The Tomb Raider trilogy delivers Stadia's most successful ports

A genuine highlight of the Stadia review phase, Nixxes' port of Shadow of the Tomb Raider managed to deliver an impressive streaming version of the game offering virtual parity with the Xbox One X release, with full native 4K delivered in its quality mode alongside a rock-solid 60 frames per second in the default performance setting. But Shadow is just one of three Tomb Raider titles available to Stadia users and while there are some issues with Tomb Raider 2013 and Rise of the Tomb Raider, these are still slick, impressive conversions well worth investigation - especially as the original reboot is now free for Stadia Pro subscribers in December.

We'll go through each game in turn, kicking off with the reboot, which is a conversion of the current-gen console Definitive Edition, as opposed to a conversion of the original PC version. By and large, this means that the same selection of upgrades are in place - including the new Lara model - alongside some of PC's improvements. Some, but not all: tessellation is absent, for example. Also curious is that depth of field - present in the console builds - is gone on Stadia too.

Where Stadia improves over PS4 and Xbox One is in terms of its output resolution and performance level. The streaming version operates at a nigh-on locked 60 frames per second, trumping the 30fps of Xbox One and the somewhat unstable 60fps of the PlayStation 4. Resolution also sees a profound upgrade. Dynamic resolution is in play, aiming for the highest resolution while maintaining that crucial 60fps. 1512p was a common measurement, with a maximum of 1720p found in one scene too.

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