Community Chronicle: 06/04/14

It’s been a long week of catching up on all the games that I was able to catch at Rezzed and plenty of updates on our Plus Point Challenges and FIFA competitions. In terms of news, it was actually a little more subdued than usual, but we still found things to talk about.

We’ll start off with the continuing trend of game re-releases, as it was revealed that the Metro games would be seeing a Metro Redux release for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Though many people seem to be in favour of this, double-o-dave was unsure of the trend in general:

This is aimed at any re-released game, not just Metro, but I’m in two minds as to whether this is a good thing or not. I wonder whether it’s a case of there’s not too much out there at the moment so developers are racing to quickly polish an old-gen game knowing that it will sell. I just hope the animation etc. is improved too and not just the visuals with these releases or it seems to me that you’re not getting a true next-gen experience.

This week also played host to April Fools’ Day, with the predictable torrent of jokes and pranks coming from all manner of companies. DICE got in on the action by way of their Frostbite Engine twitter account, but took aim at Nintendo and the Wii U in such an unpopular manner that the tweets were eventually withdrawn and Peter Moore issued an apology!

When SLUMMO316 pointed out that they weren’t incorrect in stating the Wii U’s lack of power, maybe just as tactlessly as DICE did, McProley said, “Yeah, but not all things need to be said, even if factually correct. If a friend’s girlfriend wasn’t blessed with good looks, you wouldn’t say to him, ‘Oi mate, your missus is a monstorous hound’ would you?”

Hazelam also chipped in, saying, “I don’t think they were that bad, but they weren’t funny. If they’d mocked up a few renders and put the slightest bit of effort in, I’d give them some credit.”

I too had the feeling that the tweets had ended up coming off as mean spirited, rather than in the good humour that most Aprils Fools’ jokes should be.

However, when Amazon takes an interest in a particular market, it’s no joke. They announced the Amazon Fire TV, this past week, with an obvious focus on streaming TV and film to your home, but there was all the curious release of a gamepad that allows you to play certain Android games on your TV, making use of the smartphone-like architecture, similar to the Ouya.

MrYd wondered, “What exactly is the point? It can do all those things that a million other devices can already do, for 3 times the cost of something like Google’s Chromecast, but has thousands of games for it which are going to be crappy Android games that might be fun on a phone, for about 5 minutes, or are full of cunning ways to extract money from people.”

Similarly, bladesew saw competing devices and services giving reasons not to buy into Amazon’s ecosystem.

I was actually looking to get one of these for one main reason – to stream my Amazon Cloud Player collection through my home cinema setup. But then I noticed that Google Music is free for up to 20,000 tracks so I now use that instead with a chromecast. As for the other stuff it does, Amazon Prime Video is available on PS3 along with many of the other streaming music and video services and obviously the PS3 (or any other console) is a better gaming system.

But, if I was a non-gamer who wanted a cheap system to stream music and video with some casual gaming this would probably be a good solution. I have a Kindle Fire HD and not all the games are Candy Crush-style casual games – I imagine some of them would be decent experiences on a big screen with controller support. In fact, some of the games are comparable to the indie games which appear to make up 70% of the Vita and PS4 release schedule!

Where do you stand on some of this week’s major topics? Are 1080p HD re-releases a good thing or a quick play for cash? Did DICE overstep the mark with their digs at Nintendo and the Wii U? Does Amazon have a decent chance of clawing some market share with the Fire TV?

So it would seem that I’ve been remiss in not properly keeping tabs on the emailed achievements over the last few weeks. For that I apologise, as there’s some lovely trophies collected and games completed in there. For example, the last few month saw Mick939 nab the Lego Marvel platinum, zander14rfc get Battlefield 4’s and both he and KeRaSh earnt the inFamous Second Son platinum.

Back to the week at hand and hornet1990 continues with the inFamous Second Son theme, as he completed the game for a second time with just a final expert playthrough on evil to attain the platinum. However, he stated disappointment at the level of repetition in the side missions and overall shortness of the game, something which Spence1115 also criticised on his way to the platinum trophy, before trading the game in.

Eldave0 has had some joy this week, as he completed both Knack and Dead Nation, while PoorPaddy89 has reached 100% of trophies on Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes. Youles is also up to 100%, but this time with Call of Duty: Ghosts, after polishing off the Obliteration DLC trophies.

The number 100 also has a starring role as element666 earned his 100th platinum trophy with Tearaway, though he unfortunately encountered a glitch near the end of the game and had to play the whole thing through for a second time!

Our last 100 of the week comes from trophy tabulator a inferior race, who battled through to the platinum on the incredibly difficult Wipeout 2048, as well as earning all of the DLC trophies for that 100% mark.

Blast71 took a step back to the very first BioShock game to complete it this week, while DividSmythe nabbed the Lego Movie Videogame platinum. Speaking of Lego, Mick939 has posted fresh record claims for both Lego Movie and Lego Marvel Super Heroes on PS4, not to mention taking a look through his long list of trophies to post claim to Alone in the dark, cloudy with a chance of meatballs, iron man 2, green lantern, Transformers Dark of the moon.

He’s not the only one making record claims, and we’ll round things out this week with Shaggy2Dope, setting dates and times for Dragon Fantasy Book 2, Danganronpa and Farming Simulator on Vita.

This page is done and dusted, barring the usual submissions form below, but head over to page two for the latest refresh of the Trophy Leaderboard.

If people want to send photos in of their gaming rigs, I’ll be happy to post them. 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].