Community Round-Up: 18/10/14

This week has flown by and I’ve actually had more time to play games than I usually do. I’ve got back into Modern Warfare 2 (the best game from the whole franchise in my opinion) and it’s incredible how there’s still a good mix of experienced and inexperienced players keeping the servers active. It’s a weird feeling going back to a game that I haven’t played in a long time, yet it was also instantly and reassuringly familiar – does anyone else get this when they revisit old games they’ve sunk a lot of time into?

Anyway, you’re not here to read me waffle on about that, you’re here for this week’s Community Round-Up!

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For the TSA Meets this week, we’ll be having some of the usual GT6 on Monday, Battlefield 4 on Friday, and Red Dead should be returning on Wednesday.

If you want to play something else, you can add your own Meet to the list, provided you have more than 250 TSA Points.

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It would appear the tides have turned, as in for the first time in a while, the number of Reviews outnumbers the number of Previews! So, let’s dive straight into the big’un of the week, which was The Evil Within. Tuffcub gave it an 8/10, concluding that it felt “fresh and exciting” and was a must for fans of the genre. Sitting one point higher was Bayonetta 2 for Wii U, on a 9/10. Dom praised it highly, saying it sits “amongst the most refined and dynamic action games to appear on any console.”

This week Stefan looked at F1 2014. Sadly, it didn’t fair too well, earning a 6/10, not just because the new-gen version is already appearing on the horizon, but because of it’s lack of advancement since F1 2013, even with the new cars. Meanwhile Jim gave Natural Doctrine,  a hardcore turn-based strategy game a 6/10, Adam gave the 3DS game, Disney Magical World,  a 7/10, and Peter tested out the Corsair K70 RGB Mechanical Keyboard.

On to the Previews, and as I mentioned earlier, it’s quieting down now; perhaps we’ve reached a slight lull before the November releases arrive. Regardless, that didn’t stop Stefan and Peter having a chat about Far Cry 4 with the some of the action from the game running in the background, ahead of his interview with the Lead Writer on the game, Stefan also looked at Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault and also doing an interview, and finally a third interview, this time about LEGO Batman 3. Blair also looked at the upcoming Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.

In IndieFocus this week, Kris played the incredibly addictive looking Mini Metro, while Shadow of Mordor’s Companion App featured on Mobile Watch with Jim. PlayBack joined the regular features with a look at Batman Arkham Origins, also thanks to Jim.

Sniper Elite 3 is under your microscope for this week’s WeView, after Murdered: Soul Suspect received a favourable Verdict.  Your comments on the AC Unity resolution debate and Driveclub’s online launch woes dominated Hot Topics in last weekend’s Chronicle, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see Driveclub appearing again tomorrow after all the articles I’ve seen this week!

The Blogs were pretty busy, beginning with Peter writing about GamerGate, and Jim explaining why he thought the Uruks were the stars of Shadow of Mordor.  This was followed by Dan who wrote about In Space We Brawl, and why it’s the perfect example of how not to make a local multiplayer game, while Blair focused on games that rely on a single core mechanic. 

As this week’s Round Up draws to a close, there’s just time for a quick mention of Episode 157 of the Podcast, and What We Played #177, featuring Driveclub, Shadow of Mordor and Smash Bros.


That’s it for this time. I guess I should make use of this small spell of warm(ish) weather this weekend before it heads downhill later thanks to the tail-end of a hurricane, but I get the feeling I’m going to be spending more time playing MW2! Anyway, I’ll join you next time, so until then, bye!

8 Comments

  1. Agreed about MW2 gazza. I have often revisited it and play a handful of decent games, but then hit one hacked game and it ruins it for me. I guess at some point you would hope all the hackers will have got bored and move on to something else.

    I also hope that PlayStation Now might being a bunch of people back to it, if it’s ever added to the back catalogue.

    Also, I remember when there were in excess of 150,000 playing at once, when Ghosts (albeit on PS4 – when some people may still be playing on PS3) was only hitting 40,000 odd.

    • I’ve only found myself in a handful of hacked lobbies, and those have just been the ones with random messages, none of then are game breaking like the old aim bots or fully auto RPGs.

      PlayStation Now could be a good shout, but it seems there’s plenty of new players as it is, I guess it’s reputation and bargain bin price is enough

      • Good to hear that the hacking isn’t ruining it anymore! I picked up the game around the time I think Black Ops 2 came out, so for hardly anyone was playing online and those who were comprehensively smashed me, so I went back to Killzone. I know that feeling of the old familiar though, I’ve had it most with Burnout Paradise, probably my second most played game of the last generation. I think my most played was Peace Walker, gonna have to play that through again before Phantom Pain so it’ll be interesting to see how quickly it comes flooding back after a couple of years.

      • Most played was Peace Walker!? You must have some button mashing spirit in you to get the through that ******** torture scene (it is literally torture for the player’s hand). Dare I ask, more than once?

      • Hah, well I only finished the story twice, but spent around 90 hours on the PS3 version alone doing all the extra ops, maybe 10 on the PSP the first time I played. Getting the platinum involved less button mashing and more getting spotted, restarting and rushing around sneaking over and over and over. That mashing cutscene sequence took me a few hours to get S-rank though, I had muscles like Arnie afterwards… in my finger!

      • The torture scene was unplayable for me, giving me severe blisters on my fingers. So I never knew what the ending was sadly :( That was on the PSP though, and I plan to get around to playing the PS3 remaster one day as it’s in my backlog (maybe button mashing on a DS3 will be better). In fact, I might delve into sometime this week as a trip down memory lane.

  2. Yeah the Spec Ops missions were what made MW2 in my opinion. Sadly,I think they messed them up in MW3 with poor missions and servers.

    Don’t think the campaign in 2 was anywhere near the quality of the original though.

  3. I really enjoyed MW2, no COD since has come close in my opinion. Proud of that particular platinum.

    Didn’t enjoy MW3’s special ops half as much as MW2’s either

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