Community Round-Up: 16/04/16

This week saw a brief glimpse of summer, with temperatures soaring to the mid-teens. Sadly I was mostly stuck inside working, but did any of you get the chance to get out and enjoy the sunshine? Typically, the weather this weekend has taken a bit of a dive…

Meanwhile on TSA, we’ve had a tremendously busy week, mostly thanks to the previews. So, with lots to get through, let’s begin this week’s Community Round-Up!

We’ll begin with the previews, as there are quite a few this week thanks to Stefan and Kris visiting Rezzed.

Let’s start with the articles that Kris brought us, who first looked at some of the prototypes from Introversion, makers of Prison Architect. The bomb disposal game in particular looked quite good for me, while Kris prefered their LIDAR exploration game. He then spent some time with Strength of the Sword: ULTIMATE to see how far it has come since his last look at EGX.

Following that, he brought us a round up of three other games he played at Rezzed, which leads on nicely to Stefan’s round up of six games he enjoyed at the expo. Finally, both of them shared their thoughts on Playstation VR, and the few games they got to try out with it.

Keeping the VR theme going, Stefan was thoroughly impressed with RIGS, a mech sports game, while Overwatch is shaping up nicely ahead of it’s open beta in a few weeks’ time. Worms WMD is a “Worms game through and through” which will please fans, while Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter contains plenty of investigating to do in the sequel to Crimes & Punishment.

The last three previews came from three different writers, with Dom playing Star Fox Guard on the Wii U, and Aran takes a look at The Collider 2, a fast-paced VR game set in space. Lastly, Dave played Eisenhorn: Xeno, which takes the lore from the Warhammer 4000 novels but currently struggles to translate that into solid gameplay.

For the reviews, it was a relatively quiet affair with just 3. That said, it did contain the first 10/10 we’ve seen for quite a while here at TSA. Tuffcub heaped praise on Ratchet & Clank, from its brilliant “shootouts and platforming to the practically perfect script”. Tef and Tuffcub also sat down to talk about the game in their video review, if you’d prefer to also see some footage.

Tef gave an 8/10 to Enter the Gungeon, calling it “an excellent blend of roguelike and satisfying bullet hell gunplay that’s easy to dip into time and again.” Meanwhile, Miguel brought us our last review, Stranger of Sword City, an interesting RPG for Vita, but sadly only worthy of a 6/10.

PS4 Firmware 3.5 brought with it remote play to the masses, as anyone with a PC or Mac can connect remotely to get their gaming fix. Dave gave the new trick a whirl, and compared it to Microsoft’s Windows 10 Streaming for the Xbox One.

Elsewhere, last weekend’s Chronicle talked about the video game BAFTA Awards, Mass Effect Andromeda and the HTC Vive demo in Harrods.

Finishing up, Kris and Tef held a Rezzed 2016 Podcast Special, while What We Played #249 featured Vainglory, Banner Saga 2, and of course Ratchet & Clank!

Time to open up the Forums and have a look! They’ve been pretty quiet though!

• It seems quite a few TSA’ers are enjoying DiRT Rally, including Dell in the what are you playing thread after a TSA Meet.

Enjoy your weekends, and I’ll see you again in seven days!