Community Chronicle: 04/05/14

It’s easily the strangest celebration of the year, right alongside International Talk Like A Pirate Day, but I hope you’re finding a way to enjoy Star Wars Day, even as you grimace your way through countless people saying “May the 4th be with you!”

Is anyone out there actually doing anything particularly Star Wars-y, anyway?

This was a week with a lot of announcements, with the most discussed being DriveClub’s reappearance and new launch date announcement. Sadly, it won’t be reaching your consoles until October, but it has stirred up further controversy with the revelation that it would feature a locked 30 frames per second and that the delay was largely to shore up the all important social menu system.

Avenger was first out of the gate with his opinion:

Very very messy. Delays are nothing new, but a near 1 year delay is ridiculous for something originally touted as a console launch/flagship title racing game (that was a mouthful). First it was on console launch, then PS+ a little later on from that, then early to mid 2014, and now it is all the way over in Q4. Not brilliant.

Greg Turner spotted something else about that date, noting, “Yikes, the same day as Alien Isolation, Dragon Age and Shadow Of Mordor? Good luck with that.” before others chipped in with more games that DriveClub would now be going up against.

There were also a flood of people that were noting their distaste at the fact that the game had been delayed with improving the social functionality a key part of that decision. However, djdustb gave a good counterpoint to those arguments:

I notice a lot of people complaining that the delay was for social elements. But surely this is the whole basis of the game? The game is a driving game where you form clubs (social element) and compete in challenges against friends and rivals (another social element).

Surely they had to get this right for the game to work? people moaning about the social element? Maybe this is not the racer you are after.

There’s been a lot to talk about on the DriveClub front, but it’s time to move on to another topic which crops up quite regularly. Sony dropped news of 12 upcoming indie games in one fell swoop, and while there are some great looking titles in there, from my point of view, it sparked more reactions to the comparative dearth of triple-A titles.

Admittedly, I did jokingly predict such comments, but tonycawley dove right in regardless:

I didn’t buy a very powerful, quite expensive state of the art home console to play such games. Give me my AAA.

Happy?

Thing is, that’s actually my opinion too. Sure indies can be quirky and fun, but they’re an aside. We need the big releases with these to complement them.

The only problem is that developing those triple-A games take huge resources and more now than ever. I feel that opinions have been coloured by the manner in which major publishers have had to deal with the transition, by opting to create cross-generational games so that they get the sales figures that boost their bottom line. As a consequence, far fewer games on the PS4 actually feel new.

I do agree that there is a distinct lack of triple-A games, but what I take issue with is complaining about it so regularly on posts about indie games. It’s not like the indie developers have any sway over major publishers like Ubisoft and EA to release more games, but they are in fact bringing a huge amount of additional and supplementary content to the machines.

But what about you? Where do you think this apathy and antipathy towards indie games really comes from?

We get another little outing for the Gaming Places banner, as Taylor Made sent me a lovely email stuffed full of pictures before he forgot. That last point is quite important to actually getting things sent in, it seem!

If you’d like to share your photos, I’m more than happy to host them on here, but for now, I’ll hand over to Taylor for a brief description:

Just wanted to show off my new-gen rig. It’s nothing too impressive but here is my PS4, made out of strong bamboo! I purchased the Killzone bundle which came with two pads & the camera but I also wanted the red & blue pads so I got carried away & bought them too.

I’m going try do the same with my vita, currently looking for similar vinyl but can’t find any.

Let’s stick with Taylor Made for a moment, as he’s been busying himself this past week with earning the platinum trophy for the first Sly Cooper game on PS Vita. A fairly straightforward affair, if I remember, but he’s also able to claim the fastest platinum for it!

The second new record this week goes to Crazy_Del, who’s been running around in his Spider-Man pyjamas while playing Spider-Man: Edge of Time to get the platinum record, as well as grabbing the platinum in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.

There’s been plenty of shattering for Freezebug this week, who took home the Need for Speed: Rivals platinum on PS3, and has just seven stars left to collect on Angry Birds Trilogy’s Seasons world.

R1MJAW’s just been shattering his character’s bones, over and over again, with platinum medals in Trials Fusion all the way through Beginner, Easy and Medium and most hard difficulties. He’s also managed to finish two Extreme difficulty levels, which deserves a real life medal, if you ask me!

We’ll round things out for this week with ron_mcphatty, who has been mopping up trophies in Thomas Was Alone, Metal Gear Solid 2 and Ico, while Hornet1990 turned out to be quite a bit further from the end of BioShock Infinite than he thought. He got there in the end, but couldn’t face a play through on 1999 mode…

A inferior race has been busily tapping your latest trophies into his tables, and you can head over to page 2 to view the latest 2014 leaderboards.

Following from today’s effort, 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].