Community Chronicle: 07/02/16

It’s Super Bowl in America, which means that those with even a passing interest in one of the more excessive and indulgent sports around will likely be staying up until the birds are looking for their first worm of the day.

Is anyone here going to be dozing through the four quarters of American Football?

It might be February, but the big game announcements and talking points have yet to truly get up to speed. In a slow news week, the biggest story was Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ announcement.

It also leaked half a day early, prompting TSBonyman to lodge his tongue firmly in his cheek and sputter out, “A Lego game leaked? Oh no, now the plot and the incredibly fresh new gameplay will be revealed.”

Forrest_01, meanwhile, felt a little disheartened by the announcement:

I do love Lego games, but I don’t think even I want this. I mean, they are going to be releasing more Star Wars movies right? So what does that mean, a new game every time a sequel comes out now?

I mean, it can of course be done, but what I have found with the ones based upon a single film or property rather than a series or trilogy or something is that they tend to have a lot of the story covered by the game. That’s all well and good of course, but I think it worked better when it was covering a few films and with single references and nods to points in the films.

On the other hand, excellently nuanced story telling aren’t really the Lego games’ strongest point, as they generally turn to silly slapstick humour and are designed to be a bit of fun for the kids.

As DividSmythe said, “After watching that video, it’s got to be a day 1 purchase I think. I don’t think my kids would let me off if I don’t, or at least that’s what I’ll be telling the wife!”

We also had the return of the PlayStation Plus Vote to Play feature, with Assault Android Cactus, Broforce and Action Henk the three games for you to choose from for March.

Camdaz was surprised to see the scheme’s return, saying “I had thought ‘Vote to Play’ would have been used more often. I also thought it had been abandoned.” To which MrYd replied, “They did say it was going to happen every so often. I was hoping it was abandoned after everyone got it wrong last time. That terrible falling off a tree simulator.”

The whole promotion gets a lot of stick from some quarters, and Amphlett had an idea that could diffuse some of that:

Here’s an idea, make all three of them available to every PS+ subscriber, but each subscriber can only download one of them. So whatever I vote for I get and whatever you vote for you get. That way are all happy-ish with our choices, otherwise there will always be a portion of people who vote for A or B when C gets picked and those picking A or B will be frustrated.

I think that sounds like a nice idea, if a little convoluted and complex on organising the system. It turns out this was even considered by Sony, as JR. replied that he “recommended that idea on their last questionnaire.”

A lot of people indulged in The Division’s closed beta last weekend, with those that enjoyed it quickly racking up over a dozen hours. Obviously, others didn’t get on with it quite so well, but it’s a positive sign that Ubisoft have managed to get something right.

Pixel_nme managed to pick up the platinum trophy for Dying Light on Thursday night, amidst his usual array of co-op gaming, and did so just in time for this coming week’s expansion pack.

Youles roared to the Driveclub Bikes platinum, while taking full advantage of the Black Ops 3 Double XP event last weekend to hit level 55, despite disliking the multiplayer. At least he gets to play, I think hornet1990 is still waiting for it to download! (Actually, he did get it down after two days, but now he’s decided he dislikes it)

A few people have been sinking time into Star Wars Battlefront as well, with beeje13 slowly but surely gathering trophies – though some seem to have glitched out on him – while spartanstriker hit level 25, but is eager to see some DLC released.

And finally, Crazy_Del’s been keeping himself busy, picking up the platinum trophies for The Wolf Among Us and Tales from the Borderlands, and he particularly enjoyed the latter.

There’s no leaderboard update this week, so I leave you with the usual submission form. Cheerio!