Community Chronicle: 18/10/15

Yesterday was a bitter pill to swallow for Welsh rugby fans, as our dogged defence just could quite hold off against an endless barrage of South African attacks in the second half of the rugby world cup quarter finals. That, you have to feel, was the one real chance of an upset at this stage of the tournament, as New Zealand then unceremoniously dumped France out of the competition, and Ireland and Australia are the firm favourites to beat Argentina and Scotland today.

But you never know what will happen.

Interesting news stories to get chins wagging were few and far between this week, but Sony’s PlayStation Magic Lab Director, Richard Marks, came out to say that PlayStation VR will have a “Good Suite” of games at launch.

Speaking to VR as a whole, Bunimomike said, “I’m curious as to how many times the industry will try to get us to adopt VR and turn it into something mainstream. What’s this… the third… fourth big push over the passed god-knows-how-many years? They really don’t seem to understand.”

Starman responded, “It’s funny how the industry has gone from wanting gaming to be a living room family oriented experience back to a solitary experience. Unless you count the people laughing at the fool swinging their arms about with the VR set strapped to their head.” To which Bunimomike came back, “The industry just wants to sell things. Especially the hardware makers. They want it all so they want us to want it all. VR will have to fundamentally change, I swear, to receive mainstream acceptance.”

But NotSmartEnough pointed to a handful of key innovations in this latest attempt. “One of the big differentiators between PSVR and the other headsets is the ‘social screen’ and asymmetric multiplayer,” they said. “Things like the Playroom VR monster mode where the headset wearer is Godzilla and up to four other players are trying to escape, and the bomb defusing Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes could stop PSVR from being a solitary activity and open up some genuinely new multiplayer possibilities.”

And there’s plenty out there who have a more inquisitive stance, as KnightLore said, “I never say never, but I would most certainly need a thorough go of a few games before making my mind up. Hoping that stores set up some test units. It’s going to be a tough job to push VR, in my opinion.”

Game pre-orders are an often controversial practice, and a survey made by Adobe tried to investigate this side of the industry. However, while they found that pre-orders seemed to be on the rise, they also saw that they can fill people with sadness more often than they can with joy or… admiration?

Moonpie said, “I don’t get it, how can pre-ordering something you want make you sad? I’ve got COD, Battlefront and Syndicate on pre-order and the predominant feeling I have is anticipation. And they say gamers are weird.”

Some people see pre-ordering as the best way to get the game on day one, as rSp8 wrote, “I really can’t see why everybody makes a big deal about pre-ordering. If you want the game, and can find a price you’re happy with, go for it! Most places don’t even charge you until they send the game out anyway, so it can easily be cancelled if you change your mind. I’ve seen quite a few times shops not having stock of games on release days, except for pre-ordered copies.”

Of course, times have changed so that pre-ordering a game you’re excited for isn’t necessary to get a copy. KnightLore said, “I remember when you genuinely had to preorder a game, to ensure that you would actually get a copy on launch day. It was typically cartridge based games that you had to preorder. Sometimes it was weeks before anymore came into stock!”

Amidst his usual array of co-op gaming and picking up new titles like The Talos Principle and Super Meat Boy, R1MJAW took to the track to polish off all of the quick race and time trial trophies in F1 2015. That seems to be where he’s going to call it quits though, as he’s not likely to bother with the pro season trophies or the multiplayer.

Carrot381 has been butting his head up against Bloodborne some more, and finally managed to defeat the Undead Giant in the second chalice dungeon, after trying time and time again. He still considers it to be one of his favourite games of the year, but hornet1990 cannot say the same thing of The Order: 1886. It “Feels like a glorified graphical tech demo rather than a fun game,” he wrote, and he’s looking forward to finishing it and selling it on.

Avenger and Blast71 teamed up to finish playing through Ghost Recon: Future Soldier – which is actually a pretty good co-op shooter, if you ask me – while Eldave0 grabbed the platinum for Far Cry 4, and was actually a little surprised with how easy it was.

We finish off with Ace-Mitchie though, who has been working hard to build up Mother Base for the last month, and has staked his claim to the platinum record for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain!

A inferior race has been busily tapping your latest trophies into his tables, and you can head over to page 2 to view the latest trophy leaderboard. Meanwhile, I leave you with the usual submissions form below: