Recent content by oblivion437

Final Fantasy IV. It was where the series found its legs, so to speak. It no longer just rehashed ideas done better by games like Wizardry, Ultima and Stonekeep and instead laid out a unique direction that the series would follow. Being the first SNES Final Fantasy it was also the first one...

Wish I'd grown up earlier, that way I'd have a more grounded and objective perspective on gaming's history. I expect I'd have a lot less patience for games with narrative pretensions but I'd also be able to put them into an easy off-the-cuff reference for others to understand.

Seems the Brotherhood aren't boy scouts in this one...

I don't see the validity of comparing it to Fallout 3 for a few reasons: -Fallout 3 came out seven years ago. -Fallout 3 was ugly when it came out seven years ago. -Skyrim was not ugly when it came out four years ago. -Fallout 4 isn't competing with Fallout 3 or Skyrim for consumer...

I've grown increasingly fond of SMAA and CSAA when I can use them. The results are about as good as MSAA but with a fraction of the performance cost.

Smart use of DoF is useful for controlling edge issues in games with extreme draw distances when working at lower resolutions. The Witcher 3 can often show objects miles away and actually smoothing them out is a severe resource hog so DoF reducing and blurring out the edge detail altogether is...

I'm thinking that's not legitimate. Here's why: -No Gameworks options (Fallout 4 is confirmed to support it) -The section says 'Graphics Adapter and Resolution' but there's no actual tab for the display adapter. -Ambient Occlusion doesn't appear to include a possible HBAO+ setting (which...

Those shots do look unimpressive. I'm not sure if it's a texture resolution issue or a UV mapping issue. If the former an HD texture pack or mod can fix that. If the latter then either a patch or a mod. Edit: A leaked screenshot of the PC menu settings may explain it as well - it bills TAA...

I can see shadows being cast by those trees all the way back in that first screenshot. I'm increasingly sure that one shot is some kind of delay/pop-in bug.

One shot really stands out in the worst way possible: http://i.imgur.com/WG6zEh8.jpg Other shots, apparently from the same source, show shadows and dynamic lighting but that one is horrendous. There are no shadows at all. I'm guessing we're looking at some kind of glitch or performance...

Speaking from my own experiences, Fallout 3 was actually more unstable than New Vegas, most of the glitches the games had at launch have since been patched out but 3 has a number of technical problems that can only be fixed with aftermarket tools and manual tinkering. The same degree of...

The more recent examples I used were meant to illustrate the nature of the 'aging' effect. Age of Mythology is still one of my favorite RTS games, but the increasing visual complexity of 3D rendering causes the game to show its age very quickly and it has not aged well. Doom 3 feels like a...

Before I give names, I'd like to express a few thoughts: -If a game has aged well, that might be because what was good about it then still holds today. -If it has not, it is possibly because it was only relatively good, and its virtues were thus sort of flash-in-the-pan; More people saw The...

Goodness...so many fond memories. The look in Crash's eye just before he jumps on the hog, for one. The visuals were so sumptuous in their day, and still have a simple, bright and cheery feel, like the perfect 3D evolution of the aesthetics of Donkey Kong Country.