sanfordmay

@izzygraze: It's all risky, though. The Carrie remake was based on the strength of Chloe Moretz's performance in Let Me In, the remade Swedish movie Let The Right One In adapted from the Swedish novel of the same name. Let Me In suffered critically from being a Hollywood remake of a foreign film, and movie critics have a special place in hell for those. It didn't do very well at the box office, either. But almost everyone agreed Moretz was had become a young actress to watch, especially in dark roles. Her celebrity had only grown in the interim, but Carrie remade still tanked even pushed back from a spring to Halloween-window release.

@sunbrozak: We've been doing it forever, though. The Will Smith movie I Am Legend is based on an adaptation of a Richard Martheson novel that's been filmed three times, starting in the 1960s. The first film is the only one the plot bore much resemblance to the novel, and the Smith movie is the only one to use the novel's title. And Hitchcock's classic Stewart and Day version of The Man Who Knew Too Much is not only a remake of an earlier film, it's a remake of Hitchcock's own movie. He'd made a different version of the film far earlier in his career. It's amazing how much has been recycled, remade and reinterpreted in the last 100 years. But through unique titling, vastly different locations, plot rewrites, etc., we often don't realize they're remakes. Even in novels, he's never said so, but if you've read both, Cormac McCarthy's wildly popular The Road is essentially a retelling of his own decades-old Outer Dark, although few people familiar with The Road and No Country For Old Men and maybe All The Pretty Horses have ever heard of Outer Dark, let alone read it.

@officer_falcon: Ex Machina was indeed great but then Alex Garland is just a unique talent. I'd have been surprised if his directorial debut was anything but strong and engaging.

I enjoy some of the reboots/remakes, like the upcoming Poltergeist remake, because they're things I grew up with my kids can now enjoy with contemporary presentation standards. But then again they liked the original Alien and Aliens just fine. Original Disney's The Black Hole was a big hit. These films and others like them hold up amazingly well even when I haul them out and rewatch them. Plus my son is nuts for WiiU ports of NES and SNES titles. Star Wars is kind of a different beast since it's continuing a story with films that were originally intended to be made. If a broad range of older media remains available via home video products and game ports to current hardware, I think, yeah, revisit the past as it was but new projects focus on new stories and new ideas. Think about in console gaming how we've recently got all this fancy new hardware loaded up with remasters of games barely a year or two old. Not many BioShocks running around. And by that I mean not BioShock sequels, but innovative new projects that take advantage of the hardware, sure, but more importantly become future classics.

My favorite controller remains the PS3 DualShock. Rechargeable and very long battery life, comfortable, durable enough. X360 next. And I'd call X1 and PS4 a tie. I agree X1 is a step back from 360. Love the stereo console audio on both even if you need an adapter for X1 controllers. PS4 has some cute gimmicks, though the speaker is really the only thing I think adds much to a game's presentation. But the battery life is atrocious. The ideal controller might be a Frankstein's monster of the X360 with a PS3 d-pad, the 360 sticks and triggers, PS3 face buttons, PS4's built-in console audio out, 360's battery flexibility and life. 360's form factor. Throw in PS4's speaker for grins. It'd be ugly as sin but I'd like it.

@artisanbreads: Yeah the games press has its fair share of ethics issues but magazines and web outlets that didn't do features and previews of games they will review would only have at best half a year's worth of new content unless they review about every single 3DS title that's released.

@somberowl: I thinks that's total launch content hours, though. Not just main story. Remains to be seen if you can dash through the main story in 20 hours, which you could then go back and do for the difficulty trophies.

@zombie2011: I'm renting it first. Huge RPGs either take with us around my house or they don't, no matter how good they are from a more unbiased perspective. That said, if it clicks we'll buy it. Though with substantial DLC expansions in the future I might be tempted to play through what's there, send it back, buy it when the game with DLC bundle hits retail. Which might be as early as this holiday season, as a repackaged bundle could make it a fair contender against some big holiday console title releases this year.

@adequatelyprepared: I think it's more likely a pretty mundane explanation. Guillermo del Toro was involved. They had an actor signed on. There were certainly some sort of contracts, even if those were structured sort of like options. And they're not going to make the game and the option period has run out, they pull the associated content or they keep renewing the options. They keep paying. They're not going to keep paying for a game they're not going to make, at least not in the form P.T. was advertising. I know P.T. is very ambiguous, more just a concept piece, but it doesn't mean it wouldn't fall under some sort of description like "any associated promotional materials" when it comes to paying the what was to be the future talent.

@geraltitude: Yeah, I didn't mean to imply everyone who plays on hard modes is doing it out of some false sense of machismo. Only that it's not worth shelving a good game because I couldn't bring myself to lower the difficulty. I'll probably start Witcher 3 on normal but if I start getting frustrated, easy it is. I think I got myself into this sort of rut playing all the Call of Duty campaigns on highest out of the box difficulty. But they're all linear shooters and I've played so many linear shooters it's unusual I find one I don't have a good sense of what to expect from the combat.