Community Chronicle: 16/08/15

If the week of Gamescom was a blur for me, then last week was just as long, partly because of trying to make some headway into all the previews and things to write about from the show. It really didn’t help that I was only really able to do so during the evenings, but we had a lot of features going up through the week, with plenty of articles from the whole team.

You’ll be glad to hear that there’s plenty more where that came from, over the next fortnight.

Die hard Resident Evil fans were buoyed by the news that Capcom are tackling a remake of Resident Evil 2, after the popularity of the HD re-release of the Gamecube remake of the first game.

JoeBoi said, “Amazing news. I hope it gets given the treatment it deserves. Similar to RE1 remake. I enjoy the challenge of these old survival horror games.” It’s even set to bring Eldave0 back into the fold, as they wrote, “Good stuff. Have pretty much given up gaming as a hobby at this stage but I will no doubt make an exception to replay one of my favourite games from my childhood.”

Hazelam tempered expectations a little, however:

I’m not sure if this will be as good as the Resi 1 and Zero remakes, because they were ports of the Gamecube games that were remakes of the original PS1 games – well, 1 was, Zero was a new game made in the engine for the GC remake – but you can’t fault this guys enthusiasm.

Resi 2 was one of my favourites in the series, so I hope they can put in enough effort to bring it up to the standards of 1 and Zero.

It’s a franchise which has lost a lot of its lustre over the last few years. JR. said “Resident Evil 6 was supposed to give the fans what they wanted and look how awful that was. A few years ago I would have been hyped for a RE2 Remake but I just don’t care about this franchise anymore.”

After accidentally leaking the plans before confirming them a couple weeks ago, Sony officially launched the Vote to Play scheme for PlayStation Plus, which lets subscribers vote on games to feature in the upcoming IGC updates. Armello, Grow Home and Zombie Vikings all went in for your judgement.

A lot of people shared their thoughts on what games to vote for, but there were others who simply couldn’t decide. Lieutenant Fatman wrote, “Nice idea, I can’t decide which game to vote for though. D’oh!”

Of course, MrYd was not disappointed by the way voting was turning out in the slightest:

So far the results seem to have Grow Home quite a bit ahead of the others. And then Zombie Vikings is a little bit ahead of Armello.

Which is exactly the wrong way round. Is there some sort of error? How else would something that doesn’t look like they bothered finishing it be in the lead? Given how much people moan every month that the games look a bit crap?

This is why voting is a bad idea. Nobody ever does it right.

Stefhutch20 also pondered the complexity and difficulty of setting all of this up:

Though most people won’t think twice about it (and, depressingly, will probably moan that they don’t want ANY of the three games), the logistics of setting something like this up must have been a nightmare.

Sony has to somehow convince three developers/publishers to pit their games up against each other. One of them will be the winner, presumably receive money from Sony, and their game could be played by potentially millions of people. Conversely, there’s no guarantee the other two will achieve any form of success, even with the discount.

Then again, I suppose it’s pretty good (and, I assume, free) publicity, so maybe it’s worth the risk.

Certainly, it’s an interesting scheme, but you do have to wonder how big the benefits are for the “losers” in the vote…

Finally came the half amusing, half depressing news that Guillermo del Toro will never ever try to take a role in developing a video game again, after the way his first two attempts turned out.

JoeBoi said this might be “The curse of del Toro. He should be banned from anything video game related. Other than maybe Call of Duty…” To which Bunimomike replied that “I’d like a game entitled ‘The Curse of Del Toro’. A South American setting within the horror genre.”

However, MrYd wondered if that same curse didn’t have a wider reach than just games?

You’ve all been playing a lot of games this past week, whether it’s frittering away your time in Destiny, testing out The Witcher 3 before the 7GB of patches have downloaded, or revisiting classics.

Bunimomike played through Journey again, Limbo again and Divinity: Original Sin again, for example. Youles also surfed on sand to grab the final Journey trophy on PS4, before turning to the surprisingly varied – from his point of view – The Unfinished Swan. He also scored a whole host of Rocket League DLC trophies, before butting his head up against a wall with some particularly unsuccessful attempts at Call of Duty’s co-op modes.

Amidst his usual cocktail of co-operative gaming in Borderlands 2, Dying Light and more, R1MJAW also managed to crash, smash and burn his way though to the Goat Simulator – not Stimulator, that’s a very different game – in record time, beating DividSmythe to the punch.

But while you’ve all been playing games, or at the very least staring longingly at start menu, this is all we have to show for the achievements this week.

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.