Community Round-Up: 12/10/13

Blimey, is it that time already? This week flew by without me even noticing. Anyway, let’s get started with this week’s Community Round-Up. Read on for the latest competitions, reviews and articles which we’ve had on TSA this past week!

We’ve teamed up with Curve Studios to give you the chance to win some rather unique prizes. To enter, simply write in the comments of the competition post, describing what you would do if you were the last man or woman on Earth. You can also enter by tweeting using the hashtag #TSALoneSurvivor. We’ll pick out our favourite answers and then chose our winners at random.

The winner won’t just receive a faux-PS2 disc with the game; they’ll also receive a rare signed print and an even rarer plush Sleepy Cat. Runners up will receive PSN codes for the game, and best of all this competition isn’t just limited to the UK!

You’ve still got plenty of time to get your entries in, as the competition will close on October 20th at 17:00 BST, after which we’ll announce the winners on the 21st.

Right now, we’ve nothing planned for the Meets, so take the initiative and create your own, as long as you’ve got 250 TSA Points! It may also be worth checking out the threads for Killzone Mercenary and GTA V linked below if you fancy joining in on any action there.

This week has definitely been busy on the Preview and Review side, so let’s jump straight in with Blair, who looked at Ratchet & Clank: Nexus, and also collected various staff members’ first impressions of  GTA Online. Serkan Hassan, the lead game designer of Ubisoft’s The Crew, spoke to TSA about the game, while Peter had a look at the amusing Goodbye Deponia, a point and click game soon to be released on Steam.

Stefan spoke to Kazutoki Kono-san as he took to the skies in Ace Combat Infinity,  before jumping back in time for some WW2 dogfighting in War Thunder. After going “face on” with Oculus Rift, he played some more of XCOM: Enemy Within, before turning his attention to Warface, which is Crytek’s upcoming free to play game, speaking to Joshua Howard in the process.

He also did a great video comparison of Battlefield 4, and how different resolutions can affect the look of a game, and lastly, he sprinkled on some miracle-grow in order to get his beard up to scratch for the PC game, War of the Vikings.

While not quite a preview, Jim posed questions to CCP’s Atli Mar Sveinsson, exploring the future of Dust 514 and where that will lead them, and he also looked at The Drowning for Mobile Watch.

Focusing on the Reviews now, and this week’s AAA title was Beyond: Two Souls. Sadly, it seems it’s been let down by poor gameplay mechanics and an incoherent story, leading Blair to give it a 6/10. Another game to get a 6/10 was Pro Foosball, which GregToo found difficult to master.

‘The most disappointing game of the week’ award – yes, I just made up that award – goes to Skydive: Proximity Flight, which received a 3/10 from Jim. That leaves the ‘best game of the week’ award – yes, I just made that up too – to go to Worms: Revolution, which Stefan thought was worthy of a 7/10.

Onwards and upwards, and the Chronicle didn’t feature any gaming rigs due to a lack of submissions, so let’s give a special mention to R1MJAW who earned a double fastest platinum last week! For WeView, The Last of Us follows Thomas Was Alone, which received a whopping 14 votes for ‘Buy It’ in its Verdict.

Blair shared his thoughts on Adam Boyes’s view that ‘nobody gains from exclusives‘ while in PlayBack, Rage took centre stage, as did Castle Story for Indie Focus.

In Episode 115 of the Podcast this week, the gang talked about Breaking Bad, while Newsdesk #16 was jam-packed as usual. Last but not least, Greg has What We Played #126 to round things off.

Let’s head on into the Forums, to see what’s being talked about this week:

• Double-O-Dave is looking for a new gaming monitor and is looking for your suggestions.
• A few people have been updating the Film thread with recent movies that they’ve seen.
• Teflon is asking if there’s any interest for another F1 Championship this year, although it’s looking more likely there’ll just be Meets or maybe a small tourney.
• The Killzone Mercenary and GTA Online Meet threads are still seeing plenty of action.

Turns out it was a fairly busy week, then, maybe that’s why it flew by! I’m sure next week will be just as busy, so I’ll see you then – bye!