TwinIon

I suppose I can't blame Apple for trying, but they couldn't possibly have expected to get all that.

I'm surprised that so many here want a Last of Us series without Joel and Ellie. Plenty of games have exciting worlds that I'd love to see explored outside the events or characters of the game itself, but Last of Us is pretty much only interesting because of the specific story it tells. Otherwise it's just another zombie show with a few video game easter eggs.

This isn't new info, but I only just realized from some recent articles that the entire film will be in 4:3 (1.33:1) square aspect ratio. I thought the aspect ratio in the trailer was a weird thing for instagram or something. It's just bonkers to me given that this is a film that will be seen almost exclusively on home TVs and was shot entirely in widescreen (1.78:1), but will be released only in 1.33:1. It would make more sense to me if he released the square version alongside a widescreen cut, similar to what he's doing with the black and white release, but deciding to just make it all square is quite the choice. I hope someone does a comparison with examples of what is getting cropped out. After this I suppose we'll know for sure if it's ever a good idea to go full Snyder.

It looks like a pretty low effort port to me. In the age of next gen upgrades and frequent high quality remakes, they'll have to do more to make me care about this game.

Amazing.

I grew up playing it in arcades and at home, and while I'm aware of the movies, I guess I didn't realize it's popularity. I know the recent game sold well, but nothing that would indicate to me that it has some outsized audience. TIL I guess.

I'm curious why Mortal Kombat, of all video game properties, is getting another movie. It's going to be dumb, it's just not clear from that trailer if it's going to be fun. At least it'll be on HBO Max if I get curious.

I absolutely want to see both games as a medium and the conversations that surround games "grow up" and be increasingly capable of having difficult conversations. Especially in bigger budget titles. I want to see games tackle hard issues and take a larger role in defining the cultural conversation in any given topic. That said, I don't understand the idea that you'd make this specific game and not want to make a political statement. In movie terms, I think it's the difference between the Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. The Hurt Locker is what I think the devs of this game are shooting for. It's generally apolitical, unconcerned about the war itself and instead focused on the its impact on a man and the decisions he makes in a war zone. Zero Dark Thirty is an attempted retelling of actual events, and I'd argue by doing so is inherently political. Regardless of the accuracy, when you're telling a real life story, you're making decisions about what and how to portray certain things, which are all political when it comes to war. If the developers wanted to make an apolitical game about the urban warfare of Fallujah, I think they'd have been better off with an unspecific setting. It gives you much more latitude what you can create and sidesteps all the issues they clearly don't want to address, like war crimes or the politics surrounding the conflict. By selecting a real life battle, you're inheriting all the baggage that comes with it, like it or not.

I got a deal on a PS+ sub and it seems like the PS5 will be primarily an upgraded PS4 for a bit. I'm giving Days Gone a go. It looks good in 4K60, but it's definitely a slightly lesser open-world game. It's not bad by any means, but it's no Spider-Man. I keep running into small things that annoy me and I'm hoping it gets better as I put in more time. I also suspect I'm going to re-play God of War.

I wonder if dbrand (or anyone else making custom plates) considered making them follow the shape of the console more rather than just replicating the stock ones. I want an all black PS5, but I'm not sure I care enough to actually buy new plates.

Apparently EA is due to decide on the fate of Anthem this week. The 30 person "Anthem Next" team has been coming up with how to renovate the game, but they'll need triple that to make new content and finish the overhaul.

We usually have something like 50 people over for the super bowl, so it was kind of nice to actually watch the game. Quite a bummer that the game was so dull. I was really hoping for some Mahomes heroics.

If I had to choose one, it would be movies for sure, though I would be surprised if video games haven't taken up far more of my time in total.

Just finished this right after going through the remaster, which really shows how much less there is in this one. It occupies an odd space in that by having the full city available it feels like a full game, but it definitely isn't. There's less to do and far less to earn. I feel like they tuned the progression system for people that mostly just play story missions, and that's kind of a bummer. I'd rather have had more unlocks available, even if they were middling updates, especially with a bunch of stuff locked behind new game plus. I think they were on a good path with making Miles play differently from Peter, but it wasn't quite fleshed out all the way. Especially with the invisibility. It hardly ever felt necessary, and I personally found it more fun and exciting to just fight my way through most situations. I played through on Performance RT and thought it looked good, but it's not a huge difference from the Remaster. They're excellent benchmarks to set for a new console, but I'll be excited to see what they're able to do in a full sequel. Which is really what this game made me want more than anything. These games are a ton of fun to play, and I'm glad we got the remaster and this game to tide us over until a full sequel is ready.

No one wants to buy a PS4 because the PS5 is already out. Virtually no one can buy a PS5. The Switch is a mature platform with a large library of popular games, it's very cheap, and it's readily available. Also, with new variations coming out, you get a not-insignificant number of buyers picking up a second console. Nothing about the incredible disparity of sales over the last two months surprises me. Now, if the PS5 fails to sell better once it's readily available for purchase and as more next gen titles come out for it, I will be surprised. I don't expect it to outsell the Switch anytime soon, but I expect it to follow a path similar to previous PlayStations eventually.

One of the few games I might consider playing through again. The upgraded performance modes have made a huge difference with Spider-Man.

I find it difficult to understand the decision making here. Why go through the trouble of purchasing and setting up this whole division if you're not going to give them time to make games? Why build out a platform like this if you can't give it any time to catch on? It's so odd to me they'd get to this point, having thrown all this money at it, and decide now to start shutting things down. It doesn't surprise me, but it's still strange.

Making arguments about how your representation is diminished if others are fairly represented sure is a bad look. "We deserve to have voting representatives in both houses of congress because it's our right as Americans! Can't say the same for those people in DC."

When I saw the headline I was prepared for some real reckless shenanigans from Space X, but as far as rules violations go, that's pretty tame.

Interesting article. It really seems like Amazon needs to be better at deciding what "the Amazon way" means for any given project,. I know Amazon likes to build their own tools, but where they've been successful is when they've built a tool that is best of breed, which they can then sell as a product or service. So it makes sense that they'd want to build their own engine. Still, if I was starting up a game division, there's no way that I start off by building my own engine. If there's one common thread among "corporate overlord screws up game development" stories, it's almost always about forcing some engine. It also seems like it's obvious that the data centric Amazon approach would not be a good fit for video games. Maybe you should have a video game guy in charge of a billion dollar video game business. Just a thought. My understanding of Amazon Studios is that they were not like this. That article mentions that every Amazon game needed to be a billion dollar franchise. Early Amazon Studios acquisition was Chi-Raq, not a film I'd describe as destined for a mainstream audience. It probably helps that Amazon Studios has been run by people in the industry and that they can purchase projects like Chi-Raq after they've mostly been completed. I guess we'll see how their LOTR project goes, but overall I haven't gotten the impression that it's completely dysfunctional like Amazon Gaming apparently is.

Even if GM does meet this goal and does only sell electric vehicles by 2035/2040, they're not the sole provider and cars are a rather durable good, so I'm not worried about people that absolutely need a gas vehicle. The question for GM isn't if they can meet the needs of every possible driver, the question is if they can build vehicles for the majority of new car buyers. Those are very different markets at any given moment in time. I expect charging infrastructure to improve by leaps and bounds over the next decade or so as every major manufacturer gets heavily into electrics, and I think that will change customer behavior. Yeah, right now we expect to make a dedicated stop to fill up our car every once in a while, but I suspect it'll be more common to simply tie car charging into typical activities (shopping, eating out, maybe even work). I have a friend who owns a Model 3 and couldn't have a home charger for almost a year, and that's what he did. It wasn't ideal, but it was livable, even with the very small number of superchargers around. Nearly every major and many smaller shopping centers around us have chargers already. For now it's only a couple, but as demand increases I think it'll be much more common. Then of course you have people who can charge at home, and who will almost never need to charge elsewhere. That's been the case for our electric car. I really hope that GM hits this goal largely because if they do it should mean that charging is in a much better place.

Just got my PS5 and aside from a few minutes in Astro's Playground the remaster is the first thing I'm playing, and I think it's a pretty good place to start. Playing in performance RT mode and it looks great. I originally played on release on a base PS4, so playing now on the PS5 with a 4K OLED TV and it looks great. The upgraded textures make a huge difference, and obviously RT is really great in this game. I haven't noticed the reflections being low quality, but I haven't really taken a close look. I can say that they make a huge difference both in a lot of the interior sections and obviously in the buildings while swinging around. While swinging around I've come to appreciate the triggers on the new controllers. It's not a huge thing, but I like how they have it setup with the resistance and the nice click. Certainly a PS5 feature I look forward to experiencing in other games. The effective lack of loading times is another PS5 highlight, it really streamlines an already excellent game. I also just wanted to again heap some praise on the game itself. Since playing through the first time I've played through a lot of other single player games. In particular I got on a bit of an Assassins' Creed quarantine binge. I've put maybe 10 hours into Valhalla, but haven't been too motivated to continue on. It's an unfair comparison in many ways, but Spider-Man still looks so many third person action games feel old and busted by comparison. Both while traversing the world and in combat, it's so fluid and exciting. More than perhaps any other game I can pull off the cool thing I want to. In so many games, including many of the AC titles, I end up looking like a buffoon, swinging wildly at nothing, not making a jump or climbing awkwardly around a structure. Despite the comparative speed of Spider-Man, and the range of actions available, I can almost always hit my mark. I loved it when it first came out, and I might be enjoying it even more this time around.

I just want to say this is all hilarious and a true indictment of the stock market.

I'm sure this has been answered somewhere in this thread, but are there any brands that you guys would completely avoid? Any that you'd specifically recommend? Or does it really not matter?

It might be nice if there was something not tied to LL that allowed you to get matchmaking for basically any activity. I do think that even a 1250 could be a problem for matchmaking, and I can imagine you might often get whole fireteams that were unprepared or underleveled or something. Still, the game tracks a million things. To take it to an extreme, I got Conqueror this season. Surely you could match me with other Conquerors in a 1250 and there wouldn't be a problem. Same thing with the raid. I have the seal, I've run it maybe 20 times. Put me in a matchmade group of folks who have done the same and there would be no problems. Of course, requiring Conqueror or Descendent to get matchmaking would be silly, but it does seem like there should be some way to earn the right to get matchmaking. Next time I need to grind pinnacles it's kinda silly I'll need to do the whole discord song and dance for stuff the game could easily assume that I'm prepared for.