New Tomb Raider Legend demo

By Tom Bramwell Published 15 June, 2006

With 'Next Gen' graphics option.

Graphics card maker NVIDIA is hosting an updated 1.2 version of the Tomb Raider: Legend PC demo offering you the chance to enable the game's "Next Gen" graphics option, which was absent from a previous PC demo.

As before, the demo showcases the game's first level, set in Bolivia, which sees Lara work her way through mountainous environments before tackling the inside of an ancient tomb full of jumping puzzles and booby-traps and animals to shoot (yay).

The new graphics option provides a massive improvement too, adding depth to flat surfaces with parallax mapping, upping textural detail noticeably and enabling all sorts of shadowing techniques that subtly improve the overall image.

NVIDIA recommends you play the demo, which weighs in at 503MB (including DirectX 9), using a GeForce 7800 or better graphics card with version 84.43 or newer drivers - but then they would say that. Competing cards of a similar stature ought to produce impressive results too.

Naturally you don't have to use the high-end graphics option if you don't have kit up to the task, and the game still looks pretty handsome without it - although you wouldn't save much disk space by opting for the old file (if you can still find it) since that itself was around 475MB.

As you probably know, Tomb Raider: Legend is out now on PC, Xbox 360, PS2, Xbox and even PSP, with Cube, DS and GBA versions on the way later this year. This isn't the only demo either - those of you with Xbox 360 Live access can log onto Marketplace and download a similar demo to play through Bolivia that way.

Check out our reviews of the Xbox 360 and PSP versions for more info on Lara's return.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (10) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • lambtron #1 6 years ago

    Booby Traps.

    Heh - you said Booby.

  • neuroniky #2 6 years ago

    I have to disagree with the fact that the game looks very good even with the next gen contents turned off. The game doesn't scale very well in terms of graphics, and basically there are two settings: PS2 quality or next Gen quality. You can't choose to do something in between and that's a shame, because you end up chosing in between running the game at 60+ Fps but with PS2 quality graphics or at 20ish Fps (with many peaks and a few drops, the frame rate is soooo unstable at times) but with the full next gen details. The other setting do almost nothing, the shadows being the only exception for me, as playing with everything turned on but advanced shadows makes the game run a lot more smoothly, don't know why.
    So, if you want PC level graphics please use at least a 6800, if not, expect PS2 level graphics.

  • drumbaby #3 6 years ago

    The PC demo looks stonking on my Radeon 9800 Pro at 1280x1024, sans next gen' FX of course. Undeniably a big step up from the PS2 demo graphics.

  • Darkedge #4 6 years ago

    looks great on the 360.. but it would ;)

  • MrWonderstuff #5 6 years ago

    "Penis is 12" here."

    Hahah. Very true.

  • smelly #6 6 years ago

    Where's the cube version gone? I want to play it in cubey-vision.

  • #7 6 years ago

    Played 360 and xbox versions of this demo.
    Absolutely no friggin difference, gameplay was still meh.
    If anything I had more fun on the old xbox version - have abso-bloody-lutley no idea why though.
    Who would care enough to download half a gig for a ever-so-slightly better graphical polish.

    What a load of wank.

  • space_ace #8 6 years ago

    next gen is ugly?

  • drumbaby #9 6 years ago

    Well, she's got a funny shaped head.

  • Mr_Whacker #10 6 years ago

    "and will someone shoot the bitch and start another character"

    Exactly what Mr Gard tried. Oh dear.