Until this morning I’d never heard of programming specialists Nixxes, but it seems that for the last fourteen years my PC’s fans have been roaring in dull applause of their efforts. For that’s how long Nixxes have sat on the banks of the cross-platform release river, nudging big games towards PC-destined currents with a long stick. They’ve most recently worked on Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Hitman: Absolution, and now a comprehensive port of Tomb Raider.
“The team at Crystal intended to make the game of their careers and we are extremely proud of the part we have played in the project’s development,” said Nixxes director Jurjen Katsman.
Crystal Dynamics head Darrell Gallagher added: “With over a decade of experience working alongside AMD and Nixxes at Crystal Dynamics alone, we had rock solid partners on board to create a superb Tomb Raider experience for PC gamers around the world.”
The result is a features list boasting full Steamworks integration, lovely SSAO-enabled lighting, high res textures, especially pretty shadows and cloths and more detailed, if toadless, tessellation. Elsewhere, there’s support for gamepads and Steam Big Picture Mode.
CA have also partnered with AMD to support Eyefinity – that ludicrous six-monitor display tech.
But you don’t need that.Here are all the ingredients you’ll really need to play Tomb Raider, which actually seems more than willing to slow its pace to walk in step with low spec rigs:
Minimum system requirements for PC
- Windows XP Service Pack 3, Windows Vista,7,8 (32bit/64bit)
- DirectX 9 graphics card with 512Mb Video RAM, e.g.AMD Radeon HD 2600 XT,nVidia 8600
- Dual core CPU, e.g.AMD Athlon64 X2 2.1 Ghz (4050+)
- Intel Core2 Duo 1.86 Ghz (E6300)
- 1GB Memory (2GB on Vista)
Recommended system requirements for PC
- Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8
- DirectX 11 graphics card with 1GB Video RAM, e.g.AMD Radeon HD 4870,nVidia GTX 480
- Quad core CPU, e.g.AMD Phenom II X2 565,Intel Core i5-750
- 4GB Memory
Can you run Crystal Dynamics’ intended opus? And more pertinently, will you?