Breakdown
- Team Beef has developed a VR mod for the original Tomb Raider, bringing the 1996 classic into virtual reality
- The mod is currently exclusive to Team Beef’s Patreon, but the full release will be on SideQuest
- It’s available to play on Meta Quest, Pico, or PCVR.
Booting up an old game from your childhood and experiencing it in new ways is always exciting - but playing them in virtual reality is even more impressive. Team Beef, renowned for making some incredible ports and mods for flatscreen games into virtual reality titles, has now created a mod for converting the first Tomb Raider game into VR, for Pico, Meta Quest, and PCVR.
While there is an exciting mod that turns flat games into VR, it only works for Unreal Engine titles, and you have to fiddle around to get those to work. However, Team Beef actually provides full VR experiences with previously flat games.
The developer has created mods for a variety of titles, including Star Wars Jedi Outcast, Doom 3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Half Life, and plenty more. However, the most recent title to see a VR mod is Tomb Raider, the 1996 classic starring Lara Croft.
Unfortunately, the aptly titled "BeefRaiderXR" is limited to subscribers of the Team Beef Patreon right now. But, the full version will be available to download via SideQuest, giving you the option to play it as a standalone game on your Meta Quest headset, Pico, or via PCVR, so you can play it no matter which of the best VR headsets you opted for.
There's currently no timeline on when the full version will release, but Team Beef's work is amazing, and the Patreon is only £6 a month to get access to early access builds and a bunch of other perks. So, if you've been meaning to go back to the old Tomb Raider games, this is an interesting way to play the first one again.
We also reviewed the Tomb Raider remastered collection recently, calling it "a great way to replay or be introduced to the original trilogy" and giving it a decent 8/10 score. So, if you want to replay through the series, the remasters might be worth picking up.