Community Chronicle: 03/05/15

The sun might be a little reticent to show its face, but I hope you’re all enjoying your long bank holiday weekend. It is, after all, perfect weather for a traditional British barbecue, isn’t it?

Those who are following the seemingly endless breakup between Konami and Hideo Kojima were rocked by more bad news this week, as not only did the P.T. demo get pulled from distribution, but the upcoming Silent Hill game was also officially cancelled.

Most of the blame seems to be getting pinned on Konami, in the comments section, as Jones81 wrote, “I was looking forwards to this. Konami can do one as far as I’m concerned. Phantom pain will be my last game from them.” Though scavenga took it one step further, saying, “Upset, disappointed and more than a tiny bit angry. I’m defo skipping Phantom Pain.”

One of the more frustrating aspects of all of this is Konami’s continued silence on the matter. Pitcher-T implored them to open up, as he said, “Ok that’s it, Konami now need to explain themselves. They can’t just continue naming cancellations and developer breakups whilst they keep skipping into the sunset ignorantly. It doesn’t work like that in the Internet age, people demand answers. Konami needs to start respecting its fans and explain what’s going on.”

I can’t help but feel that Pitcher is right. Konami are taking a huge amount of stick when, for all we know, this is because Hideo punched an assistant because his lunch wasn’t hot!

The rumbling discontent that you hear whenever DLC is discussed got a bit louder, as the Batman: Arkham Knight season pass pricing was announced to cost £32.99. As you can imagine, with a price for which you can often find whole new games – albeit not straight after launch – this was a little bit controversial.

MrBiron jumped in to say, “I’ll pass on the season pass. If content is announced before a game is out then I automatically suspect it’s been cut from the game to sell back as DLC.” And while that’s a little unfair, it’s a sentiment and suspicion held by many.

Gaffers101 wrote, “That’s almost as much as I have the game on pre-order with Amazon for. Don’t think I’ll be bothering with the DLC on this one.” Starman’s reaction was similarly negative, as he said, “This just went from definite preorder to ‘wait for the inevitable complete edition’.”

However it’s developed and for whatever game it’s released, the problem is that for £33, there has to be a demonstrable value to that, as Blair discussed in a blog this week. We’ll have to wait and see whether the Arkham Knight pack delivers upon that price.

Finally, in one of the least surprising news stories of the week, a leak by way of an employee’s resume suggested that Watch Dogs 2 is in development. Next they’ll be telling us there’s a new Assassin’s Creed game and another Far Cry coming out!

Camdaz put it quite plainly, “I enjoyed Watch Dogs but it could have been a lot better. I would welcome a sequel.” To which Tony Cawley replied, “This is exactly my thoughts. If they address the shortcomings of the original, a sequel could be quite brilliant. The first just missed out on greatness, but was still good.”

kjkg, meanwhile, put out a very reasoned comment as to why the original was considered a disappointment:

It really was a great game that suffered from its own hype. For a new IP, it was not a bad attempt at all. 8/10 was a fair review but by building it up so much before hand, somehow those 8’s seemed poor.

Still, they do need to make some improvements. It’s practically a carbon copy of the first Assassins creed. First one promised greatness, didn’t quite deliver, then AC2 happened. Arguably the best in the series (well that or Brotherhood).

To which Youles responded by saying, “The Bad Blood DLC was great – had a better main character (T-Bone), and the extra gadgets were brilliant. The story was decent enough and the environments much more interesting. If that level of care could be taken throughout the entire main game, I’d certainly like a sequel. If not, I’m not sure how interesting I’d be – as there was just a lot of ‘press Triangle to hack’.”

The other thing to remember is that Watch Dogs was released in the wake of Grand Theft Auto V, a game which seriously expanded upon the kind of world building that all future open world titles will be judged against. Can Watch Dogs 2 deliver as compelling and sprawling a world as GTA V’s Los Santos? Fingers crossed.

Digging into this week’s achievements, R1MJAW has managed to blast his way past the 12,000 trophy mark this past week, which is a huge milestone. He’s also managed to complete his first run through of the critically acclaimed Shovel Knight.

TSBonyman has been butting his head up against Bloodborne, but finally managed to defeat the Blood Starved Beast. He’s a long, long way behind Ace-Michie, who posted a record shout for the fastest Bloodborne platinum on TSA, which no doubt took a little bit of doing!

Speaking of records, Crazy_Del took time out from Battlefield: Bad Company to nab the record for BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, while B_Cambo finished off Mortal Kombat X for the platinum as well.

GTOWN still has a little way to go for his latest platinum, but he just needs shards and to finish his nightmare run through of Dragon Age to do so. Bayonetta seems to have created a similarly nightmarish world for The Lone Steven, though he did just about manage to best its rather exacting QTEs to complete the game.

Pixel_nme dove back into the world of Saints Row IV, but did so on PS4, as he grabbed the platinum, and Youles reached the 80 platinum trophies mark with Dying Light.

Oh, and finally, I managed to judge it perfectly, so that I took the platinum trophy for Driveclub at exactly the same time as I finished the last of the currently released DLC. Quite fittingly, I had saved the Evolution tour pack until last, which pits you against the names of the Evolution team themselves.

We’re nearly done, but you can head over to page two for the return of the Fastest Platinum boards. To finish off this page, we have the usual submission form for photos and accomplishments.