In the annals of video gaming, 2005's mind-bending platformer Psychonauts is right up there with Earthbound and Beyond Good and Evil in the ranks of games that have a devoted cadre of fans eagerly demanding sequels. Now, those Psychonauts fans might have a decent chance of getting their wish, thanks to an odd, indirect Internet back-and-forth involving Psychonauts creator Tim Shafer and Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson.

The ubiquity of the action RPG, as an idea, is a little weird when you think about it. It's hard to think of two more disparate genres to try to combine, and usually the attempt ends up leaning too heavily toward one side of the coin or the other. Action RPGs often feel like roleplaying games that replace turn-based combat with overly simple button mashing, or like action games with some cursory, stat-building “RPG elements” thrown in toward the end of development.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning manages a surprising trick, then, in creating an action RPG that feels like a full-fledged action game and a full-fledged RPG. Unfortunately, only one of those two component parts manages to stand on its own in a satisfying way.

The Motorola Droid 4 will be available on Verizon's network for $199.99 with a two-year contract, Motorola announced in a press release today. The smartphone carries on the keyboard tradition of its predecessor, the Droid 3, but with a much-improved design.

The Droid 4 has a 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 4-inch qHD display. An 8-megapixel camera that can record 1080p video is on the back of the phone, and an "HD" camera is on the front. The phone has a 1785mAh battery and will launch with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, "to be upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich," according to Motorola.

We handled the phone a bit at CES, and while it's still on the thick and heavy side, the sliding action was smoother and easier than the Droid 3, which had a stiff mechanism. The keyboard keys also had more travel and were easier to press, which should make for a better typing experience.

The Droid 4 will be available in stores and online starting February 10.

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Nikon on Monday announced the D800 digital SLR camera, the newest addition to its professional DSLR line up. Boasting a 36.3 megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor, high ISO shooting capabilities, and a variety of high definition video modes, the D800 leapfrogs well beyond its predecessor, the D700, as well as anything else in the 35mm format, to offer resolution approaching that of $10,000+ medium format cameras.

Like the flagship D4 announced in January, the D800 uses a 51-point autofocus system that is sensitive down to -2EV. It also has the new 91,000 pixel 3D color matrix metering and Advanced Scene Recognition System that compares the image in the viewfinder with a database of previously captured images and their exposure settings. The D800 retains the standard DSLR size of the D700, wrapped in magnesium alloy, but its corners and curves have been rounded in line with the design of the D4.

There's renewed buzz about support for "retina" displays on Apple's portable Macs thanks to higher-resolution cursor images showing up in Mac OS X 10.7.3. by a handful of Mac developers, there are new UI images for things like the , the , and one of the , among (undoubtedly) several others.

It's reasonable to assume that Apple might want to add these new UI elements into the OS for those using higher-resolution external displays. However, as noted by , those who have Mac minis connected via HDMI to TV sets observed recently that their machines rebooted directly into after upgrading to 10.7.3 last week without prompting, which could indicate plans to release future MacBooks with HiDPI displays.

Talk of a "retina" display MacBook Pro has been popping up more and more over the last six months or so. We acknowledged in December that we in 2012, and a in our forums indicates that users believe it will happen eventually—it's just a matter of when. As Chris Foresman wrote recently: "Apple is expected to have similar resolution displays ready for the iPad 3 in early spring, and the same technology would likely be used to make such a high-resolution display suitable for the MacBook Pro." Combined with the expected Ivy Bridge processors from Intel later this year, Apple could take the opportunity to upgrade the Pro line with new processors and higher-resolution displays in one fell swoop.