Something For The Christmas Weekend – 24/12/16

It’s the night before Christmas, and I hope you’ve all got a lovely weekend ahead of you. Get those presents wrapped – you have bought all your presents, right? – spend time with family and friends and, if you’re in the path of Storm Barbara in the north of the country, batten down those hatches!

Understandably, given the time of year, the gaming world has been a bit quieter than usual.


In the News This Week


Games in Review

As the year draws to the close, we only had a handful of game reviews this week. I looked back on Telltale’s Batman series, as well as looking forward to The Walking Dead’s fresh start, and then Dave’s been playing a bizarrely named RPG on 3DS.


This Week’s Features

We’ve been in full on end of the year mode, with Review of the Year recapping gaming and world events from March, April, May, June and July, while Ones to Watch in 2017 sifting through the upcoming Shooters, RPGs, Virtual Reality, Indie and Action games.

In Game of the Year, we handed out awards for:

But there was still plenty of space for a few other things. Miguel shared his thoughts on Gravity Rush 2 from playing the demo, we spoke to Guerrilla Games about how they developed RIGS to be accessible to as many people as possible, and how they’re taking the VR shooter forwards with the Winter Update. We also dove into Independent By Design, a book all about the studios and people behind a broad variety of indie games.

Finally, we had What We Played, with Shantae: Half-Genie Hero incredibly popular among the staff.


Trailer Park

As well as a demo, Gravity Rush: The Animation – Overture will be out on 26th December

The first trailer of Seasons of Heaven for Nintendo Switch have released
Though the devs admit they don’t have Switch dev kits yet, and this was on PC

Vampyr lets you see the Darkness Within

Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 takes you to a snowy slaughterhouse this Christmas

Until Dawn used to look a hell of a lot different on PS3 and in first person


Your Achievements

We’re light on the achievements from this week, but I’m sure plenty of people will be spending the next week staring intently at TV screens as they plough through games and grab trophies.

Ron_mcphatty got to try out a PSVR and absolutely adored the Star Wars Battlefront VR mission, before settling in to complete his first run through of Ratchet & Clank, while Pixel_nme played with another platforming duo in The Last Guardian, thoroughly enjoying his first play through. He also managed to scoop up the platinum trophy for The Division with the help of Forrest (who also got the plat).


The Week Ahead

Unsurprisingly, there aren’t any games planned for release between now and the end of the year, and TSA will basically shut down for the next week or so. That doesn’t mean you can’t keep visiting us, as we recap what’s happened in the last year, look forward to the games of 2017, and continue picking out what we think have been the best games of 2016.

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I'm probably wearing toe shoes, and there's nothing you can do to stop me!

11 Comments

  1. The video for Sniper Ghost Warrior looks really good, very unexpected.

  2. Merry Xmas all. Thanks for all your work.

  3. There’s a very good article on GT Sport about how HDR and ‘wide colour gambit’ is producing the best car graphics seen on a console.
    http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/how-gran-turismo-sport-makes-cars-look-awesome-with-hdr/#/12
    Merry Christmas.

  4. i bought a few bits of DLC for Fallout 4.
    wouldn’t have due to sony#’s boneheaded decision about the mods, but for £1.69, or whatever it was, each for the workshop DLCs, i thought, why the hell not.
    the building is one of my favourite parts of the game.
    and now the PS4 finally has a scrap everything mod i can finally make my settlements look nice.
    well, as nice as they can get for a post apocalypse.

    • It’s seem to be a hardware issue then either a Sony or Bethesda one. I’ve heard they tried external assets but the PS4 almost caused a black hole to occur. Or it just wouldn’t work.

  5. A quick Christmas deal update, The Last Guardian is £25 on Amazon.
    Have a good break TSA staff, take it easy! And I’m looking forward to the Christmas podcast Kris, it’s been a tough years commuting since you stopped recording, I’ve missed listening a lot :)

  6. Another great year of gaming…and another great year here at TSA…
    Thanks to all the staff who make my daily grind more do-able when i get 30 minutes for lunch and a bit of catch up.
    Here’s to another year of Yd moans…
    MERRY FEKIN’ CHRITSMAS FANBOYS!
    See you in 2017

    oh and i have been playing quantum break on you know the other console…

    • Me? Moan? No, I just apply a bit too much sarcasm sometimes and take the piss out of things that deserve it.

      And sometimes talk random nonsense.

      I like to think you all enjoy my little rants anyway. Not that I care if you don’t ;)

      • Ha wouldn’t be the same mate without the banter

      • TSA without Hazelam, myself of MrYdd not complaining or doing walls of text would be an extremely boring TSA. :P

  7. Oh, something chrimassy. whatever.

    2017, I will join the current gen after getting a job. 2017 will be my year!

    As for TSA, TSA will keep on being TSA. :D Though sadly, 2016 did rob us of a legendary feature. *Holds backs tears* My turns on the round ups. They amused many folks, keep the higher ups in touch with the common folks and peasents. Oh and whatever Bunimo Mike is classed as.

    #feck2016

    But joking aside, 2016 has been a fairly crap year and it better not claim Carrie Fisher. Don’t you fucking dare, 2016!

    I do hope 2017 will see some work being done to the forums. They are meh and are barely used.

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