Community Chronicle: 06/03/16

It’s Mother’s Day in the UK – or Mothering Sunday, if you prefer – but it’s interesting to burst our own little bubble and see how everyone celebrates this particular holiday in different ways. This isn’t like Christmas which has a defined date, but many countries in the Middle East have it at the vernal equinox on March 20th, while much of Europe, Africa, and both South and North America wait until the start of May.

Whenever it is, it’s always nice to show and demonstrate your appreciation of your mum.

It’s been a week that’s got you all talking, with a number of news stories that affect a number of eagerly awaited fans. There was a big embargo lifting for No Man’s Sky previews, for one thing, with a release date on June 24th in the UK and the confirmation of a rumour that it would be a full priced retail game.

That pricing was bound to be contentious. Tactical20 said “It’s putting me off a bit, to be honest. Yes it’s all very clever and huge and everything, but if it turns out to basically be a tech demo with little actual ‘game’, $60 is a lot.”

While this isn’t what tactical20 said, a lot of the arguments can be seen to stem from its status as an Indie game, coming from a small team of developers. “Ridiculous for some to suggest that whether you are an independent developer or not dictates how much you can charge,” beeje13 wrote. “The Witness was £30 was it not. The Witcher 3 and Project CARS were full price. I guess the problem is perception and expectation, Joe Danger was a pretty basic low budget game, but No Man’s Sky is not.”

Pitchforkdisney also said, “Indie should never be considered cheap. My most played PS4 game is Awesomenauts – an indie game – but that’s just me. I’ve bought full priced, big publisher games and had less value for money. Independent music and films are often far superior to their blockbuster peers and I don’t expect to pay less to listen or watch, but that’s not just me.”

And yet at the end of the day, tactical20 and plenty others are right to have certain concerns. Even with these latest previews, Hello Games haven’t been able to dispel the notion that there’s no overall point and driving force to your time in the game. As Tuffcub explained in his preview, it looks great, it’s implausibly vast and there are tons of great ideas there, but just playing it for half an hour was nowhere near enough time to truly get to grips with what it offers.

More imminently, Ubisoft explained that there would be no reviews at launch for The Division, because its a title where you can only truly get a feel for the player interactions once its live and fully populated with players.

Thankfully, a lot of people have been able to make their own mind up based on the beta tests. Avenger wrote, “I’ve pretty much made my mind up about the game. It’s something that a review can’t quite flesh out, and is better experienced individually. Nothing can quite describe the possible things that can happen in the Dark Zone.”

On the other hand, Sad Panda said, “I’ve been slowly going off this game. There appears to be no PVE end game content and I’ve no interest in enforcement of PVP in the Dark Zone. Was going to wait on reviews but right now, I’m thinking about saving some money.” This did come before Ubisoft talked specifically about end game content, mind you.

Starman’s more concerned about the servers though, saying, “An online only game launching without issues would be a minor miracle these days. I’ll be astonished if it all goes fine.” But honestly, I’d have a little faith after extensive testing with the alpha and beta.

Finally, Uncharted 4 was pushed back by another few weeks, with a new release on May 10th. SCEA’s CEO, Shawn Layden, explained that this was to allow for more manufacturing time and ensuring that there would be more than enough copies of the game to go around.

Starman opined that “They should’ve just released it digitally and kept back the physical release like Dying Light did. Or just release it fully and reap the extra money in from digital sales.” Forgetting the mess that this would present to retailers – let’s not forget about how annoyed retailers would be by this – and the mixed messaging that would have to be overcome for the general public.

Most people seemed fine with this delay, but JustTaylorNow said, “This is getting ridiculous now, push back after push back, something is off surely. If this game doesn’t blow me away after so many push back, they best write to me.”

A positive, hidden side effect of this is that it gives Naughty Dog an extra two weeks on that day one patch…

Avenger gets us under way this week by completing both Battlefield 4 and Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, but also sank time into a bunch of other games and managed to sneak his way past the Community Bounty Hunter achievement in Forza 6. Sounds like his 1977 Aston Martin V8 Vantage was well earned.

The Lone Steven finished off playing through Uncharted 3, and Andrewww cleared inFamous: Second Son from his backlog, while tactical20 netted his 11th platinum with Far Cry Primal.

CR8ZYH0RSE played a PS Vita game called Legends of War, leading Audie Murphy and his men through the Second World War. He enjoyed it enough to work his way through to the platinum trophy, and is now turning his gaze to Saints Row IV: Re-Elected to get that platinum.

A inferior race is back this week with a fresh 2016 trophy leaderboard. Head over to page 2 to see what it was all about and who the winner was!

Aside from that, I leave you on this page with the usual submission form.