In 2014, Square Enix released a remastered version of the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. And now, after almost a decade, this Definitive Edition is finally available on PC.
For those unaware, Tomb Raider Definitive Edition features the main game and all the DLCs that came out for it. Moreover, it brings some graphical changes to the game. For instance, Lara now has a refined character, with brighter skin. Moreover, there are some slight lighting changes.
Below you can find a comparison video between the original 2013 PC version and the Definitive Edition. And in case you’re wondering, no. Lara’s bombs have not been downgraded.
Now while this is good news, there is a catch. This Definitive Edition is only available on Microsoft Store. I don’t know why, but Steam does not have this version. And, since this was a shadow-drop, I don’t expect Square Enix to release it on Valve’s distribution service.
So that’s a bummer for those who want to play it but don’t like Microsoft Store. Still, if you already own Tomb Raider 2013, you can skip it. The visual upgrades are minimal, so you won’t miss anything special.
Speaking of Tomb Raider, the new installment in the series will be powered by Unreal Engine 5. And while there is no ETA on when it will come out, you can find here its first artworks.
Finally, I highly recommend trying the RTX Remix Mod for the first Tomb Raider. This mod adds Full Ray Tracing/Path Tracing effects to them. And while it’s still in a pretty early state, it makes the game look kind of cool.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
Tomb Raider 2013 epitomized the dumbed down, regenerating health, waypoint driven, QTE infested action game of the 360/PS3 era. And the “Definitive Edition” was the first example of publishers repackaging a PC version onto the then new PS4/XB1 (with some very minor tweaks) to resell at or near full price.
exactly
It is a good thing that kind of games died out.
Did it?
They didn’t die out.
Sony PS5 exclusives are all like this, they’re cinematic games with QTE made for people with the reflexes of a turtle.
Sony exclusives are designed for non-gamers, they’re literally made by hollywood directors.
They didn’t die out.
Playstation exclusives are all like this, they’re cinematic games with QTE made for people with the reflexes of a turtle.
Sony exclusives are designed for non-gamers, they’re literally made by hollywood directors.
No
You’re an idiot if you think those Sony exclusives are “cinematic games with QTE.” Hating for the sake of hating, what’s new?
So basically this definitive edition is worthless?
I prefer the old Lara model
And the lightning too.
That whole “Definitive Edition” thing was so odd. Not releasing it on PC at all, only having it for consoles and also changing the face model. Like…why? I liked the game fine, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the originals in terms of gameplay. It was the beginning of games being more movies than games.
Multiplats sold like 10:1 on consoles compared to PC back then, thought that changed fast, plus Square Enix is Japanese and much more focused on consoles.
Nice paid reshade mod, and the old Lara looks more feminine, the “improved” has been mewing for some time it would seem.
The beginning of the trend of making every woman in video games an ugly stick battery victim. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b2a4f04320c83f4cc249ba3c27eb5206811201cc4569c4946c9876292e2fe8dc.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7d4d6a79ba70e201541d014132e56101fb0e0139056acd1d2415d2f3d387efb8.jpg
Honest question; Do you think it’s intentional, or just the result of people sucking at their jobs (i.e. the industry hiring based on sexual preference/skin color that’s not white vs hiring people who are right for the job)?
My wife asked about this the other day, “Why are all video game females ugly now? Why is there no actual good looking women in games, or even just normal looking ones? They all look ugly”. I say it’s probably a bit of both, devs are hiring based on skin color/diversity instead of hiring people with actual skills right for the job, and also those diversity hires suck at their job.
The cynic in me would say it’s also some sort of propaganda/agenda push from companies like Sweet Baby Inc to make all characters look androgynous and like one unisex monster instead of making male and female characters look like normal human beings that look different because we are different.
I 100% think it’s intentional.
don’t think because its the truth.
It’s absolutely intentional, look how much backlash Stellar Blade is getting from journo cliques and ideologically driven hack developers just for existing.
100% intentional, there is a ugly african women who features in a lot of modern games and they get her features right, it’s only attractive women that gets throw under the bus.
… https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/43a2dd938022b11ea5f05fa79efd96166a6faf46afc0c2836ae4f07ff40af002.png
I bet she is less ugly than her real life counterpart, funny how that works.
I said they get her features right, i didn’t say they made her prettier or less ugly, in case it wasn’t clear.
the modern “prey” anyone? woman in there are so ugly they are kind of scary
Indeed it is, which is a shame because the game is good.
It is absolutely intentional. They consistently screw up ONLY the female faces. Just look at male Ryder in Mass Effect: Andromeda. He looks practically the same as the real life model, whereas the female one is an abomination as showcased by the screenshot @drearierspider:disqus posted. Not just that, but also for certain games the males will wear more revealing clothes than the females. Worst example of this is the last couple of Mortal Kombat games.
I think there were even some leaked design documents from (I believe) Microsoft that showed that they encourage less traditionally feminine designs. They do it under the false virtue of ‘representation,’ but we all know they do it to spite us men because heaven forbid we like our fictional female characters to not be eyesores. Their disdain for us has lately been on display on social media (such as Twitter or YouTube). You can find them on threads or videos about the latest Warhammer fiasco.
It’s very intentional my friend, feminism, lbgt666+… all the wokeness can hell conjure is intentional. Video Games as a medium to by pass and enjoy your time is gone… the minions of the devil cannot create anything good and beautiful, they can only ruin what good forces have invented or made.
What’s more demonic is being a populist.
And reneging on societies institutions and practices for whatever in-group cosmic ideology you believe in.”Legion, for we are many”
And listening to your own classical liberal ‘daemon’ as Peterson puts it above all else
If we can’t be stewards of our institutions, tasked with exploring all the possible inexplicable hidden dimensions of the cosmos . Might as well be a grouping of cosmic debris amongst ourselves.
Christianity very likely started out as an intellectual tradition before it turned into this individuated polytheistic thing it is today. Latter is what is now called ‘Gnostscism'( there are many god-heads in gnostic beliefs but only one truth. One of them being Lucifer himself as one. From his inflection point in the cosmos he is all powerful, and he actually does have something to teach us. Lucifer and Jesus share the morningstar. People’s are parts yin and yang. But there is only ONE higher order with invisible thread’s throughout the cosmos. This was the tradition(an obvious theme of course )I got the impression the anti-christ came up from. Obvly Satan just wanted to copy god and split himself into three..no four pieces Well if you are gonna fight a lost cause might as well make a bigger splash(knows categorically that gods all powerful) /s ). Cause Christians inner mindscape is positions of standing and figureheads rather then one continuous consciousness. That’s why relying on super materialist concepts like ‘archetypes’ gets you as opposed to consciously navigating the world.
Also capitalists don’t believe in command theory. And use the market as essentially as a blind giant computer instead of making conscious choices in the moment. ( the apple from the tree of knowledge. Adam and Eve were steward’s of the garden before they were kicked out and the bean counting had occurred)
Maybe we can just stop this ideological shuffle and capture and actually just be conscious people and stop calling this person or that person retrobate(plp choose to be homeless aimmrite?)or demonic. For your post-modernist label, there’s your neo-liberal. This is an ouroboros eating itself. You will never be able to out-evil and out-manipulate your evil enemy
Mythacists say that the early church leaders accusing one another of being demonically possessed was just a political infighting pitted as a spiritual battle. Let’s break out of this singularity.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e9a713daf94c8d90a217fe56e57514899efd1e8c92160d4cfa30285f3e46943a.jpg
By mentioning pseudo intellectual, drug addict zionist Peterson, you basically discredit your wall of text.
its 100% intentional
It’s pretty simple. 40% of people live paycheck to paycheck. And we have to truckers, who are more likely to be replaced by self driving trucks threatening fast food workers that they’ll get replaced by machines if they continue on insisting getting paid a dignified MINIMUM WAGE.
It’s just part of the three body problem of polemics
You make it so that everyday people and everyday lives are squeezed out. So they spill over into your subcultures. And self insert(s), cause where else are they gonna go?
“You’ll own nothing and be happy” and “live in the pod and eat the bugs” Is nothing new to those living in apartments and having oatmeal and ramen for dinner. Did you know the serf meal that is called porridge is just unflavored oatmeal? And Ratatouille is a savory dish
It’s so difficult for people to just allow others there own spaces, and don’t say lean-in thing’s/ cut across nonsense and keep to your own spaces. Like why are we commenting on women’s bodies? Are men just jealous cause women have a valid outlook on living their best life in the moment? The infamous interview with Jordan Peterson on the issue was just this piecemail outlook on presentation and appearance. Men are the only capitalist stooges that are try hard ‘s…in a service economy
STFU and keep yourselves and other communities will do the same.
Don’t find yourself gabbing about minimum wage and calling full grown a*s adults looking forward to working the lionshare of their life anyways, regardless of being a fast food worker or a doctor the playground epithet of ‘lazy’, or ‘hustle’ .
Zoomers are just acting out how Boomers have regarded every other generation as being ‘Pater Pans’.
Drop the paternalism and everyone will go back to being adults. Crazy, I know.( adults should understand the concept of contributing to society. They shouldn’t need to live in duress with the threat of their Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs being taken away inorder to commune with society. If two decades of parental and institutional indoctrination aren’t enough to make upstanding citizens of society. Societies to blame.)
they both look like advanced type of autism…
The MS Store page says the game was published by Crystal Dynamics, not Square Enix.
I wouldn’t play this trash even if they paid me.
Finally, a Microsoft Store exclusive which is going to be a real game-changer!
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/45a5f969ada16d6aa60a68bc30b8ce761c2eea742b9e4e4274017570d266d497.jpg
The original Gears of War is still Microsoft Store exclusive. I’d grab it on Steam for $5 if it were available, but that’s the only game I care about in that digital STD factory.
GoW:UE you mean, the original GoW came out back on GFWL which no longer works (lmao scammed). I think there were a few other MS Store exclusives like Forza 6 Apex and Forza Horizon 3, but both of those have been delisted now.
Just pirate it.
There is a neat mod on moddb that brings back multiplayer with bots, and one mod with Gears 3 features, but i think that one is a bit buggy.
get the cracked nocd and play . i have the game and did that.
The ancient GFWL one can be pirated easily but I think the Ultimate Edition is one of those rare games that remains uncracked even to this day. I was able to find a post from a few years back saying it was cracked but that version can’t save which is usually grounds for being nuked.
I remember playing the game pirated. I don’t remember specificaly the save issue, but i think it can be bypassed by not relying on checkpoints, just play until a chapter ends and a new one begin starts and you are golden, you can continue from there. I also played the emulated xbox sequels this way.
Nope, your save method works only for Xenia emulation of GoW 1-2-3 and Judgement, it doesn’t work on the pirated copy of GoW UE, not to mention it doesn’t work at all on anything beyond Windows 10 1603 just like GoW 4.
It’s cheap AF on the MS Store though.
I still managed to play the campaign from start to finish somehow.
“It’s cheap AF on the MS Store though.”
But does it work on other version of Windows?
The legit version works on any modern Windows
That’s cool, tough i rather try pirating it than giving money to Microsoft.
It wasn’t properly cracked, they used the Forza Motorsport 7 crack on it and it worked but it has the save issue and it doesn’t work beyond Win 10 1603
GoW UE needs to be optimized first before any re-release, it’s a 2015 game and my old GTX 1080Ti has heavy frame drops when shadows are set to anything beyond Low.
You’d think that you could sacrifice some shadow fidelity to get stable framerate like i did but then you notice that Low shadows also disable any form of dynamic shadows (yes even your character’s shadow), all of this because of sh*t and unstable GPU usage.
Whatever the hardware and the settings you have, you got to sacrifice dynamic shadows to get decent framerate
I don’t remember peformance issues playing Gow UE with my GTX 1060, granted i played with a pirated copy years ago so i am relying on memory here.
Well i tried the game for you just right now, don’t trust your memory lol, the game is notoriously known to have this issue with shadow settings, even the devs acknowledged it but stopped supporting this game probably due to very low sales on PC, the XB1 version runs at 30 fps so the framerate is not high enough to notice the issue.
I played the remake from start to finish, so not a big issue for me, but keep different configs in mind, it’s probably some compatibility issue.
I won’t even look into this game. If it’s only available on the MS store then it’s dead to me. I have bought 2 Gears of War games on that wretched sh*t-store and never again will I spend a penny there. It is by far the worst store that I have ever used.
No, and hell no!
The MS version might be news, but a Definitive Edition mod at least for Lara’s face has existed for the Steam version for a long time.
Looks like the MS version has been on the botox.
Real question is if this Def edition can be pirated.
Longer neck and bigger head in Definitive Edition. Definitively Male Lara.
As much as i want this version i wont touch that crap store
Many won’t remember, but this version was really ahead with the pc version in terms of graphics. I’ve always felt how flat ambient occlusion and skin shading looked in pc and not to mention the new tressfx that isn’t black wires. There were mod attempts to bring the pc version closer to definitive version but it doesn’t work for every outfits. I hope this gets a proper release.
I think the definitive edition had a more dynamic environment too, with moving branches that reacted to the wind and such.
AO is broken in the new version and the updated TressFX that was used on consoles is overall a downgrade on the version that was used on PC.
That’s just one’s personal perspective. Look at the pants and vegetation. It’s not hallowing anymore. And just look at the eyes how they’re expressive and have better animations.
The old TressFX was unoptimised mess, whenever camera gets close to Lara in cinematic, the fps dropped to 30 or 40 even on my gtx 1070 gpu, while im not to give qualified opinion on the new TressFX becoz i have never played the definitive edition, in Rise of the tomb raider the hair effects were a huge upgrade with no performance hit at all.
The original TressFX was indeed extremely demanding.
The tech was almost free performance wise in Rise and Shadow. Not to mention it’s default on in Deus Ex Mankind Divided and Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West.
And the tweaks here to get TR2013 with fancy hair on 8th gen consoles, only 1 year later, do show. But it’s still a downgrade for PC anyway. We don’t have 2013 era (or older) PCs anymore.
Square Enix doesn’t own Tomb Raider.
Doesn’t look like anything that couldn’t be done with Reshade ……
Bought it, test it.
Definitive Edition changes:
– improved audio mixing
– wind particle effects
– more vegetation
– more shadows
– some new cubemaps reflections!
– the new face (eh?)
– updated TressFX implementation
– better godrays
– Lara herself is slightly brighter in the environment
– some slight texture changes
Good news:
– the “Definitive Edition” changes
– 1st tomb is now no longer buggy jank that can soft lock
– updated TressFX means the hair doesn’t spazz out sometimes, like it did before
Bad news:
– AO on Ultra is broken, doesn’t work
– AO on High kinda works, you’ll see a random black square in the upper left corner tho
– Refresh Rate is jank, needs to be selected twice to make sure you are above 60 Hz
– UI elements mentioning that “an upgrade is now available” is positioned partially OFF SCREEN, lmao. Terrible
– “Quit” on the main menu doesn’t get highlighted
– updated TressFX from Definitive Edition is less lush than the original PC release, which means it’s overall a downgrade. It’s especially noticeable during close ups, but in general 3rd person camera too
– it’s a UWP release, meaning “Exclusive Fullscreen” is also broken. So no downsampling. You need to downsample the desktop first
– I can swear Lara’s model overall has less polygons than the original PC release, but it’s a subtle tweak. EDIT: checked comparison videos: VASTLY less polygons in places in Definitive Edition. Oof.
Neutral:
– the new face never was fully polished, it still looks off
– the few FMVs that show the Xbox 360 era Lara face + no TressFX hair is now even funnier vs the real time gameplay with the new face and TressFX
Even assuming they would fix all the bugs and limitations this release currently has, the face is mostly a deal break for most.
So it will never fully become “the definitive way” to play Tomb Raider 2013.
Oh my! that was quick. Well its UWP release so bugs are already expected that’s why it needs proper release on steam so that something could be done on it. Now about Lara’s Face. The reason definitive edition looks off is because of the new position of her Eyes. Look closely in comparison to the original PC release and it seems they made it bigger and slightly shifted it wide. The mod “PS4 to PC lara face model” fixes it and you can see it’s actually an improvement. But yeaah! they silently pushed this release so it sucks
I tried the PC mod for her face in the past. I found the face mod to be too stiff there also. I assumed it’s a mod limitation. But no, the original updated face model is stiff like that also.
Great Job , it should be mentioned on article at least pin the comment
Ambient Occlusion on Ultra technically works, but it’s completely misaligned. (You can easily see it in areas without fog, dust etc. when slowly turning the camera). So weird, I’ve never seen a bug like this before.
I did. It’s how ReShade MXAO goes out of alignment sometimes in some games. Exact same effect.
wait which version is supposed to be better? both look good in their way
Wtf is that face? Is she half Asian or Latina now or what?
And then these people complain about the so-called “whitewashing”.
Personally, I almost never identify with any character since almost a decade, they’re too mixed for my Aryan face.
Gears Of War UE & Gears 4 are so broken and unplayable outside from some very specific Win 10 builds because of the UWP cancer
I wouldn’t bother with the Microsoft Store even if Half life 3 was an exclusive there
Gears Ultimate is iffy, yes.
Gears 4 has always been flawless.
I’ll never understand the love for this game.
I remember watching some “let’s play” video when it came out, and as soon as I saw all the QTE (quick-time events), which is a very outdated and frustrating gameplay mechanic from the early 2000s (for the two guys in the back who forgot about it), I thought “NO THANKS”.
The sequels are much better, with way less QTE.
This game was famous for the press X to not get r@ped which i found hilarious at the time. Simpler, stupid times
This game was famous for the press X to not get r@ped which i found hilarious at the time. Simpler, stupid times
Now everyone can experience the precise moment when the series really went to sh*t.
Unless it does away with the relentless QTE’s I’m not interested. They killed the game for me, none of the previous entries needed them.
is this the one remade with the improved engine of Rise of the Tomb Raider.