So, after missing out on last week’s F1, it’s nice not to have to set alarms in order to get up in time to watch the Bahrain GP. It might not be the most exciting of circuits, though it has had its moments, but yesterday’s qualifying puts an interesting spin on proceedings, so we could be in for a good one. Chances are Lewis will be doing as he did before and winning in the slowest possible time, but you never know…
Of course, the only thing that people were talking about at the end of the week was Star Wars. The Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim saw a new trailer for the upcoming seventh film as well as a quite stunning looking “in engine” reveal for Star Wars: Battlefront, alongside a bunch of fresh details about the game.
The magic combination of Star Wars and, well, pretty much anything has wick15 completely sold on the prospect. “I can’t wait for this game,” he said. “Was hyped from the initial teaser, but I now don’t know what I’m going to do between now and the time this is released.” Probably play some Battlefield 4?
Tantalus_blank simply said, “Split screen? Sold!” but on the other hand, Steelhead countered with “No single player campaign? I’m out.” Though, truth be told, that seems to be something of a murky area. Double-o-dave, meanwhile, was troubled by the inclusion of a very particular 2014 gaming trope:
I wasn’t too fussed about this until recently, now I’m quite looking forward to it apart from one thing… Jetpacks! There’s nothing more annoying in a multiplayer game than people whizzing about on bloody jetpacks above your head from every angle. I hope this doesn’t ruin for me.
I’ve never found that any game captures jetpack or mech-suit jumps/leaps quite right either. They always tend to look daft & childish in games to me.
On the other hand, that little moment wasn’t half cool, when the Rebel fighter leapt out of the shield bubble and sent a rocket at the AT-ST. That’s really where my own personal hang up is with Battlefront, that this was all an in-engine cinematic, as opposed to how the game will actually genuinely look in action. We’ll have to wait and see just how much of the nuance is lost in the transition to gameplay and, of course, the console hardware which struggles so often to reach those heady heights of 1080p.
One game we do know for sure will be 1080p60 on PS4 (but only 900p60 on Xbox One) is Project CARS which has finally got an actual release date which they will be sticking to. May 8th is the guaranteed release date, and this game will be sporting a quite huge variety of tracks, with 110 variations of the 31 that are included.
Avenger saw the track list and found it quite attractive, saying, “Quite a good line up there, and interestingly whereas the two most pro-racing sims on the consoles have a mixtures of home brewed and city circuits, Project Cars seems to be near 100% focused on real track racing.” Camdaz added, “Good to see SMS have included a lot of the lesser known tracks and not stuck to the usual tracks seen in racing games, especially the ones that I raced a lot in the TOCA games.”
Bunimomike might not be a racing game fan, but does find SMS’ venture into the sim racer an interesting one. “I’m fascinated to see how a newcomer does in a world of Gran Turismo,” he said. “Not just to see how well it’s received but to see what Polyphony does in return.”
Kennykazey jumped in to reply that “Polyphony should up their game regardless. Forza 5 may be light on content, but the AI is much better, all the cars are of the same high quality and the splitscreen arcade mode works better. No favourite cars only crap.
“I really like Gran Turismo, but apart from post-release support, Polyphony is falling behind. Hopefully Project CARS and Forza 6 will make them give it their all for GT7.
Fingers crossed, then, that Polyphony have some tricks up their sleeves. Then again, we already know that they’re going to be keeping those accursed “standard” cars…
Finally, with the recent revival of Rock Band, Activision have countered this with the announcement of Guitar Hero, which looks set to put you in the position of a rock star like never before. This time around, you’ll be rocking out in the first person. And with a new controller part of the package, MrYd was right in there with his thoughts:
I guess a new guitar controller makes them some more money. But 2 rows of 3 buttons? For people who can’t be arsed to move their hands up and down the neck? But paying lots of money to makes things easier is the thing to do this week, apparently.
If Rock Band 4 can manage to work with the old controllers and let you import all your songs, I think we might have a very one-sided fight coming up. (Although that thing about no keyboards in RB4 is annoying too)
Double-o-dave weighed in as a guitar player, saying, “Well I can play a guitar in real life but kind of liked the cartoony, more unrealistic feeling to the original Guitar Hero as I felt like I was playing a game. This, however, gives me the impression that it would appeal to me more if I couldn’t play a guitar in real life, so that I get the feeling I really could when I was playing the game, if that makes sense. It’s hard to explain.”
Yes, that does seem quite hard to explain. Starman‘s position is much clearer though, as he took a stand against cross-generational development. “Given how they flooded the market with Guitar Hero games,” he wrote, “I don’t think this should be last gen as well. Another game that will be spread too thinly for any version to be as good as it could’ve been.”
It’s quite fascinating to see a number of developers and publishers reaching that tipping point and starting to leave the PS3 and 360 in the past. It won’t be too long before that is almost universal.
The week of sunny weather some parts of the country enjoyed seems to have put a complete halt to any and all trophy earning this week.
A handful of stalwarts remained though, as MrYd churned his way through 175 Diablo 3 bounties to earn himself the platinum trophy on PS4. He also earnt another platinum that he was more hesitant to mention, but I can reveal that it was Magus on PS3, as he experimented with PS Now. (He shouldn’t have claimed the fastest platinum record if he wanted to keep it secret!)
Youles has also been spending his free time diving into a few games, with GTA V heisting on both PS4 and PS3, it’s with the newer generation that he has managed to earn all of the DLC trophies. He also sped through to claim the Battlefield Hardline platinum.
Finally, Steelhead, in the name of testing out a couple of DualShock 2 controllers, booted up the old PS2 with TimeSplitters: Future Perfect in the drive and played his way through one of his all time favourite single player campaigns.
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 trophy leaderboard. Meanwhile, I leave you with the usual submissions form below:
double-o-dave
Yep. I must admit, after seeing the trailer, the rebel leaping out of the bubble thing with the jet pack did look pretty cool! :)
Youles
Cheers for the mention ;)
freezebug2
Cracking race, go Raikkonen.
In fact I loved Rosberg’s “Raikkonen style” team radio comment telling them to stop quoting the distance/time between him and Kimi :P
Top trumps Lewis!
Great to see Ferrari bridging the gap, sad to see Mclaren so far back and struggling!
Avenger
Yep, Rosberg knew exactly what he needed to do and got on with it (arguably he was the only one being full on aggressive in exciting overtakes). Hopefully the success of his aggressive approach will give him the confidence to push forward with Lewis.