Community Round-Up: 17/12/11

The gaming world is gently winding down for Christmas, but right now it’s time for the Round-Up.

I’m back in charge for this week’s edition, as Gazza has his end of term larks, and on top of that it was his birthday yesterday! So, lets see what’s been going on while he’s been out on the tiles, eh?

News from the front about Wednesday’s Modern Warfare Master!

That news is that there has been a bit of a hitch. Previous games in the series gladly supported 18 players in private matches, but with MW3 this is no more, supporting only 9 players. This wasn’t a commonly known issue, and so the war has been postponed, along the lines of The Phoney War. Gazza will drop fresh intel once he has a new plan to take this into account.

Aside from that, things are fairly quiet but we do have quite a big selection of unlock codes for the free to play MMO Dragonica, a side-scrolling Manga styled action game, and are going to give them away. There’s two packs, the Starter and Advanced packs, which give you a selection of useful potions and… megaphones!

If you want a code, all you need to do is say so in the comments, and Adam will get in touch via a private message on the forums. Alternatively, you can tweet @TSACom and ask for a code. If you’re feeling particularly enthusiastic, you can feel free to yell “DRAGONICA!” whilst typing it at the same time.

Whilst competitions have wound down, meets are still plenty active. Just last night there was a fun little championship meet for F1 2011. Eight of us lined up on track and had a bunch of 10% races for an hour, with Manorhowze coming out on top from some rather enjoyable races!

Looking to the future, tonight we have the usual Uncharted 3 meet, as well as a regular Bioshock 2 meet too. You all already know the deal here, as they’re long standing meets.

The exact same can be said of the Monday MotorStorm Madness meet on… Monday. That’s combined with a Killzone 2 meet. Yes, you read that right. Spooferbarnabas decided it was high time to revisit one of the best multiplayer games this generation, and head back to Helghan, reviving the old Monday Boot time of 7PM to do so.

Bodachi has set up a, currently full up, Payday: The Heist meet on Wednesday, and he is also in charge of the Uncharted 3 meet on Thursday this week, in my stead. He’s certainly getting around a bit this week!

Chances are that Friday (AKA Christmas Eve Eve) will see a big Battlefield 3 meet up, hosted by Forrest. The meet isn’t there at time of writing, but it’ll probably appear soon enough.

Remember that if you want to host your own Meet, you can do so provided you have at least 250 TSA points.

As we quickly approach the end of the year, there’s a lot of wrapping up going on, and not just of presents!

Peter has busied himself with a Review of the Year, giving us the highlights from January and February already. Whilst the entire team has been working hard on covering TSA’s Top 100 of 2012 most anticipated games, and have already zoomed to number 61.

Dan Lee has what must surely be one of the last reviews this year, Joe Danger Special Edition, for Xbox 360. Jim has been playing the MMORPG, Rift, for long enough to reach Level 20, and given it a nice and balanced review. Al has given a pseudo-review of the new Dizzy game for iOS, some early impressions of the iOS re-release of GTA3, along with a letter to console manufacturers about how they should get out of the way and just let us play games!

We also have a bunch of regular articles. What We Played has hit episode 31, Cheap PC Gaming highlights the Humble Indie Bundle 4, whilst WeView wraps up from Red Dead Redemption and asks for your opinions on Dead Space 2. Don’t be shy!

Speaking of shyness, that’s something certainly not on show in the MMO Podcast, hitting episode 47 this week. Likewise, whilst he’s a tad Raikkonen-esque at times, Lee-ma was happy enough to take part in last week’s Meet the Reader.

The forums have been full of wrapping up too. There’s plenty of GoTY threads a moment, so I think someone needs to start a GoTY Thread of The Year thread…

• SolidSteven has sparked a little debate about the inclusion of Multiplayer modes in previously single player only franchises.
• Mickey2010 has started a thread about your favourite gaming easter eggs. Wrong time of year, isn’t it?
• Crawfail’s been suffering at the hand of some cruel First World Problems. Feel free to share your own!
• Over in the Uncharted forums, there’s a burgeoning little threadlet with some videos from the Multiplayer. I’ve posted a few in there myself, and so has Goodgoa, but I know a few other people have been playing with UC3′s video exporting feature too. Get them posted!
• Don’t forget to vote in the TSA Forum Awards 2011 thread. For some baffling reason, people other than myself are getting votes. As if that makes sense!
• Finally, Tuffcub has given out a cry for some community provided Ho-ho-ing to go in the background of the TSA Christmas song. There’s a strict deadline that he needs it by tomorrow night, so get your carol singing garb (or sexy Santa outfit) on and give it a shot!

There’s plenty more going on too. SpikeyMikey’s been trying to get to the bottom of something, for example, but that didn’t seem appropriate for some reason.

I’m warning you guys that next week’s round-up will be… interesting…