I know, it's realistic, but it's not the sort of realism I want. Movie makers have had "all focus" lenses for years now so the whole scene can be in focus no matter the distance, and that's basically what I want out of a video game too. The problem is I can't turn this "feature" off in console games. I've seen comparison shots of the upcoming Metal Gear and the "better" versions on the newer consoles look worse to me, because Snake is nothing but a blurry mess in half of them!

Is this really what we WANT?

So I heard this is terrifying, but I couldn't really imagine what sort of hellish sound a whistle could possibly make, even if it is shaped like a skull.

Turns out, it really is utterly horrifying.



Yeah I can make that sound without the whistle, as I just found out.

As kids, I'm pretty sure when we imagined future headlines this is pretty much exactly what we had in mind.

http://arstechnica.com/information-techn...et-access/

And this is what it looks like on ABF's computer today.

I kid, of course.

I know he uses Firefox. : p

In recent years, the HD remake (not to be confused with a real remake) has become very popular. We've seen such HD remakes of Kingdom Hearts, Metal Gear, and Banjo Kazooie. In all those cases, the switch to wide screen was fairly easy to accomplish. Since everything's rendered in real time, simply extending the viewing area does the job just fine. There are some cases (such as cut scenes) where trouble can come up (Silent Hill HD, I'm looking at you), but generally it works well.

Not so much for two HD rereleases I recently picked up. I'm talking about Resident Evil Rebirth (PS4 version) and Grim Fandango (PC version). Two already great games with some minor visual enhancements, but notably they both are defaulted to wide screen. That's the biggest problem. Both of these games use entirely pre-rendered backgrounds. As a result, there's no way to "extend the viewing area" because those pre-rendered assets were never designed with that in mind. So, they did the only thing they could, they stretched out the 4:3 image to fit a wide screen ratio. All those graphical enhancements, but with an ugly stretched out image. It's clear they put it that way purely because new gamers might not accept an "update" with "those black bars".

Now the good news is I'm not really mad at all. I'm just saying it doesn't work, and clearly the developers agreed. They've put in an option in both of these remakes to switch the game to it's intended 4:3 (with all the other visual enhancements intact), and I'm certainly glad of that. My main reason for this is to say that going forward, remakes of games with prerendered backgrounds all need to have this option. These two shouldn't be lone exceptions.

More expensive.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/7/30/9072645...crate-soon

Yay? I mean, I don't fault Nintendo for selling merchandise. That's fine. I fault Nintendo for pretending this is somehow a "loyalty reward" when it's just something you pay for. Also, I'm not at all interested in "subscribing" for completely random stuff I may not even want.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/7/18/8997591...box-one-pc

I'm convinced SOME part of the development process took place in an American studio. My evidence is LOOK AT IT. Everything about the concept and the art style screams "this was made by Cartoon Network".

They're now making shorts for Disney.













They've still got it!