Community Round-Up: 01/03/14

A pinch and a punch, first day of the month! I can’t believe it’s March already, this year is flying by. We’d best get started on the Round-Up though, because TSA has been super busy this week. We’ve got competition updates, previews, reviews, interviews, the lot!

On Thursday we announced that theberzerka was the winner of the Don’t Starve Caption Contest, and Tony also gave us a nice update on how the Championship is currently standing. There’s still plenty of time to mix things up, and it’s well worth giving it a go as you could be winning a year-long subscription to PS+, so keep your eyes peeled for this month’s challenge!

Along with the usual Gran Turismo 6 and probable Warframe meets which have yet to show up, this week sees McPhatty hosting a Killzone Mercenary meet on Tuesday night at 7pm, while McProley goes old school with a COD4 meet on Thursday at 8pm.

As always, you can always create your own meet, providing you’ve got more than 250 TSA Points.

Let’s begin the Previews and Stefan, who this week looked at Wolfenstein: The New Order, the utterly bonkers sounding alternate reality FPS, and Zen Pinball 2: Super League Football. Aran also got in on the fun as he looked at The Mighty Quest For Epic Loot, a dungeon crawler/tower defence F2P game from Ubisoft.

On now to the Reviews, and if you’re a fan of brutally hard, strategic, and turn-based combat RPGs then Gamoc’s 6/10 review for Blackguards is well worth checking out. Meanwhile, Vita owners should take a look at DanganRonpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, which Jim says is a solid visual-novel in his 8/10 review.

Finishing off the Reviews, Stefan returned for some Plants Vs Zombies: Garden Warfare, for which he also spoke to Gary Clay from Popcap Games and gave us some gameplay videos, after his 8/10 review.

PlayBack saw Jim revisited the USG Ishimura in Dead Space, while he looked a Voro in Mobile Watch, another puzzle game for iOS. Gamoc then ran with Rymdkapsel for Indie Focus this week, a game I attempted to spell three times before I gave up trying and just copied and pasted it, before Indie Focus switched hands and Aran played Gigantic Army.

Aran’s Matter of Perspective feature took an interesting look at Resogun, a game which has little to no plot, so it was fascinating to see what he was able to dig up, while Blair blogged about why Videogames Are Awesome.

Looking at the community articles, the Chronicle talked about the lay-offs at Irrational Games, VR-headsets and it wouldn’t be Hot Topics without some resolution and frame rate discussions. Meanwhile on WeView, the Stanley Parable had an overall appreciative Verdict, while the gorgeous looking Rayman Legends jumps into the seat as the new game.

Finishing off the Round-Up in the usual way, the Podcast was down a few members in Episode 131, while What We Played hit number 145.

Let’s look at the Forums, which have had a little upgrade so are now working at full width!

• Omac Brother wants to know your thoughts on reviews, and how much you rely on them before making your purchases.
• Youles had a question about PS+ that some of you may also be wondering about.
• Mike explains why he can’t return right now and reminisces about the good ol’ days.
• And finally some threads about Meets, Teflon is recruiting for TSA’s BF4 platoon, while McProley wants to know who is up for some COD4 or W@W COD Meets.

I won’t be here next week as I’ve got some job interview stuff to prepare for and attend, so I’ll see you in a fortnight. Wish me luck!