Community Chronicle: 05/04/15

I hope your egg hunting has gone well this morning, the flightly little blighters. It always baffles me how these little ovoids manage to escape the fridge once a year and secret themselves around the house or in the garden, and lets not get started on the slightly odd tradition of them painting themselves. And yet, we refuse to take this threat seriously, instead mocking them by eating comparatively gigantic chocolate effigies.

Easter has some rather odd traditions…

The week started well, as Spotify made its way onto the PS4, replacing Music Unlimited as the primary method of playing back music as you game, and just in time for their end of March deadline. For those that use Spotify, it’s a very welcome addition.

Dan J, for example, has grabbed himself the rather tasty student discount of half price. He wrote, “Have been waiting for this for a while. Absolutely love Spotify, managed to get it at £4.99 a month too which is a steal.”

But it’s not perfect. Thought pleased with the service overall, Tony C said, “It annoys me that you have to suspend/resume your game to enter the Spotify app and change playlist.” The solution, as MrYd pointed out, is to use your phone app to change the playlist, but he himself did summarise his own early impressions.

It’s a perfectly serviceable app. Does what it’s supposed to. But it needs a lot of work. I get the impression it might have been rushed out to fill the gap left by Music Unlimited closing and wasn’t quite as good as it should have been.

And then there are those of us who just want to listen to the music we already own. “Not sure who it’s aimed at really,” said TSBonyman. “People who don’t buy the albums they like?” And though you can playback from a USB stick, as I have been recently, Starman’s complaint spanned the console divide, as he wrote, “I guess that, like Microsoft, they’re never going to let you just copy your CDs/MP3s to the HDD and listen to your own music.”

Some day, I hope.

The end of April is going to see the ending of all services from streamed gaming pioneer OnLive, as they struggled to find a foothold in the burgeoning market, even with a relaunch and refocus last year. Their closure also sees them selling patents and assets to Sony, which will help to bolster their PlayStation Now service.

The Lone Steven probably summed up a lot of thoughts, when he wrote, “Oh yeah, this existed. I forgot that OnLive was a service and could have sworn that it died in 2012. It will be interesting to see what Sony will do with it as part of PS Now.”

Highlighting corporate nature, Beeje13 pondered, “I wonder how much this cost? Either way, Sony now have a near monopoly on game streaming intellectual property! I just hope they don’t use their position to aggressively patent troll competitors.”

Wonkey-willy also wondered about the nature of the deal:

This was quite clearly a corporate buy out from Sony! Sweep up the two competitors that were practically on their backs feet up in the air, and offering the same product as PlayStation Now.

Clever move, but even though Sony has all the trump cards they will have their work cut out making PlayStation Now a solid offering. Let’s face it, they can only just about run the PlayStation Network…

Finally, the confusing and convoluted saga of Kojima’s possible exit from Konami – a twisted tale worthy of a Metal Gear Solid game – continued this week. His name was summarily removed from a number of websites and games that he’s worked on, though I think it might have now reappeared in some cases. Either way, it’s a messy situation.

Ylowz wrote, “Very strange indeed, at first I assumed they had creative differences with regards to MGS5 (perhaps Kojima wanted a definite end to the series but Konami heads thought differently), that would explain Kojima being discredited from MGS5 but now this looks like a complete fallout.”

Old School was rather damning, when he said, “The way they’re acting is extremely immature and pathetic. Kojima was the last best person they had and to treat him like this isn’t cool.” Forrest_01 replied, “admittedly it does smack of the equivalent of a school relationship break up & Konami crossing out ‘Konami & Kojima 4 eva’ & writing ‘Kojima is a durrrty slag’ on a toilet wall, but there may be a bit more to it than just that.”

But Kennykazey asked the most important question by far: “How do we know this isn’t all some incredibly meticulous publicity stunt for MGS5?”

Well, it’s been a busy week of gaming for some of you. Plenty of Bloodborne has been played, and there have also been more than a few dalliances in the Motorstorm Buggy in Driveclub. TSBonyman has a little tip though, noting:

Something people may not be aware of about the buggies is that you can cut corners without gettting penalties or slowing down. That and the KERS function help provide a little bit of the Motorstorm feeling , in lieu of actual dirt tracks.

Taking that freeform gameplay to the next level, The Lone Steven has played and finished Just Cause 2’s admittedly very silly story. Carrot381, meanwhile, has busied himself with completing the main story of “Dragon Age”, which I presume means Dragon Age: Inquisition more specifically, before starting on a Nightmare playthrough.

Steelhead finished the delighful Okami HD, as Lyts1985 staked a claim to the Sherlock Holmes: Trials & Punishment platinum record. Hunterstryfe then grabbed the platinum for The Crew while Crazy_Del followed in B_Cambo’s footsteps, his partner in crime, for the Battlefield: Hardline platinum.

R1MJAW has been mightily busy though, getting 100% on Mutant Mudds on 3DS, burning throgh the new Trials Fusion DLC, finishing his first run through of Axiom Verge and, perhaps most impressively, earning the OlliOlli 2 platinum and record!

Such a devilishly tricky game is well outside my reach, so congratulations R1M!

A inferior race is back this week with the latest update to the 2015 trophy leaderboard. Head over to page 2 to see what it’s all about and how you can be counted.

Aside from that, I leave you on this page with the usual submission form.