New Tomb Raider reboot art shows a darker adventure

Tomb Raider fans have found much to revel in or deride as Crystal Dynamics' second reboot of the elderly Tomb Raider franchise gets under away, with the latest batch of screenshots, renders and concept art likely to prove equally fruitful for fanboys and critics alike.

Rounding off Game Informer's month of Tomb Raider is a jam-packed bonus gallery giving a much more convincing argument than the snippets revealed so far.

Gaming's leading lady has her makeover more fully detailed, and it's not as dramatic as the vitriole would have you believe.

Lara's blood-stained and disheveled appearance takes a backseat to the horrors revealed in other screens, revealing enemy creatures conjuring comparisons to, among others, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune's Spanish mutants.

Gameplay aspects are hinted at by filenames like "burnable barrier," and a mysterious grey-beard is given the tentative name of Roth.

Tomb Raider is set to release some time this year on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, abandoning both Core's original canon and that established by Crystal Dynamics with its Legend/Anniversary/Underworld trilogy.

Crowned by the slogan "a survivor is born", the reboot is a classic origins story examining Lara's transformation into an action-adventure superstar.