Lara Croft is back. But the world she inhabits in Shadow of the Tomb Raider is darker, a fierce jungle full of dense, gloomy shapes. They pass beneath the player like a ghost, or perhaps whip away into the trees. Tomb Raider has always had this uneasy affection for the supernatural, an appreciation of the dark. And although Lara has come a long way since her caving days, she is always followed by a certain dimness.

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Take last week’s Steam Charts, give them a little shuffle, and then breathe out a long, despondent sigh. Oh, and then entirely randomly add an Early Access racing sim. And then start sighing again, and never, ever stop.

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The latest Tomb Raider reboot games have always been big technical showcases on PC, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider is no exception. After a slightly rocky pre-release build that’s thankfully been ironed out in time for today’s release (have a read of John’s newly updated Shadow of the Tomb Raider review if you’re still unsure), this is easily one of the most demanding games I’ve played all year, so I decided to chuck a load of today’s best graphics cards at it to see how they all hold up.

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Update: We’ve made some substantial changes to this review to reflect the dramatic technical improvements made by the day one patch released on the 12th.

Shadow Of The Tomb Raider is, we’re told, the final entry in the latest trilogy of Lara Croft adventures. And is, I’m pleased to report, by far the best of the three.

It remains a muddled affair, never quite sure what it wants to be, never certain what it wants to say. But there’s plenty of fun to be had. Here’s wot I think:

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Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: steam Charts will PAY $2 for evry time u forwad this Article.#

If you do not fwrard this article to TEN of you’re Friens YOU WILL DEFINITELY DIE!!!!!!!11

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Shadow Of The Tomb Raider makes an interesting, and it seems perhaps omen-ladened choice right from the start. As you sit down at the game’s first campfire, looking through the skill and equipment menus, you’ll spot Lara has a number of outfits available from the off. Amongst those you might have gained in previous games in the series, and the extremely funny choice to let you play the whole game looking like the triangular Lara of Tomb Raider II, is an option to guise Lara in her Angel Of Darkness incarnation. It probably seemed like it would be a pleasingly arch goof, deliberately reminding players of the infamously broken and unplayable final game from original Tomb Raider creators, Core. My experience suggests this wasn’t perhaps ideal.

After a good fifteen to twenty hours spent with what was an increasingly impressive and enormously detailed action adventure, my review copy of Shadow Of The Tomb Raider – stating I’m 52.23% of the way through – has come to resemble that most disastrous of gaming releases. I can no longer swim, fight, climb, and in some cases, even walk, as what had been a buggy but playable game disintegrated into Angel Of Darkness levels of ruination. With a day one patch expected Wednesday, I desperately hope this will all be fixed and gone away. And because I’m reviewing in isolation, pre-release, I’ve no way to know if this extends beyond me. But with a fairly typical i7-6700, GTX 1080, and a very silly 32GB RAM, this isn’t an atypical build. So as much as I have that’s positive to say about Shadow, let there be a hefty warning, because my extreme issues aside, there are an awful lot of bugs to be found.

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I didn’t much like the first in the most recent trilogy of Tomb Raider games, named with such originality and aplomb, Tomb Raider. (Square Enix’s arrogance in reappropriating the original name of a series has never been a helpful move – see also Thief and Hitman, and I’d be willing to bet a fair wad of cash we’ll be seeing “Final Fantasy” in the next few years.) It was a nasty, badly written torture sim which very occasionally let you do some running, jumping and shooting. Infamous for its repulsive early scene invoking sexual assault, it also made a mockery of Lara’s former independence by making her subservient to a father figure, Conrad Roth, and then had a dumb-ass story packed with insulting stereotypes. But more than anything else, it absolutely resented ever letting you actually play.

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Good gravy, don’t Nvidia’s Turing RTX 2080 cards look nice, eh? Yes, they’re just a teensy bit hideously expensive, but make no mistake. All three cards announced this evening, from the RTX 2070 right up to the RTX 2080Ti, have all been described to me as 4K, 60fps+ pixel pushers that are almost certainly going to be massive overkill for anyone still playing games at 1920×1080 or 2560×1440.

But enough about the graphics cards – there’s a whole article for you to read about those if you haven’t already. Here, I’m talking games>. Specifically, every game confirmed so far that will be benefiting from Nvidia’s oh-so-lovely ray-tracing tech that will hopefully make your RTX 20-series card feel like a worthwhile purchase. Here we go!

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I often wonder what freakish individuals were enlisted into focus testing to give publishers the idea that everyone wants things mean and moody. Had they invited me, there would be more games set in cheery pubs where you win by having the best bit of nostalgia about early noughties television. Also, the health system would be built entirely on the consumption of floral gums. There is none of that stuff in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, but for a game that is touted as a brutalising hell slog, I m surprised by how much fun I had with its first five hours. It s a tropical paradise full of unmarked platforming and preposterous animal attacks; it is, in other words, classic Tomb Raider. Further thoughts in this video. (more…)

If you wish to turn off all the objective markers, glowing item highlights, and even guiding paint splashes in Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, you will be able to. Leap and puzzle without any obvious assistance, if you please. Or if you find those handy and want all the help you can get, hey, the game will let you do that too. The game’s makers have detailed its difficulty and accessibility options, and it all sounds pretty great.

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