Community Chronicle: 09/02/14

The UK’s really been taking quite a battering from the elements lately, with floods hitting many parts and more storms coming with no time to recover in between. Fingers crossed that you’re all safe and sound.

Off in the gaming world, we don’t have quite those worries but there’s always some fun little scandal and interesting news to distract yourself with. Before we get to those, don’t forget that you can still get involved in the 2014 Trophy Leaderboard, simply by taking part in the main Trophy Leaderboard and updating your trophy card.

Activision announced this week that they would be changing the development schedule for their ever-popular Call of Duty franchise. Rather than having Infinity Ward and Treyarch releasing games on a biennial basis, Sledgehammer, who previously worked alongside Infinity Ward, will be creating a third sub-franchise, starting this year.

Allowing the development teams 3 years to create their games is certainly a popular move, with Kennykazey trying to balance both sides of the decision, saying that “Longer development means better result, but with three different studios the games could have varying quality and feel quite different. Perhaps that’s not a bad thing.”

Then wonkey-willy then took us on a delightfully bizarre tangent by comparing buying Call of Duty to “kissing your gran goodbye!”, something that “you don’t want to do but out of principle you have to.”

In an industry where so many games are having multiplayer added to traditionally single-player experiences, The Order: 1886 is defying that trend by sticking resolutely to solo play. Taylor Made saw this as a good thing, saying, “That’s cool, not every game needs MP, as long as it’s got replay value. Uncharted started as a single player game so maybe the future sequels will have some sort of MP.”

Having said that, and while very little of the game has been shown so far, there was definitely a suggestion from the early trailers that this would suit co-op multiplayer. Moonpie, in particular, was “Really gutted that there is no co-op. The best fun I’ve had on some games has been with my buddies playing co-op.”

Meanwhile, there was yet another little scuffle about the game sticking to 30 frames per second, but we’ll not go into that this time around.

What we will dive into are the reports that Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, the prologue to The Phantom Pain which is to be sold separately, can be finished in under two hours. That’s something which will be sold for £30, but has been designed with replay value in mind.

Ron_mcphatty chipped in:

Wow, that’s short. Not short compared to say the Tanker Chapter or Virtuous Mission, but short as its own release! I hope [MGS V] makes it as a single disc release at some point, I think a lot of us would rather wait for that to get our value for money.

E8_BALL made the comparison to another slice of news, that “a Bioshock dev tweeted that Burial at Sea Episode 2, will last around 6 hours.”

I’m surprised nobody made a comparison to the individual The Hobbit films.

BadBoyBoogie starts us off this week with a charge to a couple of platinum earning records, claiming Assassin’s Creed IV on PS3 (with the PS4 version taken) and Tomb Raider Definitive Edition on the PS4, just beating BullyBurton to the punch. Freezebug joined BBB in setting a record, for Zombie Driver HD.

Eldave0 also finished a run through of Tomb Raider, this time on Xbox One, but after constant appearances through the few months, it wouldn’t feel right if Assassin Creed IV didn’t get a mention this week. Luckily gaffers101 and mrfodder both completed the game.

Gaffers101 then went on to scare himself in Outlast, which a lot of other people did too. Heck, JR.‘s too scared to even load it up! Instead of playing a horror game, ron_mcphatty took it much easier and finished playing through Tearaway.

Trophy card tracker extraordinaire, a inferior race, took the FIFA 14 platinum, a game where R1MJAW finally found a rendition of FUT that actually works for him. R1M‘s exceptional achievement lies elsewhere this week, as he became just the fifth person (according to psnprofiles) to earn 100% of the trophies in OlliOlli.

Lyts1985 kept his backlog ticking over, with R&C: A Crack in Time, Jak and Daxter and inFamous 2 platinums all tumbling in.

Salvodaze joined him in playing older titles and finished a play through of The Unfinished Swan, as Hornet1990 went and finished his first run of Spec Ops: The Line.

But we finish things off this week with Crazy_Del on the brink. He earnt his 199th platinum trophy at the start of the week, with GRID 2 at the start of the week, so you can bet that he’s getting close to his 200th as well.

It’s going to be a fittingly crazy accomplishment.

We’re nearly done, but you can head over to page two for the return of the Fastest Platinum boards. 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].