It’s been a huge week for gaming, with some major game releases in the form of inFamous: Second Son and Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, as well as several rounds of announcements and new coming out of GDC.
Naturally, these are what we’ll focus on as we look at the hottest topics of the week.
The biggest headline out of GDC was Sony unveiling Project Morpheus, their foray into the realms of virtual reality. It certainly looks impressive and well thought out, but there was an air of pessimism hanging over the comments section.
Gazzagb managed to cover all the bases:
This has the potential to be amazing, and I’m especially excited to see what they’ve done with NASA.
But, as others have said here, Sony’s support for their secondary hardware (e.g Move) historically hasn’t been great, which I think will put off a lot of first adopters who will wait to see what support it gets, and more importantly, how it fairs up to the competition.
Certainly a valid concern, and one which was echoed by tonycawley, who said that he “won’t be buying it until a couple of years after release and only if it’s getting proper support. I can see this flopping.”
There are many more opinions, which dip into the history of VR quite heavily, but comments from The Von Braun and xdarkmagician in particular were far too long to include here.
More good news came for PS4 owners, as Sony announced the feature set for the next firmware update. Firmware 1.7 will see a raft of changes and improvements to the sharing functionality, with higher quality streaming, better video export and editing capabilities and the option to turn off HDCP encryption.
As good as it is, the comments reminded us of the long list of features that the system is still lacking. Chall5 called for suspend/resume, while homerjnick wants themes and several have been having trouble with automatic updates not working… well, automatically.
BullyBurton was much more enthusiastic, though:
Another example of Sony listening. The Upload Studio on XB1 is way better than the PS4′s sharing/editing for videos. Multiple clips with picture in picture, voice overs and custom skins/themes, though to share via Twitter or Facebook you need to use OneDrive (SkyDrive).
If the PS4 comes up to par with Upload Studio, I’ll be chuffed.
There’s also more details yet to be announced, so still plenty of time for this to improve your most wanted features.
Finally, another rumour confirmation occured this week, as Assassin’s Creed Unity had a teaser trailer released by Ubisoft. It’s shifting the series once again, away from boat filled oceans to the heart of Paris during the French Revolution. Another interesting wrinkle is that this will seemingly be for PS4, XBO and PC, with rumours pointing to Assassin’s Creed Comet for the last generation of hardware.
Starman liked the sound of having two separate releases, stating that “each gen’s game should be better optimised rather than what we’ve had so far where they’ve been making it for 6 very different systems.”
However, Bilbo_Bobbins seems to be suffering from a little franchise fatigue, saying, “this franchise is becoming worse than COD, bloody ‘eck like.” Although, Yiddo thought differently, as he thinks “The franchise has yet to deliver an actual bad game. ACIII was the worst in my opinion, and it was more because of the fact it was a dissappointment. It was still way better than most games out there.”
So what are your thoughts on the matter? Do the Assassin’s Creed games need a little break, or do the shifting time periods and characters help to keep things fresh?
It’s an exceedingly quiet week on the achievements front, it seems, but there are still plenty of games being played. If my friends list is anything to go by, inFamous Second Son is a very popular purchase, and it sounds like many of you are enjoying it. Call of Duty’s co-operative mode, Extinction, has also been getting a hammering from a fair few people.
Even our regular trophy hunters have been content to plug away at games without major achievements. R1MJAW completed yet another Diablo III run through, for example. Lyts1985 didn’t earn a platinum for one, but did gain 100% completion on Broths: A Tale Of Two Sons, while others are getting close, as Freezebug inches towards completing Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed on PS Vita.
Mrfodder managed to complete Thief just in time for inFamous Second Son to start downloading, as the clock turned to Friday, and DividSmythe performed a similar feat with Lego Marvel, earning the platinum on Friday and just ahead of inFamous’ arrival.
Crazy_Del also brings us a platinum trophy, this time from Saints Row IV after completing the game within just 27 hours. The only problem being that the game has a trophy for playing it for 40 hours, so he found himself using a rubber band on his DualShock 3 to keep his character running forwards for 13 hours while he slept.
Mission Accomplished.
For the rest of you, keep playing those games! I expect to see a flurry of platinum trophies for inFamous: Second Son, hilarious speed run attempts for Ground Zeroes and plenty more besides.
Head over to page two for the latest refresh of the 2014 leaderboards, but to finish off this page, we have the usual submission form for photos and accomplishments.
Followig from Del’s contribution last week, if people want to keep sending photos in, I’ll be happy to post them, but gaming places isn’t 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].
Lyts1985
And boom, mission accomplished, top of a leaderboard for the first (and likely only) time :-) chuffed with that!
Cheers for the mention again Tef :-)
freezebug2
It’s great to see different names at the top of the boards, and that anyone has an outside chance with some effort, well done.
It’s ironic though as all recently earned trophies added to the tally subsequently reduce trophy percentage earning potential.
Lyts1985
Cheers freeze :-)
Yeah, the people who should do well here are those who are at a low level or have a low trophy count and start hammering the trophies out… My tally will slow down considerably now.
freezebug2
Well if you do get low on the games with trophies front and a cleared PS3 backlog then get a Vita, it’s utterly bombarded with games at the moment I’ve found as a newcomer. I think the Vita is a big part of the PS4 kit, although I got the Vita first and will get around to next gen in the near future.
I mean the PS4 alone won’t be much help with any trophy leaderbards :P
zb100
Sounds about right freezebug.
I am going back through my older games on PS3 and the odd PS+ title plus playing the Vita at work or in bed.
I fly intend to buy a PS4, which was a big factor in picking up a Vita, however am in no rush to do so.
The PS4 launch seems better than the PS3 launch, due to the Indie support, however I’m happy to wait until nearer Christmas, when there are more big titles out, more freebies in my PS+ queue & better bundles on offer due to retailers competing.
Crazy_Del
“For the rest of you, keep playing those games! I expect to see a flurry of platinum trophies for inFamous: Second Son” – I got the Platinum yesterday ;)
Cheers for the mention Tef :) Saints Row IV is a mad fun game haha.
wonkey-willy
Jesus Del! hats off for the infamous platty!
I’m taking my time just sucking up the ambiance.
I’m gutted that I’ve switched from smoke powers to neon..it feels somewhat less powerful..but really enjoying infamous so far.
Lyts1985
You can always switch back to smoke if you want. I love the dashing ability of the neon and the wall running makes things much easier but prefer the attacks of the smoke.
To be honest I wouldn’t want to finish it that quick – I’m enjoying playing it too much and I don’t trade games in so don’t see the point in rushing it… I’ll get the plat this week though.
Well done Del :-)
gazzagb
I think Yiddo is bang on about the Assassin’s Creed games – yes, nothing so far as lived up to AC2, but the sequels have by no means been bad, just not as good. I used to think Brotherhood and Revelations were pretty poor, but actually I now have quite found memories of them.
Taylor Made
Really, I think brotherhood is way better than AC2 by a margin
gazzagb
Brotherhood was definitely an improvement in terms of gameplay (combat, being able to buy and upgrade shops, having a Brotherhood etc), but I still prefer AC2 overall.
I think the story was better in AC2, with the development of Ezio from just a teenager into an Assassin, and the other characters like Mario and Da Vinci were memorable.
I also liked the stark differences in cities between Florence, Venice Rome and Monteriggioni, I think they had more atmosphere and variety than Rome did in Brotherhood.
bigchrissyc
I do keep meaning to take some pictures of my ‘rig’ but never actually remember, i will do it at some point!
DividSmythe
Thanks for the mention too. I think this competition has bought the trophy whore back in me. I don’t know if that is good or bad thing.
Lyts1985
Same here mate, but it’s kept me busy while waiting for new games :-)
The FFX and X2 plats will keep me going for weeks so not many trophies for a while now lol
DividSmythe
Good luck with those plats bud. I’d love to get into FF but never tried it. I know it would eat all my spare time. I know I’m going to get lynched by FF fans here. Thanks for giving me chance to catch you up O:-)
Lyts1985
Cheers mate, and your welcome ;-) lol!
Lyts1985
FFX is the last of the greats in my opinion. Nothing since has come close. It’s going to be an awful long, not to mention challenging, run to the platinum but I thoroughly enjoyed it first time round so not too deterred :-)
I’ve never played FFX-2 so a bit unsure as to how far I’ll get with that but looking forward to it nonetheless.
I *might* try and aim for the Remember Me platinum to break up the FF runs a bit but we’ll see – I’m only on chapter 3 on the hard difficulty and it’s kicking my ass!
Lyts1985
Sorry that was in reply to Divid :-)