Advert for an advert, anyone? Screens from upcoming trailer confirm stunningly-rendered desks for Tomb Raider reboot! (Tomb Raider (2011))

One of my absolute favourite things about this generation of gaming is the new fad of releasing teasers for teasers for teasers. No-one gets excited about trailers or game reveals any more, let's face it. Nowadays your game isn't worth anything unless your publicity is publicised with at least two announcements of the announcement of its upcoming piece of publicity.

The latest game to get this treatment is this year's gritty prequel reboot of Tomb Raider - which to be fair, we are all really excited about. There's a full GC trailer due to hit tombraider.com on the 3rd of June, but in the meantime we have two screengrabs from said trailer with which to whet the appetites of your eyes and ears. Yes, that's four whole appetites pleasured right there, people. Eight, if you multiply them by both screenshots.

What do they show? Lara and a desk. But oh boy, is it the most spectacular desk in all of gamendom...

There's Lara, looking all muddy and befuddled and throughly knackered right out. We assume this shot is from a scene depicting the beginning of the game, given that the new Tomb Raider follows Lara's journey from weakling teenager to badass raider of ceremonial death chambers via a long fight for survival following a ship wreck. Look, there's a wrecked ship right there. And an old-school galleon in the background there too. Old-school galleons are far cooler than modern ships, with their rubbish cold metal and boring pointy angles.

And here's the real star of the show! A desk! And what a desk it is! Seriously, myself and Justin really have just been nerding out over the photo-realistic qualities of the rendering. The lighting in particular is fantastic. The subtle bloom effect on that paper is the best bloom effect we've seen on a piece of paper in a very long time. And we do get nerdy over bloom lighting.

Also, those little pointy things on the logo on that mug look a little bit like magic mushrooms. You might say they're clearly arrowheads, given the shafts and flights below them, but we remain suspicious. Are Lara'a far-fetched adventures set to be revealed to be naught more than the result of a psychotropic fungus stew? It remains to be seen, but we'll no doubt find out soon.

June the 3rd. That's when these mysteries and no doubt far more will be fully unveiled via the medium of glorious moving images. And hopefully we'll get an even bigger look at the game proper at E3.

Seriously though, that is a bloody nice desk...

May 27, 2011

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