Community Chronicle: 02/03/14

Picking an introductory topic out of thin air, today is the final day of testing in Formula 1, and what we’ve seen over the past few weeks has been fascinating. Will Red Bull be able to pull it out of the hat and, realistically speaking, manage to finish the first race in a fortnight? In stark contrast, will the Mercedes engined teams be able to dominate, or does the Ferrari engine have the power to muscle in on the action?

Obviously, it’s unwise to draw conclusions from testing, but from the looks of things, the switch to the new engines might bring back the fun and excitement of having someone other than Vettel winning the championship.

There was me thinking it had been a fairly quiet week on the news from, only to discover that I’d forgotten several big stories. First up, it was a pretty good week for Xbox fans that were waiting for Titanfall, with more details of the upcoming March update showing some major improvements. For prospective buyers, the Titanfall bundle and UK price drops have seemingly done a lot to narrow the gap to the PS4’s price point, too.

Although several were keen to point out that Titanfall was still coming to 360 and PC, so maybe not quite as big a coup as it could have been, Erroneus said, “Clever move from Microsoft, as many properly are considering picking up Xbox One just for Titanfall. This minor price drop and bundle with the game, will surely push some more to do it.”

Naturally, we’ll have to wait a few weeks to see how big a boost it will give the machine, but this particular console war is hotting up!

Something which got a very cold reaction was the news that the EU release of South Park: The Stick Of Truth will be censored. Though given an 18 rating and passed by the ratings board, as they later professed their innocence in the matter, Ubisoft took the decision to cut several scenes related to anal probing and abortions.

MrYd brought an even handed approach to his comment:

On the one hand, it’s pretty annoying that an 18 rated game is being censored. Or indeed anything rated 18, games, films, whatever. (With some obvious exceptions which are illegal in the first place before you try and sell them to people)

But on the other hand, it all depends on how they’re censoring it. If Parker and Stone had anything to do with it at the point it was censored, they could actually end up (a) drawing more attention to it, and (b) making it funnier.

At least we get the game, not like a certain episode where Tom Cruise refused to come out of the closet. And the 200th and 201st episodes.

Thankfully, as Steelhead is doing, you can simply go and say, “Hello North American version.”

Finally, the sad news that SCE Santa Monica faced a round of lay offs. Though Sony haven’t discussed it, some leaks and rumours have been doing the rounds. It seems that the new IP they were working on, Stig Asmussen’s project, has been the one to be cancelled, with a Sci-Fi theme mooted and a possible reason being similarities to Bungie’s Destiny.

Scythegpd weighed in on the tricky decision that Sony made:

The Catch-22: Reveal early and then get complaints of “vapourware” because of the time taken to deliver after reveal, or hold back and possibly have your thunder stolen.

Space warfare seems to be the “in” thing currently, so it’s getting harder to differentiate in that genre. Perhaps they can revisit the game later in the generation when the next trend has kicked off.

Omac_Brother agreed, saying that it’s “Better to focus on other projects than let another First Party title march out to market to get ignored.”

Personally, I feel this was the right time to cancel it, if at all. Before any reveal and before too much work has been done on a title which would be likely to struggle for a market. Still, it would have been very interesting to see what they were working on.

Maybe a little on the quiet side this week, but we kick off the achievements with Blackredyellow staking a claim to the Lego Marvel Super Heroes PS4 platinum record. It’s a sign of the times, maybe, that element666 also got in on the Lego fun, earning the platinum for The Lego Movie Videogame, and though he hasn’t said so this is also likely to be a record!

From the omnipresence of Lego to the completely unheard of Family Game Night Vol. 3 (to me anyway), which Lyts1985 took the record for. He’s going at quite a good clip, these days, and this marks his sixth platinum in six weeks. This sounds like a good challenge for the top of the 2014 leaderboards, if you ask me!

However, the current leader, Avenger, is also making good progress. This week saw him earning the Killzone: Mercenary platinum, and that’s one very time consuming trophy to get! Speaking of KZ:M, keep an eye on ron_mcphatty’s meets, as he too is aiming to platinum this game.

Sticking with Killzone, vjmwilliams finished off his 400th challenge within the multiplayer, and Eldave0 isn’t far off that mark himself. Both sound like they’re thoroughly enjoying the game, though it’s hard to believe they are as much as Tuffcub does!

Taylor Made won himself the FIFA 14 platinum, a game which he stated lacked any sense of realism and sent him to beating up a poor defenceless pillow!

HarmRehal brings us our weekly mention of Assassin’s Creed IV: Blag Flag, as he’s gone and earnt that platinum trophy, as well as 100% of the DLC trophies, to boot(y).

Rounding things out, hornet1990 was on the cusp of, and so probably has now finished his good karma plathrough of the original inFamous game, while McProley joined the 100% club on Contrast.

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].