Update: The cropped Tomb Raider images illustrating this article – which was essentially a long-winded link to Game Informer’s site – have been removed. This is because Game Informer – after threatening our readers on Twitter – sent us a legal threat of our very own. A slightly ironic reaction bearing in mind the content of the original post, which is below.

Original post:

Here’s what would be a good idea. If information about games was made widely available so we could know about games. Games aren’t a special secret, they’re a commercial product, and all the tedious drip-drip-drip of information, trailers, screenshots, artwork, icons, box art, instruction manual pages, RAM specs, photos of the sound designer’s bottom, competitions to win the tears of the lead developer after a meeting with the marketing manager, is all advertising. Free advertising, frantically posted by sites as stupid as us, desperately scrabbling to grab these morsels of information thrown to us peasants from over the castle walls. That’s the system, that’s how we all survive. So why on Earth would you then attempt to inhibit that information by distributing it through one (albeit splendid) source, who can watermark everything and then justifiably get narked off when other sites/mags nick all their information uncredited.

So, Tomb Raider – there’s some new screenshots, but only Game Informer has them. I’ve chopped off the logos from four of them and made them RPS size because THAT WILL SHOW THEM. (Edit: Well, I guess I showed them then.)

It’s a bit like Nike announcing a new trainer, but insisting only one man is allowed to know what they look like, but he can tell his friends, so long as they promise not to take any photos. IT’S STUPID. STOP IT.

Anyway, there’s fourteen megatons of information about the game over on the Game Informer site, along with what may well be screenshots but could be art I mean I don’t know I can’t be bothered really if they don’t make them widely available.

And they look rather good.

And their site says we should check back today to find out more. (Well, actually, it says the first of April, but then America doesn’t know what order time goes in.) WHAT MORE? It’s been today for ages! It’s almost tomorrow! Hurry up America, you slow-coaches.

Edit: Looks like they missed that deadline then.

The images on this story now come from the excellent Wikimedia Commons, where artwork and photography is freely shared. The first photograph was taken by MarcoCrupi. The second is a public domain painting by Dutch artist, Aert van der Neer. The third is a photograph by the excellent John “noodlesnacks” Harrison, and you can buy his prints here. The fourth is Portrait of Two Children by George Henry Harlow, and is in the public domain.

Meanwhile, if you want to see the screenshots, they’ve been reposted without politely cropping them down so they’re inferior and suggesting the original site is a better place to see them, all over the place.

Games Radar

Softpedia

CVG

Gamernode

NOW Gamer

TheSixthAxis

Gaming Evolution