Naughty Dog's Vice President Met Up With Shigeru Miyamoto At E3 This Year

Please, another Kids games for Switch.

Oh, btw...
Mario Kart 9 featuring Crash Bandicoot & his gangs.

Would be nice but it's never gonna happen. Sony and Naughty dog are bed buddies

I'd love to get some content from them on the Switch. Even just for the fact of them making games on the Switch being yet another big name 3rd party to add to the list and shut up the haters.

Well one reason why no future collaborations won't take place is due to a little thing where Sony owns Naughty Dog. However, if staff were to leave Naughty Dog and set up a new studio in partnership with Nintendo, that would be awesome.

I'm confident. It will happen.

Wow, this is a big deal. Almost on par with the US president meeting Kim Jong Un.

Naugty Dog is owned by Sony. They're not going to make games for anything other than PlayStation.

@Anti-Matter I for one rather see more mature games as well. We have enough kid friendly games as it is. Not that that is a bad thing.

Plants vs zombies Garden Warfar for Switch? nah haha I would be awesome though

Would've liked to just see their conversation recorded!

@CrazyMetroid
I'm AGAINST rated 18+ games, so i want to see more Cartoonish Kids games forthat Switch.
Especially collaboration with Shigeru Miyamoto.
I want to see something like Mario + Rabbids.

Probably just a friendly chat and nothing more.

The last of Us Nintendo edition:

Yoshi's Island. Maybe this is the inspiration for that game.

@Anti-Matter As much as I like PEGI 3 and PEGI 7 games, the Switch is lacking in mature 18 rated games. They majoratively don't appeal to me, either, so I just ignore them and don't buy them. You should do the same.

@Matthew010
"They majoratively don't appeal to me, either, so I just ignore them and don't buy them. You should do the same."
No way !
I still keep with my persistence : Rated Everyone & Everyone 10+ (with few of Teen) / PEGI 3, 7, & 12 / CERO A (with few of CERO B) ONLY !
No more, No less.

@Anti-Matter No. What I am saying is that you cannot keep protesting against any 16 or 18 rated games unless you are at least slightly insane. People buy consoles for those games, others buy them for the cute games.

@Anti-Matter Don't you think more games are a good thing even if they're not your cup of tea? It's good for the Switch to have a wide range of games.

@Anti-Matter only thing I'm against is your radical hatred for mature games. If you want to play kiddie games go on a nickelodeon website or something.
More games the switch gets the better.

" but a big part of us wants to believe that potential collaborations may have been discussed."

Errr, do we not remember what happened the last time Nintendo and Sony tried "collaborating" in video games? Something about "Greatness" I believe?

Besides, what would a Nintendo and Naughty Dog collaboration look like? Mario taking a pipe cutter to a koopa troopa's fingers and removing their organs with a pipe wrench, while blood pours everywhere, meanwhile chain chomps start garroting Toads?

@Anti-Matter I'm not exactly a fan of TLoU, and I'm really not a fan of what I saw of TLoU 2.....it's way too much...muchness and a big departure for Naughty Dog (Uncharted is an Indiana Jones adventure, and Jak was a cartoon.) but, maybe TLoU aside, that's pushing the limits of acceptability IMO, but nothing wrong with games for all tastes existing for those that like it....it's not like Switch has a shortage of games that appeal to you

I'd love to see a new game specifically for Switch.

Or a Jak X remaster. Yeah, I said it.

@Matthew010 I think he’s slightly insane.

@1UP_MARIO Oh.

Do people actually believe ND is about to make a Nintendo game?😂😂

They’re Sony First Party.

Cool picture though. Nice to see worlds clash.

@Fight_Teza_Fight Nope, I don't actually think that's in the cards. I'm just having fun answering the article's question

@CrazyMetroid
I expect More Kiddie games for Switch from both Nintendo and 3rd party, but i prefer from Japanese developers by most, not something like Nickelodeon or Western franchises (I have less interest with some Western cartoons)

The last of us playing as DK please...

@bratzdoll Thats fair enough .
For it to happen Nintendo would have to buy Sony or Sony would’ve have to go third party.

I don’t see either happening any time soon!

@NEStalgia
Ugh...
I hate all those games, except Crash Bandicoot ( i had ever played the PS2 version long time ago).
And would you please to NOT typing something VULGAR here ?
I felt disgusted and upset to read by accidentally.

hum... soy boy! Sorry I had to say it

@Anti-Matter Why be AGAINST +18 games? Respect is a two way street. If you want people to respect your love for kiddie games, you should respect the games they like.

Everyone has a right to like anything they want.

@Anti-Matter In a thread about Naughty Dog as they just released footage of TLoU2.....that was a tame commentary (I'm certain you didn't watch the Sony conference, but suffice to say, I've never seen game so.....graphic, as TLoU2, until the RE2 trailer shortly after. (Not my thing either.)

But yeah I know you hate all those games, Uncharted is just a Holywood adventure show though....it's like a playable Indiana Jones without paying George Lucas (now Disney.) Ok, the first one had zombies...that was awkward....but the other 4 are fine Maybe you don't like Indiana Jones (itself an update of 1920s adventure films), so that one I can't help with ) Jak was ok...but not as great as people think it is. 1 was an awkward copy of Rare games. 2 was just plain weird.

Regardless, there's plenty of content that should appeal to you, plus content for other people. Everyone wins! (Though I do think TLoU2 is pushing the line just a bit too far....I'm not sure why they felt the need to go to that extreme....)

Something you don't see very often! Good for him!

On another note, this @Anti-Matter kid is all over the place recently. Opinions are so opinionated that he doesn't notice he's already picking a fight with everyone. Oh well...
Play nice, bruh! "Against" certain games might be a little extreme, it's like it should be all about you. Choose your words carefully, man. Maybe you can just say you're not as interested in mature games? It's good that you voice you opinion and interests (pretty much in fact). It's not good to force it on anyone.

@Zyph Unfortunately, "this Anti-Matter kid" isn't a kid. His opinions might be like a kid's, but he is a 30+ year old man.

@Matthew010 Oh..........
...
Got it.

Shigeru is a legendary game developer but he sucks at persuasion. Especially in English language

Something tells me this writer didn't fact check the article if he honestly believes there's a chance of Naughty Dog doing anything for Nintendo.

Stop reading into stuff like this. It is NEVER going to happen. This was basically a fan meet up. Move on.

The Last of Mario!

@Matthew010 I cringe whenever I read his comments.

@CrazyMetroid you get use to it. Sometimes you can even predict the comments

Never gonna happen and that's great. The Naughty Dog that made the old classics doesn't exist anymore and i'd rather be without cinematic non games full of identity politics

What's the point of this article? Would you like to see Naughty Dog's games om Switch? That's the same as asking if people want to see Retro's new game on PS4.

Crash Bandicoot is owned by Activision by the way, not Sony or Naughty Dog, they didn't have anything to do with the remaster.

Next article: "Phil Spencer takes a selfie with Miyamoto, Halo 6 for Switch?"

@Zyph Yeah. That was what I thought when I looked on his profile.

@CrazyMetroid
Don't be surprise with me.
We are completely Different people.
I have completely Different mindset, totally Opposite with typical gamers here.
Please understand.

And the comment section went down the toilet.

Lucky man! Congrats!

@MagnaRoader If you went back in time to the nineties or even early 2000’s and told everyone Sonic would be on Nintendo.... We would have all had the same answer.

So... Anything is possible. The future, we know not.

@Anti-Matter I like a range of games - but luckily for me there are many different tastes out there because I would not like the Switch to be only kids games.

@FTL except... Sony owns Naughty dog so I don't see that happening any time soon. Unless Sony sells their share for some crazy reason

@Tokiwa according to some of the other comments here "anything is possible" -_-

Keep them as far away from production as possible. ND isn't the same after that hack bullied Hennig out.

@MagnaRoader 😂Just let them dream remember this is a Nintendo site full of Switch fans that think that switch it's the only console in the market and yes even the 3ds is trash too and needs to die already according to them and all games are only fit for Switch so yeah don't be surprised just enjoy the funny comments

@MagnaRoader

Like I said - Sega owned Sonic and in the 90’s no one ever would have dreamed of it being on Nintendo - they were actual rivals . All I’m saying is that if the internet comments existed back then, you would have said exactly the same thing back then, but it happened.

@GKO900 Umm... I own all consoles since 1982... and enjoy Ps4/XB games also... your comment is probably not valid here.. just having an opinion does not imply what you have stated

Match made in heaven

@FTL Well obviously my comment not applies to everyone but it does for some even if you denied it

@FTL ok buddy. Keep up the good faith I guess. ¯(ツ)/¯

I'm guessing Miyamoto didn't know who he was or was being polite. Since I wouldn't be smiling around a guy who showed scripted game footage for The Last of Us and called it advanced AI. Then when the game came out it was so rudimentary that they had to have the allies be invincible and never targetted.

I don't think Miyamoto's game philosphy quite lies up with a group who think gameplay is something you can lie about.

@MagnaRoader Didn’t say it would happen - just that (clearly) stranger things have.

The first three Crash Bandicoot games are the only good games from Naughty dog imho. I really despise everything they made later. I think there are way too many games like those, games that want to look like movies and shove down your throat elements that shouldn't be so prominent in games... at least not as often as they are today. I'm talking for any system out there, not just for the Switch. People like Naughty dog are turning games into something that I don't like anymore.

I rather they give nintendo some pointers oh how to create an actual Narrative in their games. The first 30min of TLOU underpins the rest of the characters development perfectly.

@NEStalgia I dunno, I think UC started out with a strong Indy vibe, but starting with UC3 it kinda lost that charm for me. It became ... uhm, for the lack of a better term, grittier and certainly more shooting-focused. They 1920s inspired swash-buckle-charm, so to speak, took a back seat to a supposedly 'mature' story and a boatload full of action.

I agree that TLoU pushed the gritty aspect alot further, but at the same time - without being some kind of dedicated fan or anything - I also found the story of Joel and Ellie alot more 'mature' aka emotional resonant, which in term - at least to me - offset some of that grittiness, as it seemed to serve a purpose. It helped create a situation where two strangers could somewhat believeably forge a meaningful bond. It had context.

What I saw of TLoU2 reminds me alot of what happened to TWD. It started as an intriguing story of a group of people faced with an extreme-as-can-be situation and then it started to turn into one episode after another of self-indulging desaster porn.

Again, without being a huge fan or anything, I still hope that the trailer did not represent the game all that well (ironic I know) and that it will turn out better than I can imagine right now. After all, the game is going to sound amazing and look insane in HDR no doubt - there is absolutely no doubt about that

I will say this though - going OT here - it is kinda amazing that out of all the exclusives Sony was focused on this year, TLoU2 was the least interesting to me. I'm actually very excited for Spiderman (I hope Spidey finally gets the game he deserves, esp. since Rocksteady has went awol for some reason and there are no more superhero games now worth a damn) and of course Ghost. The latter of which could be the crowning jewel in the PS4 rich legacy. Sony's exclusives efforts as of late have been so staggeringly good, that in the end, I could easily look beyond TLoU being some kind of torture porn mess. I mean God of War is/was insanely good, like right up there with the best of this generation for me, like BotW and Bloodborne. HoZD was also really neat. Gravity Rush, The Last Guardian, Persona 5 ... not to mention the Yakuza games of course or Ratchet and Clank or say Detroit (not for me really, but some folks are into it and it does look amazing in HDR).

Also, and I am not gonna lie here, I am very much looking forward to RE2. That game - in my view - looks a amazing, and could possibly set a new standart on how to "update" a classic. I've been really enjoying The Evil Within, too, for instance. Death Stranding could be amazing, or not ... we'll see. Not as huge a Kojima fan as some. The kind of people attached to it make me rather curious though.

@Ralek85 UC, while fun...I don't know if indy is the right word....it was arcade....technically it was overrated (unpopular comment: Just like all previous ND games...Jak was kind of mediocre but was worshipped.) I liked it. The first few chapters were strong. Then they got redundant. Then they introduced the zombies....starting at the monastery and Nazi base, it just went horribly off the rails for the rest of the game and was bad. 2 redeemed it. 3 hit the sweet spot and remains my favorite. The whole Lawrence of Arabia thing worked.

I don't think it was any more shooting focused than the first though...that's all you did was Hogan's Alley shooting sequences back to back and the respawn went on forever. 4 was the first to have long stretches of something OTHER than shooting. When I think of the first one I just think of non-stop shooting at the same enemies over and over. I replayed the Nathan Drake collection last year after beating 4. I was amazed at just how poorly the first one holds up. 2 was good, but the second half again got monotonous. 3 & 4 kept variety going. Memory makes it better than it was. It's definitely the weak link.

4 was the "best" game overall, 2 had the best setpieces, but 3 just had the most fluidity from start to finish where it felt like an adventure rather than a setup for setpieces (2) or a movie with some gaming (4.)

You know, I don't do horror (at all (even a little) ) so most of the horror genre comments will go past my head. I did buy TLoU for $10 2 weeks ago....not sure I'll actually play it though, with a 100-strong backlog! And now that I know that I will never want to touch that sequel it's less appealing than before E3. (I also fear without the Ellie/Joel unlikely companions aspect that gets so touted, the narrative of 2 won't be as well regarded either. Jumping to Ellie as a teen just feels.....generic. Plus the "torture porn" aspect on a scale never before seen.

HDR is so overpromoted (reminds me of "3D".) Properly calibrated, HDR just provides more shades of grey between dark gray to black and between light gray to white to show more detail in the upmost and topmost bands. A cool feature and big improvement in shadows for details, but nothing that should starkly stand out. Any time HDR "looks amazing" by being starkly visible means the display is disastrously out of calibration with contrast pushed to extremes. Like how people buy TVs based on which has the most vivid colors when in reality, if well calibrated, none of them should be showing saturation like you see on the show floor, tones should be much more neutral. (Home theater has gone completely off the rails in the past 5 years what with that and the fact most displays that are "HDR" don't even support the actual HDR spec (they'll sell you those in 3 years as "True HDR!"), 4k but most components (even cables) that are 4k only do 4k@30Hz, and often only 4:2:0 not 4:4:4 color depth.....so you get more pixels with worse color reproduction than your old 1080 display, and only 30fps max. Most consumers are unaware of this stuff, and have no idea they're not getting what they think they're getting (and will find out when companies decide to tell them to sell it all again!) I'm sticking with PC monitors 1080p, all the color depth I can dream of....looks great. By the time 4k/60/HDR/4:4:4 hits sub 40" PC monitors we can be sure it'll be the full spec

I love Insomniac, but I can't get hyped for Spiderman. It looks good, I'll want to play it....but I'll wait for deep sales. I can't tell what differentiates it from other similar games and I have no attachment to Spidey's lore, so it's missing a hook for me. I'm sure it's good...but I'm not hyped.

Ghost looks amazing though! I wasn't expecting it to be what it is and it seems purely amazing. I'm kind of thrilled about Nioh 2 as well....granted, I can't even get out of the first village in the first game But it keeps sucking me back in to try! I wish it were a Switch game instead.....I'd just whittle at it in handheld for months! I actually can't stand Bloodborne. I don't know why. It was free on the PSN+ giveaways.....I tried it and was like "this is awful." It's not that I hate "Soulsborne"....I haven't played DS1 (waiting for Switch) but I've poked at 3 on X1 and find it really interesting. And Nioh the clone I'm finding very addictive even if I suck horribly and get nowhere it makes me want to "try just one more time" for way longer than I should want to run into the same wall. But Bloodborne.....I just flatout dislike it for some reason I can't identify. Even for free. TLoU2 OTOH, is possibly the single most disgusting, graphic, unpleasant experience in gaming I'd ever seen....until 20 minutes later when they showed RE2 I don't do zombie games/horror games, but I was seriously disappointed after the Dying Light 2 demo that I wouldn't ant to play the night parts, because the day parts look awesome. But no part of TLoU2 looked awesome. And it didn't even have any zombies in the trailer! A horror game that showed no horror elements, or even suspense and still was a gross-out fest....not what I expected from ND. That's messed up.

RE2...well, it's RE....I guess to a hardcore horror/zombie/gore fetishist it's amazing..... Not my genre, so I can't comment....but...I just can't imagine wanting to experience that let alone pay for it!

I have such a backlog. GoW, Gravity Rush 2, HoZD, Last Guardian, P5, Yakuza, from Kiwami through 6....all on my backlog! Plus Detroit (was hyped for that from the first reveal....like Dick meets Asimov....it's kind of a dream environment for classic sci-fi fans.) And that's just my Sony backlog. The XBox log is twice as big and the Switch backlog is getting there....

Death Stranding....I hold my breath with Kojima and take hype with a grain of salt. People would praise his version of Pong HD as a revolution in gaming. And it would involve time travel. When he's good he's good. When he's bad he's incomprehensible, and too often he's both within the same game.

@NEStalgia I agree that ND's games are overrated, though I still feel UC3 was the worst. It definitely felt like a shooting gallery to me towards the end, with those pesky 'djinns' popping up everywhere. I also strongly disliked the boss fight, which consisted - in my memory - of running around in a circle, shooting some glowing fruit or whatever at the right time to kill of some Residen-Evil'esque baddie. It's pretty much Lost Legacy>2>1>4>3 for me.

As for horror I'd say to each their own. I don't like horror games like Amnesia or Outlast, or in general horror movies, but I do very much enoy the early Resident Evil games (before they went to shit with 5) and games like The Evil Within and Alan Wake, the latter two actually being favorites of mine.

The reason is simply that these games care about the atmosphere they craft. That atmosphere is one of dread and at times horror, and no, that's not always to my preference, but the fact remains the DO create a dense atmosphere in a way few or maybe even no other genre of game manages to do. I'm not really sure WHY that is though, to be quite honest. It probably has something to do with a particular attention to detail in terms of lighting and sound design that is inherent to creating horror in all media ... something like that probably.

As for HDR, you could not be more wrong my friend! I mean, there are plenty of low- to mid-end TVs that cannot offer a quality HDR experience, but a modern LG/Panasonic/Philips/Sony OLED or a top of the line e.g. Samsung QLED definitely make a huge difference. The reason is rather simple and nothing to do with colors (even though having 10bit - aka 1.07 billion colors vs 16.7 million us marked improvement) but everything to do with brightness.

A traditional TV would output about 100 nits or candela per m^2 - about the output of a hundred candles in a one square meter or 40" area. Even a current gen OLED, which cannot over the same level of ABL as a LED, can go up to 750 nits, depending how many pixels have to produce that peak brightness. That is an increase of over 7 times! The key here is that thanks to EOTF the information provided to adjust brightness is absolute. This means that that e.g. the Dolby Vision Metadata does not tell your TV to do "maximum" brightness, but tells it to go up to a specific value, say for example 500 nits - and that is just what your TV does (with some slight adjustment when the movie is mastered to say 1000 nits and your e.g. OLED only goes up to 750 nits - all the while providing perfect black).

So in short, you get precise clearly defined specular highlights in one spot, let's say a flame here, right next to a perfectly black 0 nit area around it (at least on an OLED). That creates contrast hundreds of times higher than any traditional non-HDR display could muster and makes the picture look a lot more realistic. That said, obviously we any display today can only display fraction or real-life brightness, but still the impact is significant.

This has nothing to do with calibration, as all you are doing here is showing of 500 nits e.g. on a fireplace, when the director wanted to you to see 500 nits on that precise fire place. Obviously, you can adjust your TV to output less light - but it is important to understand that this setting is completely distinct from color settings, brightness setting and contrast settings. All these settings exist on an OLED as well and sure they can be "abused", but again, that has little to nothing to with HDR. That is one many people, in my experience, fail to grasp. They basically think it's the same technology just with a bit more color gamut.

It's not, it's a different way of how image information is processed. Now, having said that, I get back to why HDR in games (can and often does) look amazing. Take God of War for instance. The game was obviously designed with HDR in mind, because it often goes to high contrast areas, for instance Muspelheim, where you have all shades of black-to-gray rocks, directly overlayed with all shades of red-orange lava. The effect is astounding. Not only can the display cover the whole range from perfect black to grey, revealing all the details, but it can contrast it pixel-by-pixel with smoldering hot red lava that basically jumps of the screen. Or to put it more technically, you can have an area of darkest shadow, sitting comfortably at perfect black 0 nits, right next to that lava blistering at say 300 nits. Remember that's about 3 times as bright as the best traditional TVs could do, all the while you can have the sun shinning through clouds right behind that, pushing for example 600 nits - being again twice as bright as blistering lava. In short you just jumped ahead several lightyears in terms of display how actual lava on black rocks looks to the human eye in nature. It's not the same, obviouly, but it's several thousand times closer.

Now, games are not constrained by reality, and this where again, God of War was obviously geared towards HDR, because it constantly throws particle effects at you, as if it were the end of days and the whole world was about to erupt into fire and ash (which accidentally is kinda part of the game in a way - Ragnarok after all). These particle are tiny, but thans to HDR, they can still be incredible bright an colorful. This is most obvious in the realm travel room, where the game makes staggering use of extreme lighting effects and particle effects. It must be seen to be believed.

As for calibration. It's worth noting that the 2018 LG offer two new kinda revolutionary features in this regard. The first 3D LUT autocalibration support and the second is that this feature can also applied for game mode. Trust when I say, that even a well calibrated image with a color dE of around 1 and a white balance dE of around 0.1 looks equally astonishing, if the OLED (aka light output) is dialed up to 100. Again, this is NOT the brightness setting. The contrast and brightness settings are setting entirely different from this (again, that's a really common misconception people seem to have in my experience, that's why I'm going on about it).

Now, obviously for all of this to really shine, you need a good TV (preferably an OLED for perfect black contrast, something not even a highend plasma could ever achieve), the right fewing conditions (10 nits surround lighting are suggested) and a source material that really takes advantage of the technology (again, I REALLY like the implementation in God of War, it's one the best I've seen yet). If you have all that, you are either blind or you are dead, if you still don't see a stark difference between this setup and an standard dynamic range setup.

I'Ve seen people talk about how one should just set one's SDR-TV to dynamic contrast to basically recreate the HDR effect, which is a) a horrible effect, as it will oversaturate, kill details and still be stuck well under 100-120 nits, without the ability to display perfect blacks or replicate the color gamut of 10 (and in future hopefully) 12bit display). Also - and obviously - leave dynamic contrast off on your HDR TV as well.

Dynamic Tone Mapping is a different story, as that is basically a feature you could call Dolby-Vision-Emulation, where the frame is constantly analyzed for contrast and specular hightly can be restored that would be destroyed by a static image setting, as it is inherent in HDR10. This is often quite obvious with clouds covering the sound, where the outlines of the clouds get overpowered in a static image by the sun behind it. Dynamic tone mapping can restore those outlines, without impacing the specular highlights of the sun. Again, just as the 'light' and brightness/contrast settings are different from each other, so is dynamic contrast and dynamic tone mapping (purely named for sure by LG, bu still an excellent feature imho for all non-Dolby-Vision-content, as DV provides exactly that kind of dynamic light information as part of its dynamic metadata.

So you actually get more pixels, with a lot more accurate information about color space, but more importantly, alot alot alot more accurate (absolute) value) about 'light' - plus a lot more light in general and perfect blacks. In short, this can actually create a visual representation of sunrays hitting through dusk. Previous display were simply incapable of creating any kind of meaningful contrast between sunrays and light grey volumetric effects, or particles or just dynamic billboards - just to name one example. Obviousyl, you can also create actual fire and explosions now .. or l4Z3rb34ms!

Or to put another way yet: Don't play HDR games in Non-HDR. Certainly don't play games with a really good HDR implementation on a non-HDR display. Don't do it, you will regreat it, as you will just have a fraction of the experience. In fact, if you have to rebuy a game like Nier Automata or Hellblade on X1 just to get HDR ... do it. Unlike checkboarding vs "true 4K) or 40fps vs 52vs on average (horrible uncapped frames), this actually makes A HUGE FRI**IN DIFFERENCE!

Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, The Last Guardians, Shadow of the Collossus, Detroit, all of these feature really good or amazing HDR implementation. You would be totally insane for go for a 8bit/SDR/1080p implementation. That's like staying home to watch the Dark Knight on VHS instead of watching in IMAX - you are not just getting a lesser experience, you are getting a different, a worse, a less compelling experience, and you are getting significantly away from what the director wanted you to see in the first place. I have no idea who could have soured you thusly on HDR, but they did you are really meaningful disservice, if I may say so.

Oh yeah, and if you want 4:4:4 chroma subsampling for your PC, set the PC input HDMI to PC (not just rename but actually pick the PC icon - at least that is how it works on an LG).

I'm excited for Spiderman, 1st because I love Spidey, but second, because the last comparable game I'Ve played was Arkham KNight - that was 3 years ago, believe it or not. Spidey will be quite different though, as it Spiderman is a very different hero. For instance, there will be a huge open world with civilians about, plus plenty of daylight (which again, is going to look actually amazing in HDR, because you have an incredible range of lighting scenarios you can very accurately cover from dusk till dawn, with plenty of specular hightly around the sun or any other lightsource or metalic surface that bounces light (cars, glas towers, etc.). There is not really all that much in terms of quality superhero open-world'ish games out there - if we are talking "quality", there is probably none.

As for Nioh, it's a great game, but frankly, in my view, what made Dark Souls 1 so important, and why I love it so much, why it such an impact on me, is actually absent in Nioh: Level design is the first aspect. There were no levels in Dark Souls, just one (okay two, I guess with Anor Londo). The second aspect is storytelling - or lack there of. The whole storytelling in Dark Souls was basically environmental - intro and a few snippets of dialogue aside. There were not cutscenes or exposition. These two things tie very closely together as the whole one-world-design is very detailed and intricately linked to the story. HOW the world LOOKS is the result of WHAT happend, and thus you can infere a great deal of events just from walking around and soaking in the scenery - which btw was very well designed with all kinds of artistic influences on display. It was just a very rich world, one that unfolded at your own pace - it was never shoved down your throat. Nioh has self-contained, small levels though, and it has an actual narrative, that is told rather traditionally. What they did here, was copy and even expand upon the mechanics of "Souls", but quite literally giving up on the soul of Souls games. This is rather obvious to anyone like me who actually started out not on Dark SOuls but Demon Souls, and can clearly understand the leap Dark was in that regard over the already excellent Demon.

As for RE2, and just to be clear: "I guess to a hardcore horror/zombie/gore fetishist it's amazing" .. it's really not hardcore horror or gore. Again, there are plenty of hardcore horror games out there, like AMnesia or Outlast, or dozen of others. RE2 is still way more 'From Dusk Till Dawn' than it is 'Insidious' (or something like that, again, not a Horror fan or expert). It's actually quite exploitative and silly in many ways. It's severly lacking the psychological horror aspects. Any scares it has are really just cheap jumpscares, and to me that makes it so charming. It's not trying to make me quite in fear or disgust, it just tries to engage me with a layer or dread and uncertainty while moving forward. It's quite effective and Shinji Mikami was a GENIUS in using the technical limitations of the PSX to his advantage, parituclar with the fixed camera perspective (you fear, what you cannot see, but hear) and by withholding excessive agility from the player, aka tank controls, thus not empowering, but actually dis-powering the player: If you run from what haunts you, you cannot shoot it. If you shoot it, you have to stay your ground and stare it down ... it was a brilliant piece of gaming design, truly!

Kojima never really reached those levels, if you ask me, even though I can say plenty of good about the first MGS game, which I really love unlike most of the sequels. Mikami was also the guy who brought the over-the-shoulder perspetive into play latter on (now even used in God of War by the by to great effect), thus it is kinda incredible to see this RE4 innovation, that certainly made him famous, as thousands of game used that setup thereafter, being brought into RE2 - maybe the best of the series.

It's just ... well, it's a game that is not jsut dear to many gamers, but that had a huge impact on the industry directly and indirectly. It's just a very fitting celebration of one of the most important games ever made, and I'm happy this reimagination seems to be panning out quite well. It's probably not the same, if you haven't had the pleasure of playing it back in the day, when ... well, when you had never seen anything quite like it before. When it was like someone opend up a new imaginary world for you. Like it or not, it's fitting tribute is all I am saying

As for Detroit - and final remark before this post needs his own book deal ^^ - Detroit is ... not my cup of tea. It looks absolutely sumptous in HDR, it really does, that whole dystopian world is coming to love at times heartstopping effect, but - as you mention, even as a avid Asimov reader and fan - the writing David Cage offers up, is just not up to snuff. I never liked his stuff, and so I am not unbiased, but again, I just think it's shallow and stilted and really only midly successful in emotional manipulation, but never in any kind of emotional evocation.

As far as technical craftsmanship and effort goes, I tip my heads to them, but Cage is a writing hack, and no level of HDR goodness can ever change that. Yes, here I said it at long last, even HDR has it's limits!! Although I mean ... I never managed to get through his other stuff, but Detroit looked amazing (yes, it just looks amazing in HDR, that's a fact ^^) enough to see me through. If you are into stuff like this, you are better off watching "Humans" instead btw. It's much more worthwhile than anything David Cage could every cough up .... yeah yeah I'm a hater, but whatever

@NEStalgia Forgot to mention something: If you have Gears of War 4, you can actually set it to display a SDR/HDR image side-by-side while playing. It's obviously not meant to be played this way, just to demonstrate the effect of HDR. It's great to test the HDR capabilites of your screen and show clear as day how much impact HDR actually has. We humans are fickle creatures, prone to take things for granted, so ... yeah, one could be forgiven for thinking the stunning HDR image they are looking it, is just the it has always been.

It's not of course, and the way Gears 4 handles this with the inclusion of that small option is a really neat way to make this (quite literally) clear as day. The HDR in Gears 4 in general is pretty well done as well, so it's a suitable way to put any screen through the ringer!

@Ralek85 Wow, you have bested both myself and thanos in post length. My life is now without meaning. Even I have to condense this now

Uncharted: No, 1 is definitely, by far, the worst in terms of overall design, pacing, etc. The first half was great, but the second half kills it. The djinn was a terrible shooting gallery in 3, but it was very brief, just an interlude of a delusion. I don't remember that boss though. For me it's 4, 3, 2, 1.........which isn't a bad thing to say, it means they did improve with every game in my opinion...they did what they aimed to do. Haven't played legacy yet though.

HDR: Well...yes...no...maybe... That's describing videophile grade equipment representing thousands into tens of thousands of dollars. The average TV in Best Buy doesn't even fully support the HDR spec, is not setting absolute brightness, and even if it did, isn't necessarily desirable. Those features were meant for large projectors in large rooms. Up close in a closed dark room, those absolute brightness outputs would be fatiguing and ultimately damaging to the eye. There's a reason you don't see that supported on a single PC monitor, not even high end graphic design monitors. The PC monitors that support HDR don't actually support it, they support a partial spec, and few ofthem support it either. Although high end PC monitors have always supported superior output to all but the best TVs anyway, so it's kind of a skewed market. But in actuality all HDR SHOULD be doing is increasing the level of detail at the highest and lowest bands without blown highlights/shadows. The spectacular effects of extreme lighting contrasts is an interesting tech demo, but wasn't really the point of the capability. It reminds me of "that other HDR", the photography kind that's not particularly related. For years HDR was pushed with the very visible gimick uses of HDR, and people learned to think of HDR as being those gimmick uses, versus "normal" pictures until FINALY the movement caught on for the intended use and output of HDR....and the result was people started thinking the normal images were HDR, and that the HDR ones were not...because properly used, you should not actually notice anything "HDR" about it. It simply improves the range of detail through a greater portion of the light spectrum by combining the over/underexposed shots to retain the median detail. The tech works quite differently but the effect desired is the same. Properly used TV HDR should not have a "wow" factor, that's gimmick HDR. It should simply improve detail, and yes, edge contrast of light vs. dark areas.

RE2: OLD Re was a campy police series that had zombies in it. NEW RE is a graphic gorefest to me. I had to close my eyes for most of that RE2 trailer at the sony show Horror just doesn't work for me! I played about 20 minutes of the first one and noped out. It wasn't true horror though, I'll give it that. The new ones seem to be.

Nioh: Well from a gameplay perspective I find Nioh extremely enjoyable. I can't compare the world/lore to DS yet as I kind of jumped in at 3 while waiting for 1 on Switch, and I'm more examining combat than world design with the little I've dipped my toes in

Haha, truthfully I'm unfamiliar with Cage's writing. Heavy rain never appealed to me. Beyond I never tried (got it free of course and it was interesting the portion I played but I haven't played too far, and the feel is kind of weird.) But the concept of "a game about dialog trees" for detrot plus the environment sold me from the first trailer

As for my own screen, the thousands of dollars on HT equipment/projector isn't going to be replaced any time this decade, but I'm too nearsighted to play on that, so I play games on a 23" PC monitor (right weight class to fit on my swivel mount)....and they don't even MAKE that size in HDR/4k yet Which is fine because all my cables/switches/repeaters/etc aren't going to be replaced for a long long time either. People that just buy a TV and plug a console in the back must have a convenient life I have like 400 feet of cable and repeaters and 2 matrix swiches in the chain......any "upgrade" of that is both expensive and takes time away from playing games But I keep an eye out for 4k/HDR monitors....someday someone will make one under 30"

@NEStalgia Yes, so-called HDR that is apparently available now on phone cameras (I'm really not up-to-date on this stuff) is a different approach, as you say by combining under- and overexposed shots.

I don't understand why anything I have described would be a "gimmick" Oo Pop in, say, the BBC's "Blue Planet II" documentary series and it will look spectacular. That is not to say, that it will look oversaturated, blackcrushing or anything. You will simply have, for example, a body of water reflecting sunlight and yes, it will be blinding, but such is the nature of a body of water reflecting direct sunlight. It's just a rather close reproduction of what one would see if one were in place of the camera It's not about creating a wow-effect by overblowing this or that. A close-to natural image ... that is as wowing as a display can possibly get and HDR takes as much closer than we have been before. To me it is really as simple as that!

Of course, for a game like God of war the "rules" are different - what is the accurate brightness level and color saturation for a draugr exploding into ashes? There is none, so the artists are free to do whatever looks good them. Again though, that is not to say that on the other hand reflections of sunlight in Lake of Nine in GoW are not very pleasing to the eye and rather realistic as well.

I genuinely don't understand your point then. As for pricing, here in Europe you can get a last-year modell like the LG 55C7 for like 1200€, which is hardly into the tens of thousands, and you don't really need anything else, as the internal player supports HDR/Dolby Vision, also for Netflix and Youtube. All you need is a power outlet and an internet connection

The wow-effect to me simply comes from the fact, that for instance the sun or flames or a car light bears a resemblance to my everyday experience. I not quite sure how this could possibly be seen as anything less than significant progress.

You are right though, a lot of consumers get shafted by being sold equipment that is not up to the HDR specs. It saves them a couple of hundred quids, but really ... you could have just stuck with your old (in my case) Pana Plasma.

I dunno, there was no lack of gore in RE2 even back then. I think any change in that regard is due to graphical capabilities (look at Doom today, it is laughable, but back then, we had discussion around here, whether or not it could inspire young man to commit school shootings - it was actually outlawed if you can believe it, akin to a public health risk), as well as the changed camera, which is just ... well, alot more in-your-face, and thus makes the violence that more personal. It casts you as a perpetrator, not a spectator. While I agree about campy, I think I made that quite clear in my previous overly long ^^ comment, I still expect this to be in there, even though it was not part of the trailer. It wouldn't be "classic" RE without it, and I am sure they are aware of that. Hence my comparison with the endlessly campy but fun From Dusk Till Dawn obviously ^^

As for Nioh, I agree, it's more complex and fast-paced than DS, as I said it expanded upon the mechanics for sure, while maintaing that sense of deliberate weight to all action that is a hallmark of the Souls games. Still, form a design perspective in terms of level design, world building and narrative approach, it is in my book a significant step down.

As a sidenote, I found Nioh much harder (due the speed and complexity) than Dark Souls. DS3 is also much faster and offense-oriented than Demon or Dark Sous. If you find these games to challenging but are curious about the Souls games, it would be worthwhile to go back to Demon, or as you suggested, wait for DS1 on Switch and give that a go. DS1 is the best package of them all anyways, despite the obvious graphical upgrades seen in 3. DS2 is ... well, it's alright.

As for your setup, I am kinda sorry you have this going on. While never going to those lengths, I had a rather extensive setup myself, but since I had to move recently ... well, let's just say, I cut down significantly for the time being, which made it easy to replace my trusty old, professionally calibrated Pana VT30 with a LG C8. There are something I prefered about the Plasma (like the lack of vertical banding), but frankly, the gains in terms of black level (even though the VT30 was basically a Kuro-reference level product at the time) are significant, and I think I said anything I could about the benefits for HDR. To me, it's biggest gamechanger I've seen since I moved on from my Grandma's 30-or-so year old CRT (which died tragically almost to the day a year after her ;-/) to my first Sony 1080p LCD.

I'm not saying that there are no ways to abuse "HDR" as a commercial gimmick, for sure, but I am saying that the proper hardware feed with the proper content produces amazing results. There is simply not other word for it. It's much much much closer to the everyday experience we all share, and thus by any meaningful definition I could adhere to objectively better.

I say this as someone who actually liked the Plasma 'flicker' and look, who felt it gave images a certain kind of ... well, it's hard to describe, but I'd say positive glossy-ness might be the right word. I actually kind picked the C8 over the C7 among others for it's inclusion of Black-Frame-Insertion, which by the by is also supported in game mode, just like dynamic tone mapping - unlike in the C7. It works beautifully with 60fps games. It's not for everyone for sure, as it introduces some flicker and the perceived brightness takes a bit of a hit, but again, after close to a decade of Pana Plasmas, it's something I appreciate when I feel nostalgic (not to mention, that it does create a smoother 60 fps presentation as well).

I'm not sure how much benefit 4K offers on under 30". I'm doubtful it does much for my 55" ... at best it's negligible really. It's a tad sharper for sure, if you pause the image you can also see the differences between checkboarded images and native images. From a proper distance and with motion ... it's close to impossible for me to tell them apart. I didn't buy it for the 4k though, I came for the black levels, the wide color gamut and certainly the HDR, and I could not be happier with it, but obviously that is just me

As for Cage, well, if Heavy Rain never appealed to you, and if it had anything to do with the writing at all, then you're almost as familiar with his writing as I am and we are kinda in the same boat. I only tried his other games for a really short while, before I got frustrated by the needlessly 'detached' controls, and yes, the pretentious writing.