Community Round-Up: 30/06/12

Hello again! Can you believe June is nearly over and we’ve still got rubbish weather?! It’s been raining every day down here, although it was a lovely 28°C on Thursday! Anyway, you’re not hear to listen to me rant about the weather, so here’s this weeks Community Round-Up.

The second round of racing, smashing and bashing is finished in the DiRT Showdown Tournament, and we have a second extensive video commentary of proceedings from Death_in_Flamez. The groups are finished, and the top four guys progress to head-to-head quarter finals now. Good luck to everyone that’s made it through!

Starting off with the Meets, let’s take a look at what we’ve got shall we?

Tonight, Bodachi hosts the usual Uncharted 3 meet beginning at 7pm, while at 9pm sanmartinez hosts the Bioshock 2 Meet. Tomorrow, R1MJAW hosts the DiRT Showdown meet at the usual time of 6pm.

Monday night’s Gran Turismo 5 Meet starts at 7pm hosted by Jambo, featuring the Spa Francorchamps DLC track. [I also made a little teaser trailer for it – Tef] Also on Monday, Youles gets dirty with the DiRT 3 meet at 8pm. And then at 9pm quinkill hosts the Max Payne 3 meet.

Later on in the week, Element666 hosts an Assassins Creed Revelations meet at 8pm on Thursday.

Keep an eye out for Youles’s usual WipEout Vita meet on Friday at 9pm, as well as Forrest’s Friday Night Battlefield Meet, and if you feel like it, you can create your own Meet provided you have 250 TSA Points.

Once again, we’ve only got two reviews for you this week I’m afraid, but the first one is Dan’s 9/10 review of the impressive, but sandy, Spec Ops: The Line. Blair gave a robust 7/10 to the 3DS title Heroes of Ruin. Lastly, Tuffcub gave a 6/10 to Lollipop Chainsaw, the game featuring a cheerleader and a chainsaw – what more could you want?

We have a few more previews, beginning with Stefan venturing beyond the E3 demo of Black Ops 2. In fact, Stefan’s been a busy boy, going hands on with The Amazing Spiderman, Skylanders: Giants and lastly Transformers: Fall of Cybertron.

Despite a tough week, Peter’s managed to put together a completely outstanding article explaining the true historical context of Assassin’s Creed 3, and why you maybe shouldn’t be quite so outraged at the nationalities of the antagonists, nor the protagonists in the game series. If this excited you, you’ll be pleased to know there’s more to come.

Al has been writing so much stuff this week. He lends his thoughts on what it was that made WipEout 3 so great, (It extends beyond the self-referential title screen) the way PS plus benefits the industry, why LBP Vita is the best thing on the PS Vita, the real problems for PS minis and finally why he’s found himself stop playing MotorStorm RC. Rounding us out is Kris, looking at what the point is of SimCity Social.

And now, let’s move onto the community articles and regular features. First up, it’s results day for those of you that took the Meet the Reader Exam. Congratulations to those of you that passed, for those that didn’t; retakes take place next week! We also have the WeView Verdict for inFamous 2, before asking you about the equally PS+’d Space Marine. Borderlands featured in Gareth’s Cheap PC Gaming this week, but not to be missed are last Sunday’s Sunday Thoughts looking at second screens, the 67^th Episode of the TSA Podcast and lastly What We Played #59 from Greg.

It’s great to see the Forums this week are brimming with activity, let’s take a look at what we’ve got:

• After countless years of retakes, Elder Mike has finally completed his degree! He was only a nipper when he started!
• Ignoring the fact I’m half Welsh, OrigamiKiller demonstrates why Welsh people shouldn’t be allowed behind the wheel with some of his F1 2012 footage.
• A Inferior Race asks you to name your top 5 games for a little forum game he’s planning.
• Sympozium asks about Minecraft, and if you’ve got any cool creations, why not show them off?
• And lastly, CrazyDel, or more specifically, CrazyDel’s sister needs help winning a t-shirt design competition.

I think last week saw the closest battle yet, but eventually Sephiroth was declared winner with 8 votes to 7 against Solid Snake, so Sephiroth enters the hallowed Hall of Fame. Now that we are almost 6 months into the showdown, and with 4 contestants in the hall of fame, I decided it’s about time we put them head to head.

So, in the first week of ‘Saturday Morning Showdown’s Head to Head Fight of the Champions’ (catchy, heh?) we are going to see Optimus Prime from Transformers take on Ratchet from the Ratchet and Clank Series.

Ratchet

Pros

• Ratchet is a Lombax, a sort-of feline creature and looks kinda cute!
• Has a vast armoury of futuristic weaponry.
• Also has other equipment such as Hoverboots at his disposal.

Cons

• His sidekick, Clank, seems pretty useless for 95% of the time.
• Those long ears can probably get caught in machinery quite often, and attract strange fetishists.
• Being the last of his race must make his love life a bit complicated. Oh, and the whole looming extinction thingy too, I guess.

Optimus Prime

Pros

• Leader of the Autobots, the most badass assembly of robots. Ever.
• Drives round with an armoured weapons platform, just in case something goes down.
• Will never surrender to the Decepticons.

Cons

• Attempts to surreptitiously conceal himself as a massive red and blue truck, because you see loads of those everyday, right?
• Often trusts those he should not, ‘seeing the good in everyone’.
• Goes through loads of WD-40.

Well that’s it for yet another week. Leave your votes below, and I’ll see you all next week! Bye!