issues holding it back. So far, our time with Feral's Switch port has been bug-free — although it does seem to run a little bit less smoothly than its older counterpart in terms of resolution — and we’ll be making sure to dig in over the next week to see whether the original's problems have been sorted across the game’s entire duration in time for our full review.

In terms of storylines, well, it’s pretty much total hokum across both games, if we're being honest, with just enough silliness, magic mirrors, ancient artifacts, and other archaeological-based nonsense to keep you vaguely interested — it's surely no coincidence that this collection lands on Switch just as the fifth and final (well, we'll see) Indiana Jones movie opens in cinemas.

But of course, the real hook in both Guardian of Light and Temple of Osiris is the engaging arcade mix of puzzles, light combat, and addictively slick platforming combined with the all-important co-op factor. A whole new proposition for Lara’s traditionally solo adventures, co-op play allows for two players in Guardian of Light and up to four in Osiris. It adds a whole new dynamic and a ton of fun to proceedings as you work together, squabble over goodies, and enjoy levels that switch things up for co-op play, rearranging the environments and baddies from the dedicated solo mode to give multiple adventurers a proper workout.

It's somewhat unfortunate, then, that we only have a local co-operative option on Switch. Online would really have given this one some legs — especially with leaderboards to work on conquering in the long-term — and it's a feature that made it into the original releases of these games all those years ago, but for now we’ll take what we can get so long as both adventures manage to hit their target of 30fps and remain bug-free whilst we blast around their bespoke locations with friends in tow.

If you’ve never played these two gems before, this collection features many of the previously released DLC and challenge rooms too, and we do recommend keeping an eye out for our full review as, if they perform as expected, this is a collection that’ll be well worth the reasonable asking price ($24.99 / £19.99 at launch) for Lara fans and anyone else who enjoys some slick and stylish tomb-raiding action. Fingers crossed.

Have you played Guardian of Light or Temple of Osiris before on another platform? Looking forward to them releasing on Switch or turned off by the lack of online co-op? Be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments.