BTW: is there a way to change the controls to Resident Evil style (left-right rotates Lara instead of running left/right). I never really got around to liking the Uncharted/MGS style of controls.. just didn't seem right after the playing so many good Tomb Raiders with the original control scheme...
I'm not sure if there really is a "rotate the character" control at all as opposed to an "orbit the camera" control. While you're actually moving, changing the camera orientation is the same as rotating the character, but not so while you're not moving.
All in all, i'm impressed. If the game had been given a DX10 path to get around DX9 shader length limitations (its not like the hardware doesn;t have multiple times the shading capability of consoles) then it would be a definate buy. As it stands, its back on the possible list depending on how different the 360 version is.
Making a game that's Vista-only didn't really sit well with anybody -- especially not in the focus groups and surveys over the entire course of development. Having separate SKUs to avoid the Games For Windows nonsense is one possibility, but the fees associated with that are utterly criminal. In any case, I think there is some uncertainty about whether DX10 is worth it at any point because by the time we have any additional game coming close to release, all indications are that DX10 will already have been long superceded, and you'd be making this same complaint about DX11 and/or Larrabee if we came out with a DX10 title.
And honestly, from the "want" angle of development, Larrabee is many times more attractive than DX10/11 any day of the week. In practice, of course, the "want" angle is infinitely meaningless. The "need" angle is the real concern and is, of course, completely unknown.
Second an actual question about the PC game: SMM, can you tell us whether CD handles the port in house or is it the Dutch folks from Nixxes that handle this version? I'd guess the latter, given the great relationship between CD and Nixxes, but a confirmation would be even better than a guess.
The answer is C) All of the above.
Crystal and Nixxes put together makes one studio, more or less. PC, PS3, and 360 are all one codebase and all are developed on simultaneously at all times both here and at Nixxes. If you want to talk about specifics of TCR compliance, platform-specific UI, support for keyboard/mouse, etc., then that's pretty much all Nixxes. On the broader level of the overall codebase, there are no ports at all among those 3 platforms.