Community Chronicle: 11/10/15

As this goes live, the Russian Grand Prix will be well under way, having started an hour ago, but let’s look back to yesterday’s rugby, with a thrilling match between Scotland and Samoa, and the daunting performance from Australia which surely suggests they are now the favourites to win the World Cup itself.

The strangest piece of news this week came from Microsoft’s and Square Enix’s stable, as they detailed the DLC and microtransactions involved in Rise of the Tomb Raider. In particular, they concerned the Expedition Cards and ancillary game modes beyond just playing the main story mode, as you create challenges and share them with your friends.

“I don’t care about the Expedition Cards as long as I can enjoy the game without ever seeing a single prompt or message about them,” TSBonyman put it quite plainly, while Starman added that it “Sounds quite like the burn cards from Titanfall. Fortunately it doesn’t look like they’ll be needed for the campaign, just the DLC modes.”

JR. was far less conciliatory, as they said, “Microtransactions in a Tomb Raider game?! Season pass? Waves of infected? It’s even worse than I imagined.” To which Kennykazey replied, “Well, since people didn’t want a multiplayer, they had to get creative as to how they could fish for whales.”

In the run up to The Witcher 3’s first major expansion pack, CD Projekt Red are pushing out a simply vast 19GB patch with over 600 changes that span all parts of the game.

Stefhutch20 said, “Although I applaud CD Projekt RED for supporting the game so well after launch, it’s a sad indictment of the industry when a game requires 600 changes, four months after release – I know not all of them will be bug fixes, but still. Either way, it’s enough to make me happy that I’m yet to make any major progress on the game!”

Hornet1990 was similarly miffed:

It’s annoying when they add “additional conversations with key characters that will enhance your relationships with them as well as the story as a whole”.

Thanks for that, so what have I missed out on because I sure as hell won’t be replaying the game any time soon? (if ever) And since I’m probably a good third to half way through it I’m not going to restart now after the hours that have already been invested.

Starting to think I really need to reign in the temptation to buy these games and wait for a GOTY edition when hopefully development will actually have been finished.

Starman put it into perspective when he wrote, “I thought this patch was bad, then I tried to play World of Tanks today and that had a 25GB update, which is the same size as the entire game! These patches are getting ridiculous.”

Finally for this week, we finally saw a subscription service go live for PlayStation Now in the UK, with a much more reasonable £12.99 price point compared to the individual costs for renting each game.

Jas-n put that into perspective, saying “Brilliant news. £5 more than 30 days for 1 game,” and MrYd had a similarly positive point about the pricing, as he said, “For once it’s not more expensive here than the US. The monthly cost for the US is $19.99, which works out just about exactly the same as we get to pay. Actually, we get it cheaper, because that $19.99 would then have 20% VAT added on to it. Making it about £15.60, if I can count and Google was using an accurate exchange rate.”

Amphlett, as I did as well, noted that “Sony have rather annoyingly also put the “PS Now” icon towards the start of my games list.” Don’t worry. Just play lots of games for a minute or two and it’ll slide down the list.

It’s a little quiet here this week, but a lot of people have been indulging in the Star Wars Battlefront beta, and it was interesting to see some of the thoughts people had – to the extent we might have a special WeView for it this week.

Avenger felt the novelty wore out quite quickly, and was disappointed at how the Rebels struggled to win at Hoth. Thoughts that were echoed by double-o-dave and wonkey-willy. Eldave0 – who found time to play after 20-odd hours being sunk into Far Cry 4 – thought this was partially down to the clueless rebels not taking the AT-AT defences down and shooting at them at vital times.

Ron_mcphatty has been plunging through Metal Gear Solid V, and has finished all the main missions last night. Carrot381 has also been making some solid progress with a few more bosses defeated in Bloodborne.

Oh, and apparently R1MJAW got the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 platinum trophy… I guess somebody had to!

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.