Community Round-Up: 30/07/11

Gather round, my good people! Gather round! As ever there’s a huge amount that goes on at TSA every week, and we thought it’d be a lovely idea to bring back the Community Round-Up to help you come along on a Saturday and find a few of those gems you might have missed during the week.

So read on for details of competitions, articles, meets, forum threads and about 70 billion hotlinks!

The pick of the bunch this week has to go to the Dirt 3 Tournament. A Head2Head Knock-Out competition, that will stretch into early September, you’d best enter by putting your name down in the forum thread pretty soon, as the entries close tomorrow night, Sunday 31st, at 9PM.

Jas-n is leading the charge on Folding@Home once again, and in order to get us to set every electronic device we own to the task of curing every ailment imaginable, he and TSA are offering some prizes. Just set your PC, Mac, PS3, Microwave, etc. to do some Folding, and get at least one work unit submitted as part of the TSA Folding team, (number 78731) and you’ll be entered into a draw to win a £5 or £10 Amazon voucher. For more details, head to the article.

Each week, there’s also a competition or two on the TSA Podcast. They record on a Thursday evening, so you only have a few days between the release and the deadline, but Lewis will dip into a stack of DVDs, and Kris into a pile of comics to give stuff away. Everyone that enters correctly has a great chance of winning. Aside from that, it’s a good listen, so check out the latest episode here.

Following up on the Dirt 3 Tournament, Manorhowze hosts his weekly Dirt 3 meet on Sunday afternoon at 4PM. It’s always a good laugh, and Manor works through all the modes, so you get a taste of everything. This week has a particularly big turn out, so we’ll see a second lobby spring up too.

Racers seem to rule the roost at TSA a moment, as MotorStorm: Apocalypse meets on both Monday and Friday now. Also, following on from Jambo’s Super GT Gran Turismo 5 championship (congratulations to AshGraham), Fridays also see a themed GT5 meet, details of which are in the forum thread.

If racing isn’t your thing, though, Killzone 3 has regular meets on Monday, and a DLC meet on Fridays too. Then there’s also a regular Brink meet, Crazy Del wants to play Mortal Kombat, and Uncharted 2 often gets a look in. A few meets have also sprung up for games not on the list of games to choose from. So we have Castle Crashers disguised as CoD (more details here), SARPBC disguised as Assassin’s Creed (with a forum thread), and Singularity masquerading as Everybody’s Golf (Singularity forum thread here).

There’s so much going on, that it would be near impossible to sign up for everything, and play. Get involved as much as you can via the overall meet list, and chat about stuff in the TSA Meets Forum.

Had enough of gaming, though? Feeling a bit apathetic to it all this week? I think I know exactly how you feel, so go and try your hand at a bit of reading with a side of typing.

This week’s WeView article sees us get a chance to review MotorStorm: Apocalypse. Drop by the forum, and you’ll see it already has a bunch of positive reviews, despite its flaws, so if you’ve got a contrary opinion, or just want to add your agreement, don’t forget to post by the end of Sunday. Please keep it short and snappy though, Kris has to read all of these, and he’s already mildly insane.

Aside from having a Folding@Home competition, Jas-n has also been introducing us all to a few of the Folders at TSA. Early in the week we met Fattyuk, and TSBonyman, then last night we met a DeadlyChipmonk, before we finish the week of interviews tonight. So set your PS3 to do some folding, and then come meet some of the guys.

“Enough of the household chores!” I hear you say, “Take me to the side of town, where all the hot steamy action is!” Well, in that case let us delve into TSA’s dark and seedy underbelly. I’m exaggerating a bit, it’s not really that dark.

In Gaming Banter, people have been discussing:

• The revamped TSA Trophy Leaderboard, and the accompanying TSA Trophy Banter thread.
• Origami Killer wanted some recommendations for local co-op games. So if you’ve got some more suggestions, or want to see what people are saying, check that out.
• The post featured in the banner was from Fresh191, wondering if there’s a particular etiquette to playing CoD. Seems the randoms just couldn’t handle him being better than them. Make TSA proud, Fresh!

Heading over General Chat, where you’ll need to be a TSA Party Member. Have your papers ready for the checkpoint.

• Origami Killer gets another mention, as I share his sentiment that birthdays are silly. Some people seem to like them, though… Crazy!
• Yogdog’s disappeared off on holiday to Cornwall lately. He seems to be having a good time, even if he’s a bit smug about it! Oh, and if you’re reading this out loud to children, be ready to bleep some words out…
• My personal favourite thread came last Sunday afternoon, when Aerobes posted a lovely letter from a mother to her son. I’ll give you a short extract:

Dear Son,
I am writing this letter very slowly because I know you can’t read very fast.
We are all very well here, you won’t recognise the house when you get home because we’ve moved. It’s quite nice and it’s got a washing machine. I put shirts in it last week, pulled the chain and haven’t seen them since.
… 

I’m just scratching the surface, though. There’s lots of threads running in the forums, you really do need to dive in and have a look for yourself.

So there we have it. I’m sure you’ve already completely forgotten what I’ve said, and we seem to have travelled from a carnival to Communist Russia. So I command you to enter the Dirt 3 Tournament, write an MS:A review, do some folding whilst you’re ironing, and post something in the forums!

Until next week, Comrades!