Community Round-Up: 02/05/15

May has sprung upon us, and with its arrival comes a bank holiday. It was a nice surprise when I realised this on Thursday, and saved a would-be embarrassing and wasted commute on Monday morning!

Meanwhile in the world of gaming, it’s been a bit of a quiet week. It’s amazing to think that E3 will be here in just over six weeks! Anyway, let’s ignore the future and look to the past in this week’s Community Round-Up!

Looking at the Meets, Monday will see the usual GT6 Meet, followed by Battlefield on Friday, with a few GTA V Heists meets thrown in also.

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

Diving into the reviews, this week’s top game was Space Colony: Steam Edition, a sim management game set (funnily enough) in space. Aran took charge of his galactic-conquering industrial company, aiming to please the bosses while also catering to his employee’s needs. Overall, he enjoyed it and gave it an 8/10, before having a look at Gameloading: Rise of  the Indies. The documentary, funded on Kickstarter, follows the development of several indie games and looks at what the industry is like for small developers.

Also sitting on an 8/10 was Guns, Gore & Cannoli (I first read it as ‘cannelloni’ which would have been a far better title in my opinion), again reviewed by Aran. This time he thought the cheap title offered loads of content, and called the “pure explosive chaos” great fun. Meanwhile Stefan played Broken Age: Act 2, and found it didn’t quite live up to the promises of the first act. That said, the story continues to be appealing and the puzzles are harder than before, hence its 7/10 score.

Our last review of the week came from Dom, who gave a 7/10 to Codename S.T.E.A.M. Made by Intelligent Systems, “the historical and literary figures, married with the silver-age comic book visuals make for an engaging world”, yet it is sadly let down by the less than tactical gameplay that the devs are known for.

State of Decay is a couple of years old now, and it’s just been remastered and re-released for Xbox One with State of Decay: Year One Survival Edition. Dom got his hands on the game, which includes the original plus the expansion content, and fell in love with its atmosphere that has you constantly worried as you search for supplies. Another game with a brilliant, although totally different atmosphere is Rocket League, the sequel to SARPBC. Jim gave us his first impressions from the beta, which although small, offers a taste of what we can expect later this year.

Also this week, Blair took to the track with the new DLC for Mario Kart 8. He found the new 200cc mode adds a new element to Mario Kart that we haven’t seen before, as he enjoyed the new characters and new tracks. Elsewhere, Mortal Kombat X appeared on Mobile Watch, with Jim sharing his views on how the revered fighter has transitioned to mobiles.

There was a lot of talk about DLC this week, and especially the questionable practices developers and publishers use with it. Blair examined the “DLC scam“, and concluded that it boils down to the perception of value for gamers.

From the Community articles, the Chronicle discussed crumpets, Smash Bros., Star Wars: Battlefront and Oculus Rift in Hot Topics. Meanwhile, the WeView Verdict for Mario Kart 8 was a unanimous Buy It, as Dying Light looks like it will also receive a solid verdict next week.

There was no podcast this week, so all there’s left to mention is What We Played #201, which featured Halo, Broken Age and Mortal Kombat.

The only thing keeping the Forums going this week was our faithful threads:

I hope you have a good bank holiday and I’ll be here once again next week – bye!

1 Comment

  1. why is it when i send in a question to the podcast, something happens and it doesn’t get answered for weeks.
    i sent one before the EGX or Rezzed podcast, then just before Kev hosted and didn’t have access to the TSA accounts, then last week i sent one in and there was no podcast.

    do i just have the worst timing? ^_^

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