Good morning everyone. It's me, Scrooloose, and I'm here with the WRUP. Surprise!
I missed last week because I was so busy. The sun came out and suddenly everyone wants me at their houses to work on various things. I'm happy for the work and the pay, but thank goodness I'm taking a couple of days off because I'm smoked. I have friends here from out of state and I think we're all going to get together and hit up some brew-pups this weekend so I'm looking forward to that. But you're not here to read about my boring middle aged life, so let's go to the WRUP.
Much to the chagrin of Microsoft, regulators in the UK have stopped the acquisition Activision Blizzard. Microsoft isn't taking the news well calling the "...darkest day..." and saying they think it's bad for Britain.
I'm personally not sure how another giant corporate merger would be good for Britain. Inevitably people lose their jobs and livelyhoods over these mega-deals and that could be hundreds of people on top the thousands during big layoffs that have already happened this year and last. The potential for this merger to hurt more people than it helps, as I see it, is pretty huge. I actually think it's good that Microsoft isn't going to be able to wall off the garden a little bit more. And come on Microsoft, the whole 'I can't believe we're not allowed to be a monopoly' argument just makes you sound butt-hurt. Here's Gamespot with many a quote from Microsoft president, Brad Smith.
In what is the most realistic looking game footage ever, Unrecord, stands as a somewhat controversial point of interest. Look for yourself here at WindowsCentral. I can only guess that there are a lot photo scans involved to get the lighting and level of texture realism that are present in the teaser video. The controversy as I see it, lies in that Unrecord is being developed as a shooter and that level of photorealism in that subject material becomes somewhat traumatic to view. On top of that the question of whether this is actually game footage or just some live video capture meant to scam people has come up. Developer, DRAMA has stated that Unrecord is made in Unreal Engine 5 and actually does show the tools running while in creation mode. That said, I do think I could easily see this kind of "real life graphical quality" thing being used for first responder training and simulator training for race drivers, equipment operators, hospitals and so on. Up to this point the most level of realism we have probably seen in gaming is the current Microsoft Flight Simulator. If you haven't seen the comparison videos, they're pretty interesting to watch. On a larger screen you can pick out the real vs the game fairly easy, but it seems that if there was some stabilization added to the actual flight recording in that linked example and you were watching that on a phone or tablet, you would have to look pretty close to see which was which.
Okay everyone, have a great weekend.
What are we playing?
Greywolfe: winding my way toward the end of ghost of a tale. most of the side quests are done, i believe, so i can start in on doing the actual main quest at last.
Scrooloose: When I can find some time I'll drop into Dredge, EverSpace and maybe even a little Diablo 3.