Community Chronicle: 05/01/14

With the holidays behind us, it’s time to catch up on everything you’ve been up to over the last fortnight, as we get going with this year’s first Community Chronicle.

Before we get into the main body of the article, a inferior race asks that you update your trophy card if you’re taking part in the TSA leaderboards. We’re doing something interesting with that…

The new year has brought with it some news from the front in the console wars, with the UK market buying next-gen consoles just about as fast as they can be put on shelves. The PS4 has taken out an early lead, but everybody wins when nearly a million have been sold in just this single country!

Ron_mcphatty said, “It is incredible! It means that roughly 1% of the UK population bought a next gen console pretty much at launch. That’s probably more than ate the recommended five-a-day.”

Of course, there are still millions of the last generation machines knocking around, and Starman is “Still refusing to buy one until my 360 backlog is finished!”

Elsewhere, it was more bad news, of a sort, for Criterion fans, as Alex Ward and Fiona Sperry have left EA to start on a new adventure of their own. Criterion was already trimmed right back down to 17 people a few months ago, so my thoughts aren’t all that far removed from coruscant’s:

Criterion is pretty much dead, let’s face it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they folded completely soon.

To be fair, they’ve not made anything compelling since Burnout Paradise, and Black before that.

Then again, freezebug’s sentiments are also right on the money, as he said, “Best of luck to them in their new endeavours, maybe a fresh start without restriction is just what the doctor ordered.

Sony also bore a little bad news for those who are still working through a hefty backlog of games, announcing that they planned to shut down the multiplayer servers for Resistance and Gran Turismo 5. This in addition to turning off the servers for MAG and SOCOM games, which was previously announced.

However Bunimomike wondered if they couldn’t handle the dismantling of a game’s servers more gracefully:

I’m surprised Sony doesn’t build a bare bones P2P utility that patches into every game that uses online (or at least most of them) which will then support people hosting a game and others connecting. It guarantees the life of the game with online shenanigans.

I used to be able to host Left 4 Dead 2 games with seven friends connected no problem. Even with a couple of people connected from the Netherlands, and I’m in the UK. If Sony built that utility it means it would be secure and could run on every game flawlessly.

It wouldn’t be the same if R1MJAW and Crazy_Del weren’t trawling their way through games, and R1MJAW closed out last year by earning himself the fastest record for the Minecraft platinum, before playing through the decidedly more emotional Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and Rain.

Crazy_Del, meanwhile, was busy battling the enemy and the myriad of bugs that plague Battlefield 4, to earn that platinum. I believe he’s also just a single trophy away from the platinum on Assassin’s Creed 4, which practically everyone and their dog seems to be playing, but is finding it tricky when there’s a code gremlin blocking his path!

Vallon, who has now re-branded himself as Cron_13, first finished the cop career of Need for Speed: Rivals, then decided that he was enjoying himself so much that he might as well carry on and get the platinum trophy. Freezebug was also getting his dose of racing pleasure, with the platinums for both WRC 3 and Test Drive Ferrari Racing Legends.

Bigchrissyc found himself battling through to the Resogun platinum, which is a game I need to get back to myself, but we finish off this week as Sitorimon claimed the records for Wonderbook: Book of Spells, Toy Story Mania and Machi-ing Maker 4…

I find that last one particularly impressive, since I’ve ever heard of the first of the three releases!

We’re nearly done, but you can head over to page two for the full trophy leaderboards. To finish off this page, we have the usual submission form for photos and accomplishments.

If people want to keep sending photos in, I’ll be happy to post them, but gaming places is no longer a regular feature. If you fancy it, just use the submission form below, get in touch with me on Twitter at @teflon, or just send me an email out of the blue to [email protected].