Community Chronicle: 24/05/15

I’m rather disappointed that Australia didn’t win Eurovision last night, but not for any musical reasons. I really enjoyed the notion that they could win overall and then host – albeit not in Australia itself – and perform next year as well, effectively letting them try to compete for years to come, so long as they could keep on winning.

Sadly, it was not to be, as Sweden won and the UK finished in a traditionally low position, though not quite as low as Germany and Austria!

We’ve a lot of racing fans on TSA, so when images leaked of a possible new racing wheel coming out of Logitech, they were naturally intrigued. We labelled it as a rumour to start with, because of a couple of little inconsistencies, but it’s now starting to look more and more likely, partly due to some of the comments.

Freezebug was slightly sceptical – as I had been when writing the story – saying, “I think it’s a Photoshop jobbie, an attempt at a hybrid Thrustmaster/Logitech wish list. The wheel centre logo has the “G” ran Turismo adopted by Logitech and famous DFGT red dial control but it has the Thrustmaster paddles and blue wheel centered band.”

But Paolo101 came to the rescue with a new image that lends a lot more credence to the leak, as he replied, “I agree that it looks weird but its not fake, the good thing is its not a G-series wheel, its the cheaper DF series so the G29 would’ve look better.. Here’s a link of the picture of its box, zoom in at the box below the desk.”

Finally, CarBoyCam hopped in to respond to james_m2603 clear up the situation with regard to security chips and getting a wheel to work on PS4:

That is not why [old wheels] don’t work. Security chips I think are needed for home menu controls for the console (T500 doesn’t have a chip and can’t control the PS4’s main menu), but it works in Driveclub. G25 and G27 will work in-game if Logitech make a driver and send it to developers, but they won’t work in the main PS4 menu.

Other than racing wheels, it was a relatively slow week, but there was, of course, a certain sting in the tail for The Witcher 3’s release. The game’s frame rate isn’t quite as stable as they’d like, while there’s also been a bit of a stink about a visual downgrade.

MrYd wasn’t particularly impressed:

So it’s broken on release and needs another update on top of the first patch, there’s free DLC but that turns out to be horse armour, there’s a season pass, the XBone version gets extra bits in it’s fancy expensive edition, and it looks somewhere between “not quite as nice” and “a massive downgrade” compared to what they showed a year or 2 ago.

I thought they were supposed to be different and a fine example of how things should be?

Not that it’ll stop me getting the game at some point, of course. If they can be a bunch of hypocrites, so can I!

That’s a pretty grand generalisation in many regards – it’s certainly not “broken” for the vast majority of peopl – and sparked a lively debate in the comments. KennyKazey came in to note that “Both systems can handle 1080p, but a lot of developers choose to reduce it in order to boost other aspect. It’s always a balance. Last gen saw half the games not even reaching HD.”

Pitcher-T also, um, pitched in to defend CD Projekt Red’s honour, saying that outside of some minor issues the game is fine, but also that there’s the right spirit within the developer.

How many other developers include a map, companion booklet and soundtrack with their games? Most are lucky to have a full blurb on the back of the box.

Sorry for the rant, but I really feel if more developers were like CD Projekt Red, it’d be a much nicer gaming experience.

The two overriding games being played right now were The Witcher 3, with a lot of love for it alongside a little bit of dislike from certain quarters, and GTA V. In fact, a surprising amount of GTA V, given how long it’s been out for.

Ron_mcphatty has been tooling around and hunting down collectibles, which helped him get the Solid Gold Baby trophy this week. Hornet1990 has managed to complete the story and then stole a P-996 Lazer fighter jet, to store in his dusty airfield hanger. Meanwhile, Youles finished the fourth heist on PS3 with his brother, Crazy_Del and me, and he’s edging his way towards the platinum.

Youles also spent a bit of time in COD Advanced Warfare again, to get 100% of the Ascendance DLC trophies and restore his 100% record in that game until the next DLC comes out. Bamabo_19, meanwhile, posted a record for the Velocity 2X platinum, while RudeAwakening spent 158 hours in Dragon Age Inquisition, teetering on the edge of burning out and boring himself to death during his Nightmare playthrough, in order to get the game’s platinum.

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.