Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light PC Performance

The latest installment in the Tomb Raider series is quite different from every previous game. This time, instead of a classic third person game, we have an isometric 3D action/adventure/platform game that emphasizes a lot in looting and upgrading your beloved girl. It comes as a shock that this experimentation is among the best we've seen and shows the way Tomb Raider should had evolved. We all love the breasts of Mrs Croft but after a while, what matters is the game itself and not the boobies. And here we have a refined gameplay that isn't ruined by the problems of yesterday (regarding game and camera controls).

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light's game engine is remarkable and utilizes all four cores of a quadcore CPU. There are some great physics effects here and there that add a nice touch to the environments. CPU usage was around 70-75% and the game was running amazingly well. We didn't notice any slowdown even when there were a lot of different enemies on screen.

Regarding the GPU, Lara Croft's latest adventure doesn't stress them. With a GTX295 and the SLI patch of EVGA, we had 48-80% usage at 2048x1536 + Max Details + 16xQAA. You will notice the low resolution textures immediately, as well as the blur/DOF filters and the advanced particles effects. And those water effects are simply astounding. Both Lara and the enemies are created with a lot of detail and polies, so you won't notice any weird or rough edges. Collision detection is fine, although sometimes Lara will get stuck to a wall or on a rock. We'd love to see better textures, but given the fact that it runs with 60fps constant, it doesn't require a high-end PC and it is a digital download only, we can forgive these limitations.

If you are a fan of Lara and action/adventure/platforming games, get it. Till then, enjoy some high resolution screenshots of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light!