The teach focussed team at Digital Foundry are still at it looking at the latest gaming releases and analysing them from a technical perspective. The latest project is the recently released Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition ports from Aspyr. The team says “it’s a remarkably iffy port” with the Nintendo Switch 2 version in particular “proving a disappointment on a visual basis” and that “it’s disappointing to see this game paring back so many of the game’s features that even the original non-Definitive PlayStation 3 has.” So it would appear as though Aspyr worked on the Nintendo Switch version first and then boosted it with a few bells and whistles for the Nintendo Switch 2. You can read Digital Foundry’s full analysis here.
Cutbacks and compromises for such an old game are perhaps understandable when looking at the Switch version of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, but the downgrades to the Switch 2 version cut deep and don’t particularly make sense for a title released on a brand-new system. If Aspyr and Crystal Dynamics are looking to complete the trilogy with Rise and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, we can only hope for more sympathetic, feature-rich conversions that do those excellent games justice.
