Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

It’s probably the case that most people’s favourite Tomb Raider is the first one they played. Unless it was Angel Of Darkness. Mine was Tomb Raider II, so it’s always the one I think of the most fondly.

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Crystal Dynamics have released an alternate playthrough of Rise of the Tomb Raider‘s [official site] ‘Advancing Storm’ demo to showcase Lara’s stealth possibilities. This is probably because even though they said stealth was entirely possible that bit got lost when the main message of the original video turned into “GUNS and then THROAT SLITTING and then EXPLODING BARRELS and then SHOTGUN YOU IN THE FACE”.

Or perhaps the stealth message went astray during the bit where they explained [at 3.13 in this video] that you could set up a poison bomb in someone’s corpse and the beeping would lure an AI over and then the poisonbombcorpse would explode. Who knows.

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Once a week most weeks, team RPS gathers, eyes itself warily across the table then debates. Sometimes it’s about SCANDAL, like slow-motion Batman or No Man’s Sky hype, other times it’s about perennials, like best levels ever or if Early Access means the end times.

This week, we’re discussing the pitfalls and merits of platform exclusives, in the wake of Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture being PS4-only, despite its devs making their name with the PC-only Dear Esther. In recent months similar has happened with Tomb Raider, and of course there’s a long history of this sort of thing, from your Marios to your Halos. Is this right? Is it sensible? And what about the other side of the coin, with XCOM 2 being PC-only? Not so grumbly then, are we? Let’s see if we can figure this one out, eh? … [visit site to read more]

Just as Dark Knight Rises was mostly a tale of falling down in order to get back up again, Rise of the Tomb Raider [official site] will require Lara Croft to hit the ground hard before she even considers doing any sort of upward movement. A new 13 minute video from Gamescom sees her Jonesing around, talking about her dad’s research, stumbling, crashing, dodging bullets and – SHOCK OF SHOCKS – raiding a tomb.

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Fail Forward is a series of videos all about the bits of games which don t quite work and why. In this episode, Marsh Davies discusses Tomb Raider [official site], evil wizards, falling off things and the forthcoming demise of the cinematic shooter.

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Remember how Square Enix were fannying about with Rise of the Tomb Raider [official site], playing tedious word games and falling silent to pretend that their neck-impaling sequel would be an Xbox exclusive when clearly it wouldn’t? You’ll never guess what: it is coming to PC after all!

Well, the word games aren’t quite over – it may or may not be exclusive to Windows 10 (more below). But yes, “early 2016″ is when it’ll come our way. As I’ve been dutifully ignoring the game until Squeenix stopped playing around, I suppose now’s the time for me to flood you with details and gameplay trailers.

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Everything is so bloody stupid. In a world where major publishers like THQ can fold, and even something of the scale of Activision-Blizzard couldn’t find a buyer other than itself, you’d imagine Square Enix wouldn’t be doing absolutely >everything> in their power to reach as few customers as possible. But the company that recently suffered financial woes, and complained the first Tomb Raider didn’t sell enough copies, are doing exactly that. Rise Of The Tomb Raider is the sequel to the morbidly overrated Tomb Raider reboot and was previously revealed as an Xbox “exclusive” release, ensuring the vast majority of its potential sales are instantly removed. And now they’re tying up their marketing with in-store promotional brochure, Game Informer.>

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It’s hard to believe that Lara Croft’s been cavorting around stealing priceless artefacts and killing endangered animals for nearly 20 years. But rather more amazing is that she’s been doing it in fan-made levels since November 2000’s Tomb Raider Chronicles PC release, which gave anyone with the inclination the tools in the form of an official level editor required to send her on new adventures.

The dedicated ladies and gents of the Tomb Raider fan community have been squeezing life out of that decrepit old blocky Tomb Raider engine for 14 years, and while they’ve slowed down a bit in recent times, they’re showing no signs of stopping.

Dutch schoolteacher Titia “Titak” Drenth has been there from the beginning. “I thought it would be fabulous to be able to make my own worlds for Lara to run around in,” she says of her initial motivations. Fabulous indeed. Titak’s levels take Lara to the Himalayas, American Wild West, the world of Stargate, and the jungles of Cambodia, among other places, with rave reception from the community at the Tomb Raider Forums and trle.net on nearly all of them.

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Four years after the surprise twist in the Tomb Raider franchise that was Lara Croft And The Guardian Of The Light, Crystal Dynamics have punctuated the releases of their reinvented Lara with its sequel, Lara Croft And The Temple Of Osiris. The review code we received did not yet have multiplayer switched on, so here’s wot I thought of playing it through on my own.>

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Alec wrote about some of his favourite gaming moments last week and I was inspired to put together something similar. Ever the structuralist, I decided that I’d string my favourite moments across a fictional interpretation of an actual day. Here is one of many days in my life, from a breakfast of champions to the blurred bottles at the heart of Saturday night.>

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