I felt like that too, I think it has to do with the overexposure every scene seems to be under now, it is almost always super bright and flashy or incredibly dark.
If they toned back the filtering, rendering, and balanced it a bit more, it would probably come out much better.
If you want to hide text you will have to download the universal cheat mod from the OP, it allows you to hide text and scrollback if you use the built-in scene feature.