Community Chronicle: 17/05/15

It’s the height of the endurance racing season, as Nurburgring 24h enters its final hour, and we have Le Mans 24h in just under a month. A full day of racing flat out, trying to push a car, whatever class it is in, as far and as fast as it can go. Today’s race looks like it could go right down to the wire, as well.

And they’ve often been replicated in video games, with Project CARS the latest to feature these two locations and many other endurance race locations. Is anyone else planning on going for the full length 24h race trophy?

We could almost feature Ubisoft exclusively this week, as their plans for Assassin’s Creed, The Division and Rainbow Six Siege all came into focus, but we won’t quite go that far. The big reveal came for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate though, with a new setting (London), time period (the reign of Queen Victoria) and lots of new technological advances coming to change the game’s pace, as Quebec Studios ready their first entry for October 23rd.

Gazzagb rather enjoyed what he saw, as he said, “I was quite impressed by it (although the last AC game I played properly was AC3), so I’m mostly looking forward to running around the streets of London. The combat looks to have changed quite a bit, a lot more focus is on hand-to-hand rather than swords which make sense considering the time period.”

While others stated a similar desire to see the game returning to its best, and a general optimism that it might, Clubber Lang cheerfully poked fun, as he said “Imagine the limitless possibilities of the horse drawn carriages! I can… I can imagine some very real limits to their use and entertainment value.”

MrYd replied that “after that time I parked a carriage 50 feet up in the air in Red Dead Redemption, I wouldn’t be so sure. (There was an explosion and bits of horse everywhere, then the carriage just kind of floated in mid-air, in case anyone is wondering. Funniest bug I’ve come across, and I could never repeat it. I wish we’d had PS4-style, always recording video back then)”

I guess it all depends on if they’re magic horses…

We interrupt our Ubisoft news with the latest twist in the tale of Konami’s recent palaver. The company now seem to be shifting to focus on mobile games and their other businesses outside of the PC and games console industry. It’s a… bold strategy, you could say.

With a hint of bitterness, spacedelete wrote, “It’s funny how every publisher thinks moving to mobile only will solve all of their problems and make them millions, when the mobile market is very crowded and a publisher would be lucky if anyone bought their game. I hope it fails for Konami and they run out of business.”

Bunimomike was somewhat less damning in his response:

Returning to Ubisoft then, there was the disappointing news that The Division has been delayed until 2016, alongside a release date for Rainbow Six and admitting that they would no longer actively develop for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Naturally, it’s the first of these stories that had the biggest response.

Considering that AC Syndicate and R6 Siege are hitting shelves within the space of a fortnight, there’s something to beeje13‘s comment. “I read that development has been ‘hell’,” he said,  “but Q1 2016 isn’t a big delay though. Maybe it’s just to give it some space from other shooters releasing later this year.”

Gazzagb also said, “I’d rather it be delayed than be broken, but it’s still annoying when you’re looking foward to it. Hopefully Rainbow Six is still OK for later this year!”

And finally, it was up to Amphlett to plant tongue firmly in cheek and say, “Rumour has it that Ubisoft have reviewed pre-release graphics and demanded they be downgraded, hence the additional time required.”

Quite.

It’s really been a staggeringly slow week for achievements this week, though Youles has, as always, put a little bit of a shift in and managed to get 100% of the trophies in the first COD: Advanced Warfare Exo Zombies DLC, as well as 100% of trophies from the Guacamelee! STCE DLC.

Other than that, a lot of people have been playing Project CARS, and a general assortment of other games. TSBonyman, for example, beat two of the bosses in Bloodborne – the rather easy Witches of Hemwick and Amelia – while Steelhead got stuck into Final Fantasy VI and Advance Wars: Dark Conflict.

Avenger has spend a week with Destiny, but found it doesn’t have the same staying power as COD: Ghosts’ Extinction mode and DLC. R1MJAW, Forrest and Pixel have been enjoying Borderlands as well, while tactical20 has picked up some bargains and been jumping between Child of Light, AC Chronicles China, Battlefield 4 and Wolfenstein: The Old Blood.

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.