I remember playing these levels twenty-five years ago when ‘Tomb Raider Chronicles’ was released on PlayStation One, but I don’t recall them being so macabre. I refer of course to the eerie adventure set on an island off the Irish coast, featuring a teenage Lara Croft.

Taking on this flashback story with a young Lara creates an interesting dynamic, and is different from the rest of the game – with no weapons available and the surrounds being very dark and gloomy; requiring a degree of stealth and cunning to pass through.

The opening chapter is titled ‘Gallows Tree’ and Lara is quickly introduced to a ghoul hanging from a branch with a hole in his chest where his heart had been cut out. Quite sinister for a Tomb Raider game, right?

The freak show doesn’t end there though, as Lara is forced to contend with deadly imp creatures who follow her around and will lash out if she allows them to get too close. I should mention that these little monsters are called ‘changelings’ in the official guide, but I shall refer to them as ‘imps’ – as I never witnessed them change into anything.

The next stage is named ‘Labyrinth’ and features some truly scary supernatural entities; from floating apparitions to sword-wielding skeletons. As I played along, I became convinced that there was a scene in this level where Lara is chased by a large monster, but this did not eventuate – proving that my memory remains a little foggy with regards to this game. Perhaps I got mixed up with a different Tomb Raider title?

However, like the ‘Gallows Tree’ chapter, the atmosphere and mystical settings here are fantastic – and the remastered edition adds a few extra macabre details to certain backgrounds, which I will point out when I post the side-by-side comparisons later.

The labyrinth that the level is named after is a series of rotating wooden bridges and it wasn’t too hard to find a way out – but to add a little more difficulty, a few fiends crawled out of crypts to attack Lara just when it felt like she was safe. Fun times for all!

The third and final level is ‘The Old Mill’ – featuring some challenging rope swings and tricky jump sequences – all of which my ageing reflexes struggled with. As far as bad guys go, we have a Demon Knight, an evil underwater mermaid-like creature and a cameo appearance from a group of deadly imps.

In the end, Lara defeats both foes by firstly tricking the sea hag into a cage, and then beating the Demon Knight by reading out a passage from an ancient bestiary.

Overall, the Ireland adventure in ‘Chronicles’ was a refreshing change from what we normally expect from a Tomb Raider game. Not only did the young and inexperienced – as well as unarmed – Lara Croft add an extra degree of intrigue to the story, but the disturbing surrounds really set this apart from the Rome and Russian Submarine levels featured previously.

As I mentioned earlier, the developers really went to town with the remastered version and added a number of well-placed additions to the scenery. I have selected some of the better comparison shots below – with the 2025 game featured on top and the original PS One displayed on the bottom. I think the first screenshot is the best and most imaginative, with that ‘thing’ under the sheet being an unnerving ‘improvement’ – luckily it was only there for show.

Having made it three-quarters of the way through ‘Tomb Raider Chronicles’, my honest assessment of what I have experienced so far is a game with very short levels that I have had little to no difficulty passing through. That being said, I enjoyed the Ireland adventure a lot more than the previous stages, and in a strange way got a kick out of the weird and wonderful things that were going on as the story progressed.

So, it is now onto the final stages – set in the Von Croy building in Manhattan – where the original game featured a bug that essentially made it impossible to progress. Apparently, this newer version has ironed out such problems, so we’ll find out soon enough.

‘Tomb Raider Chronicles’ is part of the second remastered Tomb Raider Trilogy and is available at the PlayStation store.

All screenshots are courtesy of Aspyr, Crystal Dynamics and PlayStation.