![]() The Mulan legend has been adapted many times, and the character’s origins have changed to suit. China has a tradition of “ gǔ wéi jīn yòng” (“Use the past to serve the present”). ![]() Controversy really kicked off after its star declared her support for the Hong Kong police The fact she holds Qi is repeated too many times to count, even though the film doesn’t explore it in any meaningful way. The child Mulan can already wield a sword like a warrior. Unlike the animation’s average teenager, who works hard to succeed as a soldier, the new Mulan is ready made. (Before he died, my Beijing born father used to hug me when I was upset in order to get rid of the “bad Qi”.) In the film, Qi gives Mulan superhuman physical powers. Philosophers describe it as a type of energy or living metabolism in all beings – though not a special, individual power. To do this they repurpose an element of Chinese culture known as Qi, which translates as “breath” or “air”. Perhaps most jarring is the decision made by the film’s four credited screenwriters to strip our heroine of any flaws, bestowing her instead with a mystical “force”. But that’s about as close to passion as we get in this film. Li ultimately steals the film with several scenes between her and Mulan (Liu Yifei) that prickle with sexual tension as she attempts to turn Mulan to the dark side. They are replaced with a sister with no purpose, a phoenix who doesn’t do very much but looks pretty, and two new villains, Bori Khan (Jason Scott Lee), a nomadic leader, and a witch called Xian Liang (Gong Li), who operates as Mulan’s Lacanian “double”. The new film follows most of the original’s storyline, but major elements of the cartoon have been removed, including the wise-cracking dragon guide Mushu and Mulan’s love interest, Captain Li Shang (today a bisexual icon). ![]() The presence of Chinese-American screenwriter Rita Hsiao on the 1998 Mulan writing team seems to have been forgotten: she no doubt helped to create the film’s sense of the second- and third-generation immigrant experience, subtly inserting joyful references to Cantonese culture throughout the film. The themes of struggling to fit in, reconciling your own identity, and the pressure of making your family proud were a unique package. It was a film that reflected the complexities of my upbringing as the half-Chinese daughter of a mainland Chinese immigrant growing up in the former British colony Hong Kong. I am still an unabashed lover of the 1998 cartoon. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() If you plan on picking up the game, which version will you choose? Let us know in the comments. The gameplay is similarly not being left untouched: a new type of evolution is being introduced called Primal Reversion, new mega evolutions have been added, and players will now be able to design their own secret bases that can be shared through StreetPass.Īlpha Ruby and Omega Sapphire are scheduled for release on November 21. The most significant change, of course, is the shift from the sprite-based 2D graphics of the older Pokemon games to the 3D-graphic style introduced in Pokemon X and Y. Luckily, Reddit user YouDontKnowThisUser has compiled a comparison of three dozen screenshots that pit the 3DS remakes against very similar (if not identical) scenes from the original games, which you can see below. But if, like me, you haven't seen Ruby or Sapphire recently, you might not realize just how much of a change the games' visuals have undergone by simply looking at screenshots of the 3DS versions. To obtain Pokmon missing from your version you need to trade with someone who has the opposite version. Like all the paired games in the Pokmon series, Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire each include Pokmon that cannot be obtained in the alternate version. By clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot'sĬonsidering 12 years have passed since Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire were released on Game Boy Advance, graphical improvements are to be expected from their upcoming 3DS remakes, Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. Version-exclusive Pokmon in Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire. ![]() ![]() ![]() Modern Warfare 3, like its predecessors, doesn't require any kind of mandatory install on the PlayStation 3, but there are occasions in the game where we wish that an option existed to dump texture data on the hard drive for faster access. The only other major difference we spotted during our playthroughs concerned texture streaming. In some cases, the equivalent PS3 textures arrive 1-2 seconds later. Texture streaming is a point of differentiation between the two console platforms - the Xbox 360 seems to be more adept in getting high quality artwork on-screen. This has changed for the sequel.Īs you can see from the shots below, alpha buffers are reduced on PlayStation 3 to what we would think is something lower than 50 per cent of 720p resolution, meaning that effects such as atmospheric rendering, particles and explosions can be rather more pixelated in comparison to the Xbox 360 where the effect is running at full resolution. Modern Warfare 2 didn't pursue this strategy and we can't help but feel that it was a contributory factor to the PS3 version's noticeably lower frame-rate. In Call of Duty: World at War, the developers experimented with lower resolution alpha buffers (used for particle and transparency work) on PlayStation 3 in order to increase performance. However, we do see some ideas first implemented by Treyarch making their way across to a Modern Warfare game. While we're never keen about features being removed from sequels, in this case it's probably a good move - 3D support in Black Ops came at the cost of the engine's high frame-rate, a crucial component in the make-up of the Call of Duty gameplay experience. The standout example here is that the stereoscopic 3D technology introduced in Black Ops is absent in Modern Warfare 3. The sub-HD nature of the console games is mitigated somewhat by the high frame-rate, but the PC version offers up the chance to compare the 1024圆00 2x MSAA framebuffer with a more preferable native 720p with 4x MSAA.īased on what we've seen on previous Call of Duty titles, it appears to be the case that Treyarch carry out their own custom changes to the core engine - and there's no guarantee that the tech team at Infinity Ward keep these alterations for their own games. This sub-HD reduction from standard 720p has been standard since the first Modern Warfare game, and allows the developers to maximise the 10MB of eDRAM attached to the Xbox 360 GPU, while the reduction in fill-rate frees up precious RSX resources on the PlayStation 3. Both versions run at the standard COD resolution of 1024圆00 with 2x multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA) applied. ![]() This time - for whatever reason - we're going to assume it's by design, so we've left the default settings as is for our main comparison assets, and double-checked that both consoles were indeed set to full-range RGB output.įirst up, the good news is that the resolution disparity between the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 that was introduced with Black Ops hasn't been carried forward into the latest iteration of the Infinity Ward engine: the underwhelming PS3 res of 960x540 is no more. In a year where the gap between the two consoles has become wafer-thin, has Infinity Ward managed to upgrade its core technology to produce a truly like-for-like experience on both machines? Let's find out, first by checking out the usual head-to-head comparison movie, backed up - as ever - by a comparison gallery that includes both consoles, plus the PC version running at 720p on the maximum quality level.Ĭuriously, the colour balance issue we saw in Modern Warfare 2 hasn't been fully addressed in the sequel (there were no problems with Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops), so while the 360 version doesn't look so dark and oppressive as it did in MW2 (and is a match for PC) the PlayStation 3 game is considerably brighter. ![]() Putting aside DLC exclusive windows and a perceivably higher level of multiplayer performance, the core technology itself just seems to run better on the Microsoft architecture: every metric we've run on COD titles from Modern Warfare onwards has produced a palpably higher performance level on Xbox 360. While the Call of Duty games have enjoyed mammoth levels of success across both console platforms, the game has arguably found its home on Xbox 360. ![]() The latest chapter in the Modern Warfare saga may well be short on revolutionary new concepts and never-seen-before technology, but what Infinity Ward and co-developers Sledgehammer and Raven have delivered is a supremely enjoyable, highly polished package that offers a ton of value across its principle single-player, Spec Ops and multiplayer components. The biggest game of the year has finally arrived. ![]() |
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