Community Round-Up: 08/09/12

Welcome back, agents. Another week has passed like a flash, and I barely know what day it is, but there’s lots of exciting things happening in and around TSA for you. In particular, some of us have been having an advanced little preview of a TSA redesign; if you follow Al on Twitter you’ll know that Tuffcub doesn’t completely despise it.

Most intriguing…

It’s been a good week for competitions. Most urgently, we have a giveaway of three Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD codes for PS3 running until the end of today. All you need to do is propose a skating move, and the best one will win with two further being awarded at random. Even if you think your idea sucks, you’re still in with a chance!

We also have an ongoing handout of codes for the beta of War of The Roses on PC. Just drop your name and email address into the correct boxes, and we’ll have a code winging on its way to you ahead of the release early in October.

There’s also another week of MotorStorm: Apocalypse action for you to catch up on from last weekend, with another update coming along soon.

Finally, the EGX tickets competition closed last night. The five winners names have been drawn, and emails have been sent out congratulating the winners, so please be sure to check your inboxes and spam boxes while we sort out an announcement post for later today or tomorrow.

It’s all your usual fun and games in the Meets section. Mainly regular meets though, as we wait for the great big slab of “Holiday 2012” games to drop on our doormats.

For tonight, Bodachi hosts the usual Uncharted 3 meet beginning at 7pm. Sunday sees the DiRT Showdown meet starting at the usual time of 6pm, hosted by R1MJAW.

CarBoyCam hosts a MotorStorm: Apocalypse meet on Monday at 8pm, while Forrest’s Max Payne 3 meet occurs later a little later on at 9pm.

Forrest is also hosting another DiRT Showdown meet on Tuesday night at 8pm, before moving on to Thursday for a Ridge Racer Unbound meet that kicks off at 9pm. Thursday also sees R1MJAW getting his skate on with THPS HD at 10.

Finally we have the regular Battlefield 3 meet on Friday night. Our month with a BF3 server has actually come to an end, so if you’ve used and enjoyed this extension of the site, you should head over to the forum thread and voice your opinion. If enough people want it, we’ll look at bringing it back.

I’m sure there’s a few meets that have yet to be made, so keep an eye out for all the other meets that will pop up during the week. Don’t forget that you could create your own Meet, provided you have 250 TSA Points, if you don’t see what you want to play on the list already.

Just the single review this week and it’s not even of a game, but rather a video review of a device to make gaming videos, Elgato’s Game Capture HD. It’s an impressive little bit of kit that’s certainly made a few waves in the industry, so tune in to see what I think of it.

I’ve been busy in the previews though, with a look at Sacred Citadel and Sacred 3 coming last Saturday afternoon, and Call of Juarez: Gunslinger from yesterday. Peter breaks out his own video editing tools to have a look at Joe Danger: The Movie. Just in time for its release!

Adam Guest is our very suitably named Guest Writer for a take on the true value of PlayStation Plus, which rounded up a week of opinion pieces. Kris pointed out that SCEE need to fix their PSN updates as soon as possible, whilst Peter gives us ten tongue in cheek reasons why the EU store sees so many delays and Aran thinks it’s about time that the games industry gave a fair and honest representation of disabilities within games. Finally, Al sometimes just wants to kick back and relax whilst playing a game, with Easy mode letting him do so without any simulated stressed.

The recap of the top 100 most looked forward to games of 2012 recap continues, taking us all the way up to 51. Half way there, lads! Last week’s Community Chronicle featured Burgess super water-cooled PC. (Incidentally, pretty please could people send their gaming rig photos?) The WeView Verdict game in for Starhawk with The Darkness 2 next up on the stand for your disapproving (or approving) gaze.

Rounding us out, we have the regulars in What We Played and the TSA Podcast making their weekly appearances.

Oops. I completely forgot about the Forum last week, but it didn’t seem like any of you noticed this segment missing. Even so, it has returned.

• Tobo is trying to raise enough scratch for an expedition to Madagascar. Can you point him in the right direction and help him get there?
• Who would be your ideal cast for the Metal Gear Solid movie?
• It’s story time with GTOWN… This will not end well.
• TheLig bemoans a certain rising level of cynicism and negativity in the gaming press.
• Both threelions and Origami Killer are hit by breakages on their old 60GB PS3’s… The former wanting an old FF7 save on a long deceased beast, the latter hit with the HDMI dying. Sad times.

Last week I pitted Dante, from Dante’s Inferno against Death from Darksiders 2, with Death managing to beat the Death killing Dante to become out latest addition to the Hall of Fame. That’s one convoluted sentence right there!

However, I figured it only fair to give Dante a chance to redeem himself and honour his name. So for this particularly confusing edition of Saturday Showdown, we’re going to have Dante from Dante’s Inferno going up against Dante from Devil May Cry 1-3 and both will also have to defeat the re-imagined Dante from DmC: Devil May Cry coming out of Ninja Theory.

I’m sure that almost all of you already have a particular winner in mind already. Maybe you prefer Dante’s Inferno and his great big scythe, or the PS2’s white haired Dante does more for you with fond memories of epic demon hunting? I’d say he’s something of an outsider in this contest, but I do have a soft spot for Ninja Theory’s games so despite the initial negativity that game faced could he one day become the best Dante yet?

Place your votes, and I believe Gazza will be returning next week to mop up all the pieces.