Tomb Raider’s release is finally almost upon us; on March 5, Lara’s reboot will be in your hands. If you’ve decided to grab the Crystal Dynamics effort through Steam, you still have a few days to take advantage of a 10% discount, and can begin preloading. The PC version apparently comes with an optional set of HD textures so you may want to get what is likely to be a whopping download started ahead of time.

To get you in a mood, here’s some footage of Lara being absolutely brutal while a bunch of wannabes express their admiration. If you enjoy this trailer or are jealousy hoarding your Internode data quota, you can grab it from our file mirror.

Yesterday’s tease from AMD promised a revolution in PC gaming realism, and AMD have delivered… a new hair-rendering system. Sounds weird? It actually looks super impressive, and AMD are debuting it in the PC version of Tomb Raider. Don’t worry though, it’ll work on NVIDIA cards as well — all DX11 cards will be supported.

“TressFX Hair revolutionizes Lara Croft’s locks by using the DirectCompute programming language to unlock the massively-parallel processing capabilities of the Graphics Core Next architecture, enabling image quality previously restricted to pre-rendered images,” reads AMD’s announcement. “Building on AMD’s previous work on Order Independent Transparency (OIT), this method makes use of Per-Pixel Linked-List (PPLL) data structures to manage rendering complexity and memory usage.”

Check out the before-and-after pictures below for some promising comparisons (click for larger).

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I have played and finished the new Tomb Raider. There. I said it.

 I was one of those lucky so-and-so’s tasked with writing ‘er up somewhere, and if one thing dawns on you when you yourself go a-Lara’ing, it’ll be this: Hot damn there is a lot of shooting in this game. And brutal shotgun-to-the-face finishing moves. Oh she looks like Bambi now, but she is soon as unlikely a mass murderer as Nate Drake. Those two should just date. More than any other game I’ve played of late, the distinction between Tomb Raider’s modest array of cannons is sharp enough that you work out what you like and what works for you pretty quick. Shotgun to the face.

It got my thinking about how I best like to dispatch digital people and creatures, and how.

Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics have published the system requirements for Tomb Raider, along with some interesting highlights of the PC release. Lara’s new adventure will have full Steamworks integration with cloud saves, multiplayer matchmaking, achievements and auto updates; it will support Steam Big Picture mode; and although it has control pad support keyboard and mouse controls will be fully configurable.

These are simple things but so many multiplatform releases overlook them that it’s a delight to have them confirmed. But the PC goodies don’t stop there: Tomb Raider will offer support for high-resolution textures with up to 16 times the data of the already gorgeous-looking console versions; detail tessellation with algorithms to smooth geometry; higher quality shadows; a near-blur depth of field; post filter effects; improved cloth, SSAO, and wetness effects; Windows XP support; and adjustable LOD quality for those of us whose gaming rigs are on the less elite end of the range.

It all sounds quite dreamy; head through the break for the full tech specs. Tomb Raider is due on March 5.

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Tomb Raider has gone gold and is already rolling off production lines ahead of its March 5 release. But just a few weeks ago, Crystal Dynamics was still hard at work, and this new episode in the Final Hours series tracks the very last days of that effort. It presents an interesting look at what goes on just days before a game is submitted for certification; although many designers and artists are off the hook, 80 team members were still working on solving issues with menu transitions, Lara’s hair, and general bug squashing.

This new Tomb Raider video video goes into detail on how fast travel and gear upgrades make it easy and profitable to return to previously explored locations. Find secrets, gather salvage, and earn XP by taking your new goodies, like portable ziplines, back to earlier levels.

As the title screen aptly reminds us, this is the second episode in Tomb Raider’s ‘Guide to Survival’ series; the first one was about some of the game’s key mechanics. Tomb Raider is due in March.

Source: RPS

As you may have heard, the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot will be the first in the franchise to feature multiplayer. In the latest of a series of videos entitled ‘The Final Hours of Tomb Raider’, we are given our first glimpse of what said multiplayer will actually be like.

And what is it like? Well, at first glimpse it seems like a pretty stale concept. Seems like it’s only really deathmatch at this point, though that’s not to say there won’t be further modes when the game is released, or even that being only deathmatch is a bad thing. The Eidos team do seem to have spiced it up with traps, such as the exploding ammo box or the lightning rod, and you can crawl all over the walls, too.

It’s hard to tell at this point whether it’s going to be everything Eidos hope it will be, but keep an eye on it, it might surprise you! The actual multiplayer segment of the 7 minute video starts around the 4:35 mark, so check it out for yourself and let us know what you think.

Until recently, we’ve known very little about the new Lara Croft. We know she’s young, and that the course of the new game shows her evolution into an action hero. We know she gets hurt a lot. And we know she hasn’t got a braid. But who is she? Is she the unstable but cheerful orphan of the first game? The dignified but still larcenous nob of later efforts? The family-focused adventurer of the Crystal Dynamics games and film? Or – heaven forfend – the unexplained emo of Angel of Darkness?

In a new interview, writer Rhianna Pratchett has finally dropped a few hints, saying that the “unapproachable British Ice Queen” is not as popular today.

“We’re living in a different climate. Rich characters throwing their money about… To be fair it’s partly the film’s fault as well. She needed her sharp edges rounded off a little bit,” she said.

“She does still come from money. She’s uncomfortable about it for a couple of reasons. She very much wants to make it on her own, partly because her parents are missing. They don’t feature at all in the story [of this game] but they are missing. Touching the family money would mean acknowledging that they’re really gone and that they’re not coming back.”

Pratchett also commented that “there’s no flick switch to bad assery”, suggesting Lara’s growth will be more drawn out and believable than was suggested by earlier references to a pivotal attack scene.

Tomb Raider is due in March.

Source: CVG

Crystal Dynamics have today revealed that the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot, long speculated but never confirmed to have multiplayer, will, in fact, feature multiplayer.

“OK, so after all the speculation..yes it’s true,” tweeted Crystal Dynamic’s Karl Stewart, linking us to this Official Xbox Magazine page.

Details will be revealed in the next issue of the magazine on January 8.

Source: Kotaku AU

The marketing machine has well and truly begun for the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot, and Lara Croft is front and centre in this new ‘Guide to Survival’ series of videos. This first one focuses on ‘Smart Resourceful Lara’, which is a bizarrely constructed phrase that seems to translate to “Here are some of the key mechanics in our video game”. In any case, it’s a good look at how the XP and base camp systems will work, as well as weapon upgrades. Check it out below.

Our own Toby McCasker recently went hands-on with the game, and came away quite impressed. How are you feeling about it?

In other ‘games that I am excited for’ news, here is a new extended trailer of the rebooted Tomb Raider. Fresh from this weekend’s VGAs, the trailer focuses on story and a little bit of gameplay, and thankfully steers away from the lack of any actual tombs.

I am a die-hard Tomb Raider fan, so I will admit, I am a little worried about the apparent lack of any Tomb Raider-esque gameplay. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be a great game, or at the very least, an extremely pretty one, with a great female lead.

Watch the trailer below and let us know what you think. Our own Toby McCasker went hands-on with it just last week, and brought back these impressions.

Tomb Raider is due on March 5 for PC, XBox 360 and PS3.

If you’ve been out of the game a while, you might remember Lara Croft as somewhat pointier in the chest region than she will be circa 2013. Toby McCasker recently got a chance to sit down with a few hours of the updated Tomb Raider, and brings us back his thoughts.