Community Chronicle: 12/07/15

Just like that, the hopes and dreams of having both of the Murray brothers lifting a winner’s trophy at Wimbledon have been dashed. Both played brilliantly to get to where they did, but were ultimately outshone by their opponents – in particular, Federer was absolutely sublime – and we have to wait another year for them to try again on the grass courts of Wimbledon.

Still, at least England gave the Aussies what for in the first Ashes test, eh?

After a rather long stretch of reliability, PSN has found itself in troubled waters once more, with quite a lot of downtime over the last few weeks. Tuesday was another instance of choppy performance, with some parts of the service going down alongside maintenance of several games. This, naturally, did not go down too well…

Hully666 said, “I get that online services have the occasional hiccup but this is really beginning to be a common reoccurring thing. What doesn’t help is the ambiguity and cryptic responses from the Sony online team. Yes I would hope the engineers are looking into it but I’d also like to know what the resolution was and how they intend to stop the fault occurring again.”

And vjmwilliams added that they’re “Not usually one to complain but this is getting ridiculous. Not much point in planning a gaming session in the past week or so. When I’ve been able to get onto Destiny it’s been a lagfest! Never had loading screen whilst travelling within a mission until the past few days. Crucible has been unplayable at times.”

Homerjnick observed, “So, first Tuesday when we go live with store/PS+ and its goosed…nice.”

It’s starting to get a bit silly again, isn’t it? “At least the PSN is free,” said Sad Panda, “imagine if we had to pay for this service…”

This week also saw an extended 18 minute gameplay demo appear for the highly anticipated No Man’s Sky. Yet, even as more of the game’s details are peeled back, it manages to have plenty of people completely and utterly baffled.

Tactical20 wrote, “Still not sure what the actual point is?! Yes, it’s beyond vast and all very clever, but if all you can do is scan lifeforms to fill in a never ending encyclopedia, or mine/trade to earn money for never ending ship upgrades, it simply just doesn’t sound that fun, or even original?”

Of course, maybe that’s the entire point, to simply explore and be within this world? As homerjnick replied, “You have clearly never graced the old game of Elite. No Man’s Sky is just exactly the same as that albeit more detailed. In Elite you simply traded, fought and did very sporadic missions… that was it.”

The only problem is that there already exists a modern Elite game. Severn2j wrote, “Original Elite oldie here too (although, it was the C64 version for me) and also a big fan of the new Elite:Dangerous as well. I’m on the fence with this one, I really like the look of it, but I’m not sure what it brings that E:D doesn’t…”

And speaking of classic games, fans of Rollcage on the PlayStation need to get a grip. I am, of course, referring to the first trailer of the upcoming game, Grip.

“I loved Rollcage on the PSX,” scavenga said, “and will definately check out Grip. Looks like a smashing time.” DJ Judas concurred, saying, “Rollcage was amazing, and they seem to have captured its essence very well, based on that video.”

But the spiritual successor also brought pangs of desire for revitalising other arcade racers. Forrest_01 said, “I would definitely go for a Blur/Split Second remaster. Split Second especially, as that game was just bloody awesome. But I fear these titles have probably basically just died a death as both devs have gone bust haven’t they?”

On the other hand, Sitorimon called for more forward thinking, as he wrote, “I would prefer a Split/Second 2 and a Blur 2 rather than remasters, please. So much of this gen has been a look back instead of a forward momentum.”

We are all a bit tired of this trend of remastering games, aren’t we? Even if they’re fantastic games like Uncharted, there’s just a few too many of them out there.

We’ll kick things off this week with blast71, who finished Killzone Shadow Fall this week, having battled his way through the first hour or two to get to the fun stuff towards the end of the campaign. Also digging back into the PS4’s catalogue was Avenger, who finished Watch Dogs, but has decided he can’t be bothered with collectables and mini-games.

Ron_mcphatty thoroughly enjoyed himself as he finished Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty, while Carrot_381 has been playing more of The Witcher 3, and has found himself just four trophies away from the platinum.

Pixel_nme, on the other hand, was able to square away the LEGO Jurassic World platinum, thanks to a helpful hint or two from R1MJAW about how to go about playing the games. Speaking of R1M, he’s grabbed himself the platinum record for Riptide GP2 on PS4.

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.