I'm no Egyptologist, but there are comparisons to be made to hieroglyphs in that whole and individual parts of a figure or form are drawn from a perspective where the they are recognizable. Hence the typical "walk like an Egyptian" figures, where the arms are drawn in a radically different position from the figure in…

The artistry with which such cultural appropriation is done doesn't need to insult our tastes though.

There are ones that have a few tiny knobs at the bottom. Those seem like a pretty good compromise. Pretty safe to say that you always need a power/volume knob, and a track selection knob and a few buttons set. These don't need to take up much room, the touchscreen can do its thing, be OS upgradeable, etc.

I love my PS4 but damn I'm glad to have a PS3. Eventually there will be more games, but it's totally okay to start small.

And yet Maya or 3Ds Max still builds "curves" like this.

Yep. AC games have always been ho-hum for me in terms of brawling about and causing a ruckus. I wish I was a better person who enjoyed actually achieving things in games.

I made some of the paper crafts, good way to decorate a cubicle, and use the company printers for good instead of evil.

On your #2 - What was their reason for no backwards compatibility?

If you ask someone with a two-pedal tiptronic whatever if they have a manual or an automatic, be prepared to cringe when they say "both!" Do you have a clutch? If you don't, you're car is equipped with an automatic gearbox. Get over it, and stop lying to yourself and your loved ones.

The horizontal alignment of game and app icons is easy to read even with more than 20 now saved on my system. The ability to dive down into any of them to see game/app-specific art, add-ons and social activity is intuitive as can be.

Now we have to shoot two handed as well as horizontal? When will you and your ilk run out of rules?

Nathan, great article. This is going to be revisited as a reference for a bit by me and those like me making similar experiences.

Swordfight is a wrong link.

All you anti-vertical video people, the post has a good example of how it actually can kind of work, and the bad example we all hate.

AA batteries in the ecosystem in whatever way is a sign of a crumbling institution in 2014. As to personal logistics... I usually buy all accessories, esp. motion gaming, and with Nintendo that's a serious investment in a fragmented ecosystem.

1st party or white label or GTFO.

I don't buy anything with cylindrical batteries. At least XBox has an accessory (though the batteries may be a shrink wrapped cylinder series, not my fav).

Market the Wii U to friend groups. A bit like a neighborhood ten person-bicycle. No sense at in everyone having one.

That's a depressing way to run a new product development effort.

Waited until last week, got one. Like it. Areas that I expected to complain about are tolerable.