Shadow of the Tomb Raider Definitive Edition from Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montréal and Square Enix has been released today with a Linux port available from Feral Interactive.
If you're in the camp of preferring the first Tomb Raider reboot to Rise of the Tomb Raider, fear not, as Shadow of the Tomb Raider is apparently much better. However, I think you're all rather odd as I thoroughly enjoyed the first two games. That's okay though, different opinions on fun are what keep the world going. It's fantastic to see Linux get the full trilogy, since we often miss out.
Direct Link
Thanks to Linux getting the port later, we get the full Definitive Edition which comes with all seven DLC challenge tombs, as well as all downloadable weapons, outfits and skills.
Linux port details
Running with the Vulkan API, the Linux version should run well for most gamers. Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit is the main distribution they're supporting but it should (as with their other ports) work fine across most others.
As for specifications, Feral Interactive said for NVIDIA you need at least the 418.56 driver and AMD requires Mesa 19.0.1 or newer. Intel GPUs are not supported. On top of that you're going to want at a minimum a 2GB AMD R9 285 (GCN 3rd Generation) or a 2GB Nvidia GTX 680 according to their Steam listed specifications. To get the most out of it though? The recommended specifications on Steam are an 8GB AMD Radeon RX 480 or an 8GB Nvidia GTX 1080 .
Sometimes it really is the little things, like Feral Interactive's customized Linux launcher. It always looks great styled to the game and helps to show just how much attention they give to their ports:
Not just good looking though, as it's feature filled too. It will ask you if you want to send crash reports to Feral directly, helping them to further improve. Always good to see something like that. Many other helpful things included like setting you resolution and preferred screen, accessing the soundtrack and wallpapers, direct support links and more.
If you wish to get the most out of the performance, ensure your CPU is set into High Performance mode. You can do this manually if you wish, by entering this in your choice terminal app:
echo performance | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor
Played before and found your save game doesn't appear? You can try to copy it over to:
~/.local/share/feral-interactive/Shadow of the Tomb Raider/SaveData/[steamid]
As for the performance, during my testing this evening on Manjaro Linux it performs incredibly well. Even when absolutely maxed out (above the "Highest" preset), with anti-aliasing on the maximum SMAAT2x it was seeing an average of 125FPS which is awesome.
The 2080 Ti is obviously a very powerful card, so here's a look at how some other cards perform in comparison at various levels.
That's a very well optimised port, at least when going by benchmark results the Linux port performs extremely well. After playing a bunch of it myself, it holds up too. The actual real-world gameplay is quite often better than what the benchmark shows, regularly much higher as benchmarks are usually a stress-test of course.
During the gameplay, even with the 1060 on High settings it remained smooth and enjoyable. Certainly seems like Feral Interactive have done some outstanding work here.
Click to enlarge screenshots, all taken in the Linux version.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is an incredibly pretty game, some of it is truly gorgeous. That intro scene too certainly got the blood flowing—how intense!
Much like the first two instalments, there's plenty of over the top action scenes that have you run, swing and leap to safety which I always enjoy. It's like being truly part of a movie at times, I once again feel like I need to own a Pickaxe as it seems they're handy for all occasions. It's a lot more of the same, with a few tweaks that doesn't really change the overall formula. That's to be expected though, since this is the third and final part of this story. It would be a little odd to see them drastically change it. So if you enjoyed Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider, you will certainly have a lot of fun with this one as well.
However, there's a lot of newer little features and changes in Shadow. When climbing for example, you can now rappel down from rocks onto platforms below. It's only a small change but a welcome addition to everything else, especially as it helps keep the tension going. You're already running and leaping from one unstable platform to another, frantically tapping your key to grab on, now you've got to rappel and swing from a rope up high and hopefully not fall to your doom? Sure why not.
Where to buy
You can pick up Shadow of the Tomb Raider Definitive Edition from Humble Store, Feral Store and Steam. If you own the normal version, you should be able to upgrade. Recommended? A resounding yes.
We will be having a livestream of the release tonight on Twitch, Sin (our streamer) will also be showing off plenty more of it throughout the week.
As another reminder, we also still have Life is Strange 2 and Total War Saga: TROY to come from Feral Interactive as well.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I just hope this is not Feral's swan song. (or should I say penguin song?)Why would it be? They only recently confirmed TROY and Life is Strange 2 is yet to come.
These were announced yonks ago and nothing yet after that. Unlike Aspyr, I don't think Feral will just up and forget they do Linux ports, but it does look like Switch and mobile are what is buttering their bread right now.
As far as i can tell, feral has a pretty rigid structure when it comes to this, mobile is a different division than linux.
Comandante Ñoñardo Nov 6, 2019
Wow... Your regional prices are 1/4 of my regional prices (Brazil)!! How come?As I understand it is not available yet as Steam page does not have ability to buy the game, so news are premature.
EDIT: Feral Store key works, so it is only a problem on steam.
Maybe is a regional issue.
The game is available for sale in Argentina.
Sadly the Trial version wasn't ported...
That is because the brazilian currency is more strong than the Argentinian peso.
That is how regional pricing works...
Sadly it won't install for me. It will only download the shader cache and not the game.
Yep the very same thing happens to me now, before I cound't even proceed to the checkout on Steam and now it only downloads the shader caches... Not a brilliant release this...
edit: never mind, once the shares where downloaded the game suddenly appeared to download.
Last edited by F.Ultra on 6 November 2019 at 6:08 pm UTC
Sadly it won't install for me. It will only download the shader cache and not the game.
Yep the very same thing happens to me now, before I cound't even proceed to the checkout on Steam and now it only downloads the shader caches... Not a brilliant release this...
Not to be funny but it seems to be an issue at your end, the rest of us appear to have had no problem with it, including myself.
Hardly Ferrals fault, No ?
Sadly it won't install for me. It will only download the shader cache and not the game.
Yep the very same thing happens to me now, before I cound't even proceed to the checkout on Steam and now it only downloads the shader caches... Not a brilliant release this...
Not to be funny but it seems to be an issue at your end, the rest of us appear to have had no problem with it, including myself.
Hardly Ferrals fault, No ?
The purchase problems where clearly Steams fault since they had some filter that decided that one of the included DLCs in the bundle (and the bundle is the only available item for this game in my region) was already present in the game itself so it refused to continue.
However the "only download shader cache" solved itself, once the shaders where downloaded the game appeared in the download queue. So it was just that it didn't appear in the queue in the normal way.
edit: and in no way have I blamed Feral for this, this is all on Steam.
Last edited by F.Ultra on 6 November 2019 at 6:11 pm UTC
Sadly it won't install for me. It will only download the shader cache and not the game.
Yep the very same thing happens to me now, before I cound't even proceed to the checkout on Steam and now it only downloads the shader caches... Not a brilliant release this...
Not to be funny but it seems to be an issue at your end, the rest of us appear to have had no problem with it, including myself.
Hardly Ferrals fault, No ?
The purchase problems where clearly Steams fault since they had some filter that decided that one of the included DLCs in the bundle (and the bundle is the only available item for this game in my region) was already present in the game itself so it refused to continue.
However the "only download shader cache" solved itself, once the shaders where downloaded the game appeared in the download queue. So it was just that it didn't appear in the queue in the normal way.
edit: and in no way have I blamed Feral for this, this is all on Steam.
Ah, I see what you mean. Never looked at what downloaded first as set to install then left it.
The wording used came across like it was aimed at ferral screwing up to me, Sorry.
Sadly it won't install for me. It will only download the shader cache and not the game.
Yep the very same thing happens to me now, before I cound't even proceed to the checkout on Steam and now it only downloads the shader caches... Not a brilliant release this...
Not to be funny but it seems to be an issue at your end, the rest of us appear to have had no problem with it, including myself.
Hardly Ferrals fault, No ?
The purchase problems where clearly Steams fault since they had some filter that decided that one of the included DLCs in the bundle (and the bundle is the only available item for this game in my region) was already present in the game itself so it refused to continue.
However the "only download shader cache" solved itself, once the shaders where downloaded the game appeared in the download queue. So it was just that it didn't appear in the queue in the normal way.
edit: and in no way have I blamed Feral for this, this is all on Steam.
Ah, I see what you mean. Never looked at what downloaded first as set to install then left it.
The wording used came across like it was aimed at ferral screwing up to me, Sorry.
Nah, Feral is gold!
So it downloaded for me and I can play it, but the extra content is missing. In the store it says I own the definitive edition, but doesn't mark the DLCs as owned and also doesn't download them.... Hope this gets fixed soon.. At least meanwhile I can play the main story. With all options and VSync enabled I'm getting a solid 60fps @ 4K :)
Send an email to [email protected] so they can look into it.
grumpytoad Nov 7, 2019
I'm running openSUSE Leap 15.1 with a second hardware device, running sound through a HDMI cable to the monitor, so I guess it's all a bit of a snowflake edge case.
Everything else works great, thx Feral.
Just a quick note from me: I couldn't get sound to work for this game without setting the FERAL_SYSTEM_ASOUND=1 environment variable.
What does that do and where did you learn of it?
I'm running Jack (no pulseaudio) through a USB UMC204HD and get stuttering sound unless I stop it. When stopped I also have to tweak my .asoundrc to disable mixing in the rear outs on this unit or it also stutters. So it's just a very simple .asoundrc specifying the device as the default and that works.
It's no biggie as I use the scripting options of QjackCtl to automate this but I'd still be interested in furthering my understanding.
As to the game - loving it ^_^ The only other issue I've had is one hard freeze, which was annoying but it was just the once.
Edit: meant to add, I did try FERAL_SYSTEM_ASOUND=1, amongst other things.
Last edited by fabertawe on 7 November 2019 at 11:22 am UTC
grumpytoad Nov 7, 2019
What does that do and where did you learn of it?
I'm running Jack (no pulseaudio) through a USB UMC204HD and get stuttering sound unless I stop it. When stopped I also have to tweak my .asoundrc to disable mixing in the rear outs on this unit or it also stutters. So it's just a very simple .asoundrc specifying the device as the default and that works.
FERAL_SYSTEM_ASOUND and other environment variables are used in the startup script
.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Shadow of the Tomb Raider/ShadowOfTheTombRaider.sh, which attempts to override the ALSA dll used by the steam runtime with the system one. There's a comment in there about setting STEAM_RUNTIME_PREFER_HOST_LIBRARIES, so that might help ? In the past, when I haven't used pulseaudio, I recall using ALSA_PCM_CARD and ALSA_PCM_DEVICE to some degree of success.
yep, did so; as even checking local files for integrity didn't do the trick and redownload would mean at least 6 hours if I get full bandwidth all the time and don't do anything else on the internet, so I'd like to avoid that...So it downloaded for me and I can play it, but the extra content is missing. In the store it says I own the definitive edition, but doesn't mark the DLCs as owned and also doesn't download them.... Hope this gets fixed soon.. At least meanwhile I can play the main story. With all options and VSync enabled I'm getting a solid 60fps @ 4K :)
Send an email to [email protected] so they can look into it.
Last edited by slapin on 8 November 2019 at 4:04 am UTC
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me