tomb-raider posts

LucasArts is still interested in internal game development, at least according to its hiring moves. This week the publisher announced that it has hired Tim Longo to join LucasArts to work on an unannounced game. Longo previously worked at Crystal Dynamics as the creative head of the developer's Tomb Raider game franchise. Longo previously worked at LucasArts as well including the creative director of Star Wars: Republic Commando.

LucasArts previously had two periods of mass layoffs in 2010, one in September and another in November. At the moment the only announced game on the publisher's plate is the long awaited MMO Star Wars The Old Republic which it is co-publishing with Electronic Arts.

Redwood City, California-based game developer Crystal Dynamics is getting prepped to work on an all-original game after working exclusively as the makers of the last few games in the Tomb Raider series. Gamasutra reports that the studio has hired a new executive producer, Scot Amos, that will lead the new game IP team.

Amos comes from Electronic Arts' Visceral Studios where he helped to develop the team's Dead Space games. Currently Crystal Dynamics is working on the reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise for publisher Square Enix that's due out late in 2011. This new game will be the first all original title from the studio since the sci-fi first person shooter Project Snowblind which was released in 2006.

The Tomb Raider movie rights now have new owners. The Hollywood Reporter reports today that the film rights to the action-adventure game series have been acquired by GK Films from publisher Square Enix. The movie's producers plan to release a new film in the series by 2013 which will be an origin story for its lead character Lara Croft. Ironically Square Enix is developing the next game in the series as a rebooted origin tale as well.

The two previous Lara Croft Tomb Raider movies, starring Angelina Jolie as the lead character, remain two of the most successful video game-based movies ever made with a combined worldwide box office gross of $432 million.

It looks like our hardware feature will be delayed slightly. It's now scheduled to be ready to roll on the site sometime on Friday. In the meantime we are counting down the hours before 2010 ends. Has it really been 12 months?

• Steam has some automatic bug updates for the beta of Counter-Strike Source and for Hegemony: Phillip of Macedon.
• There's yet another piece of StarCraft II fictional lore available to read at the game's official web site.
• Game Informer has released the first public screenshots from the next Tomb Raider game which were part of the print magazine's cover story earlier this month.
• For your latest "cool Minecraft video" fix, check out this Rube Goldberg in-game machine.

On Sunday we began our multi-part feature on Big Download's most anticipated PC games due (at least at the moment) for release in 2011 with the first person shooter genre. Today we continue our series with all of the action games we are excited to get our hands on the next year that don't have the first person perspective as its main viewpoint.

This next 12 months will see quite a few pure action games on the horizon including a reboot of one of the biggest game series of all time, a return appearance by a certain Dark Knight detective and a game where all of the action is happening inside your comatose mind. Really. Here's our action game list for 2011, in order of the games' expected release.

Before bought out by Eidos and contracted to reboot the beleagured Tomb Raider franchise, Crystal Dynamics was known for a different set of games: the Legacy of Kain series. With this new DLC for Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, they have returned to one of the franchises that made them incredibly popular by putting Kain and Raziel (the two main characters from Legacy of Kain) into the world of Tomb Raider. It's an interesting trailer, and while the differences appear to be mostly cosmetic, it's still pretty cool to see Raziel and Kain working together once more.

Download HD Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light 'Raziel and Kain Character Pack DLC' Trailer
Check out all Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light downloads

One of the traditions of releasing a new Tomb Raider game was that a lucky UK woman was hired by Eidos to portray the lead character Lara Croft at various press and fan events.That model achieved international fame and it sometimes lead to other things. The very first official Lara Croft model, Rhona Mitra, has had a solid acting career since her time in the costume in the late 1990s.

But now it looks like the franchise's new owners Square Enix have other plans. The just announced new reboot of the action-adventure game series, simply called Tomb Raider, has a preview in the new Game Informer magazine. According to a post at NeoGAF from a person who has reportedly read the preview the plan is not to hire a model-actress to play the Lara Croft role this time. So you will just have to deal with the tons of non-official cosplay models. Oh well.

As has been rumored for many months, today publisher Square Enix has officially announced its plan to launch a Batman Begins-Casino Royale style reboot of its Tomb Raider action-adventure game franchise. Indeed the game itself is simply titled Tomb Raider and follows the adventures of a young Lara Croft as she finds herself washed ashore on an island after the ship she was on is hit by a massive storm.

Game Informer will have the first preview of the game in its new print issue which will give the concrete details of the game that's being developed by Crystal Dynamics. No release date for the game was announced.

Lara Croft And The Guardian of Light has been available to download and play for PC owners for close to two months now but the top down action-adventure game from developer Crystal Dynamics has finally gotten its first patch update. It's a pretty major one as the patch enabled online two-player co-op support for the game,

The patch is now available for automatic download via Steam. It also has some performance and stability improvements along with more audio and graphics polish to the game. The patch also has some unnamed improvements to the game's controls for both keyboard-mouse set-ups and gamepads.

Lara Croft's fans were helped out with this year's release of the downloadable top down game Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. However it was also under understood that there would be a full blown retail game in the long running action-adventure game series at some point.

Now some are speculating that a teaser ad and web site are giving us a hint that the next game would be officially revealed in Game Informer magazine. A two page spread from the current issue scanned over at NeoGaf shows a wrecked ship and the words "A Survivor Is Born" with a cover reveal scheduled for December 6. There also a web site, asurvivorisborn.com, with the same info minus the ship. All of this might hint about not just the next Tomb Raider game but that it will also be a Batman Begins-style reboot for the series.

[Via Eurogamer]