Apr 10, 2013

PC Gamer UK Podcast: Episode 88 – Other Options Are Available

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad with Rising Storm - PC Gamer

In this episode we discuss the crime games of yesteryear, the team's adventures in Red Orchestra 2 and Chris' first faltering steps into Defiance. Also featuring round two of our' ongoing attempt to figure out Tomb Raider and what happens when Graham answers Twitter questions before he's had his milk.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or download the MP3 directly. You can also listen on YouTube. To ask us questions, follow the PC Gamer Twitter account - we'll put out a call in the morning before we record, which is usually a Monday. You can also follow us individually:

Chris - @CThursten
Tom Senior - @PCGLudo
Graham - @Gonnas
Marsh - @marshdavies

Show notes
Graham's Red Orchestra 2 review from a while back.
Chris' Tomb Raider review. Last time, we promise.
First footage of EA's next shooter, 'The Adventures of Captain Gets His Leg Trapped Man'.
Current descriptions of Thief 4's plot describe Garrett as returning to The City, so it sounds like the new game isn't quite a straight reboot.

Apr 5, 2013

Tomb Raider Thoughts From A Lara Newbie

Tomb Raider - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alec Meer)

peekaboo!

The only other Tomb Raider game I’ve ever played was the first one, which I found alternately brilliant and annoying. Oh, and I reviewed The Angel of Darkness for a magazine, but that doesn’t count. This year’s reboot, Tomb Raider, was my first experience of Crystal Dynamics’ work with Lara Croft, so I was a relative blank slate in terms of expectations. Perhaps that’s why I had a better time with it than John did – there wasn’t anything I knew to miss or call for, any pre-existing associations to be endorsed or threatened. That didn’t stop me from howling in misery at all the quicktime events and the often bobbins plot, of course, but there’s an awful lot in there I really dug. (more…)

Apr 3, 2013

Square Enix’s new president plans fundamental review, as more lay-offs hit LA office

Sleeping Dogs

Square Enix's incoming president, Yosuke Matsuda, has started sharpening the axe of financial viability after the "extraordinary loss" of this last financial year. In a Square Enix Holdings briefing session, translated by Siliconera, Matsuda announces plans to review all elements of the business, with a view to focusing its direction on "what makes us successful".

"After having succeeded the important role as the president, I plan on reviewing all Square Enix duties, business and assets on a zero-based budgeting standpoint," Matsuda says. "Due to the radical change of environment, I’d like to fundamentally review what works and what doesn't work for our company, then cast all of our resources towards extending what makes us successful and thoroughly squeezing out what doesn't.

"As far as a concrete plan on what to expect from us, I will further explain it on another briefing session in the near future, so I kindly ask for your patience. Thank you for your support."

While Matsuda isn't due to step into the role until June, Square Enix have already begun to restructure. In a statement to Polygon, senior director of PR Reilly Brennan announced, "We can confirm that Square Enix's Los Angeles office has eliminated a number of positions as part of the corporate restructuring announced last week. This is an unfortunate situation and we are offering assistance and severance packages to any employees affected by this, we want to thank them for their hard work and sincerely wish them well in the future." This is in addition to the LA office lay-offs made back in December.

How SE's development studios will be affected by Matsuda's review is unclear, but sales figures suggest a change may be due. Tomb Raider, Hitman: Absolution and Sleeping Dogs all failed to meet expectations, despite Tomb Raider experiencing a record launch week for the series.

Mar 29, 2013

Tomb Raider Update Released

Tomb Raider - Valve

We have just made public a new version of the PC version of Tomb Raider, build 1.01.732.1. This patch will be applied by Steam automatically when you next start the game. If your game does not update, please restart the Steam client.

New fixes in 732.1:

- Fixed an issue in ”Chasm Monastery” where the player cannot progress after fighting the Oni.
- New community requested graphics option ‘Screen Effects’ to disable camera-based full screen effects like water and blood drops.
- Fixed last campsite save not always updating when expected.
- Various small optimizations.
- Various minor UI fixes.
- Minor graphics fixes.

While we expect this patch to be an improvement for everyone, if you do have trouble with this patch and prefer to stay on the old version we made a Beta available on Steam, Build730.0, that can be used to switch back to the previous version. Please note however that you can only play multiplayer with people that share your version.

Unfortunately we do not yet have a resolution for the players that are experiencing crashes and major graphical corruption on NVIDIA hardware. We are still working on this with NVIDIA and hope to have an update soon.

We are planning further patches beyond this one to address various issues. We always welcome your feedback!

Mar 26, 2013

Square Enix expects “extraordinary loss” this fiscal year, CEO steps down

Sleeping Dogs

Square Enix have announced the resignation of their CEO, Yoichi Wada, following an earnings forecast that predicts the company will experience "extraordinary loss" this financial year. According to their consolidated results report, the company had expected to make profits of 3.5 billion yen (approx. £24.5 million) before the end of the financial year, this March 31st. That didn't happen. Instead, Square Enix is now expected to report a loss of 13 billion yen (approx. £91 million).

According to the report, "The Company forecasts that actual business results from its Digital Entertainment Segment substantially fall below its plan primarily due to slow sales of major console game titles in North American and European markets." Detailed sales breakdowns aren't available, but while some of the low earnings will be from the Japanese console-only side of the business, no doubt their Western studios, recently responsible for Hitman: Absolution, Sleeping Dogs and Tomb Raider, have also underperformed.

In addition to Wada's resignation, to be replaced by former company president Yosuke Matsuda, Square Enix are also planning a major restructure in "development policy, organizational structure, some business models, and others." What the means in real terms - especially for upcoming projects like Eidos Montreal's Thief - remains to be seen.

Thanks, Polygon.

Mar 26, 2013

Wada Way To Go: Square Enix Loses Money & Its Boss

Hitman: Absolution™ - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alec Meer)

metaphor

It’s a bad day for Square Enix, latter-day publisher of Tomb Raider, Hitman, Deus Ex and Thief, as well as those dreary Final Fantasy things. Citing “slow sales of major console games” as well as uninspiring business from its arcade machine arm, it’s admitted that its recent monies “substantially fall below its plan” and its president Yoichi Wada has fallen on his sword as a result. (more…)

Mar 25, 2013

Nvidia GeForce 314.22 drivers boost BioShock Infinite, Tomb Raider performance

BioShock™

As it typically does for a major game launch, Nvidia has updated its GeForce card drivers to 314.22 for boosts in performance and stability. It claims recent titans BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider both get a significant bump in frames-per-second, with the former increasing by 41 percent and the latter by an astonishing 71 percent.

Nvidia's article provides benchmark results and pretty green graph bars to scrutinize. Though the company's test hardware was an Intel i7-3960X and a GTX 680—a beefy setup most definitely on the high-end of priciness—Nvidia says the improvements apply to most other cards in the GTX family.

Other frame gains include an extra 30 percent for Civilization 5, 22 percent for Sniper Elite V2, and 12 percent for Sleeping Dogs. Smaller boosts are given to Batman: Arkham City, Battlefield 3, Borderlands 2, Black Ops 2, and Skyrim. Really, if you're playing nearly any graphics-heavy game from the past few years, and you're a GeForce user, pick up the drivers on the official website or through the useful GeForce Experience tool. It's green across the board.

Mar 25, 2013

Tomb Raider Update Released

Tomb Raider - Valve

We have just made public a new version of the PC version of Tomb Raider, build 1.0.730.0. This patch will be applied by Steam automatically when you next start the game. If your game does not update, please restart the Steam client.

New fixes in 730.0:

• Upgraded the save slots from three to 99
• Introduced “Last Campsite Save”, which automatically saves your progress up to the last campsite you have visited
• Added stereoscopic 3D reticle
• Fixed issues with the discovery of the Unworthy campsite.
• Fixed a problem that occurred when traveling back to the Sacred Hall Basecamp after that story has been completed
• Fixed a playthrough stopper in Chasm Bridge
• Fixed a playthrough stopper that could occur when loading a saved game created in the Coastal Forest after upgrading the axe but before opening the gate
• The active selection in the main menu no longer changes due to the rotation of the menu itself
• Fixed Mouse and Aim Sensitivity slider settings getting rounded to coarser values on save
• Fixed a crash in multiplayer that could occur while migrating hosts
• Added functionality to activate and deactivate DLC multiplayer maps during matchmaking. Maps can also be manually activated and deactivated in the new ‘Match Making’ menu in the ‘Options’ menu.
• (DX11) Fixed a few self-shadowing artifacts in the beach
• (DX11) Various performance optimizations
• (DX11) Improved sunlight shadow quality
• (DX11) Lens flares now render correctly in stereoscopic 3D
• (DX11) Improved exclusive fullscreen <-> windowed transitions
• (DX11) Fixed occasional crash on startup related to stereoscopic detection
While we expect this patch to be an improvement for everyone, if you do have trouble with this patch and prefer to stay on the old version we made a Beta available on Steam, Build722.3, that can be used to switch back to the previous version. Please note however that you can only play multiplayer with people that share your version.

We are planning further patches beyond this one to address various issues that have come out of consumer feedback since the release of the game.

Mar 22, 2013

NSFW: Tomb Raider Glitch Makes Lara Croft Look Practically Topless

Tomb Raider

Well, this is unfortunate: a glitch discovered by a Canadian player makes it look like Lara Croft's tank top has gone all see-through.

The glitch was sent in by a person who goes by Recostar from S3DGamerZone. Here's his account of how the bug came to light while he was playing the game in 3D on his PC:

It was right after we died from an explosion; we kept getting strange glitches. We had been to close to a gas exhaust and shot a flame arrow beside it causing Lara to die. When we came back into the game, water, shadows and lighting looked very odd. So we kept selecting re-load last check point hoping to solve this issue. For the most part everything looked ok after several re-loads, until we went to break a valve and I noticed her tank top looked funny in the light.

When I looked closer, I could see what appeared to be 2 nipples. We zoomed in to make sure that's what they are (purely scientific lol). My only possible conclusion is that when they made Lara's damaged explosion mesh, behind her tank top they jokingly put these 2 t marks were her nipples would be on purpose. They probably never thought that a glitch would remove the tank top overlay exposing this. Also, I noticed in the video right where Lara's nipples are you can clearly see 2 huge and out of placed square pixels.

It should be noted that Kotaku hasn't been able to reproduce this glitch.

Older players amongst you will remember the nigh-indestructible rumor of a "nude code" for the original Tomb Raider. This isn't quite that. It's a long-odds software hiccup that makes the newly-redesigned look a lot less modest than her predecessor. After years of more attention being paid to Lara's breasts than to gameplay or character development, the new Tomb Raider succeeds because the game isn't all about Ms. Croft's endowment. This instance of unplanned exposures isn't quite as bad as the fully naked Heavy Rain glitch from three years ago. But still: Shame on you, explosion glitch, for trying to mess up Lara's evolution away from being a sex symbol.