September arrived with the announcement of a new Xbox One bundle featuring a 1TB sold state drive and a price tag to match. Grow Home became the first game to be chosen by vote for PlayStation Plus, and everyone looked a bit puzzled when Activision announced it was bringing Deadpool to PS4 and Xbox One.
A rather low key Tokyo Game Show brought us Gravity Rush Remastered, Everybody’s Golf, Resident and Evil: Umbrella Corps, whilst Project Morpheus was officially christened the descriptive, if rather dull, PlayStation VR. Meanwhile back in the UK, EGX got underway and was also a little underwhelming, although it did spawn a very short podcast featuring the staff and friends of TSA as they got drunk in a pub.
The Rumour Mill was churning out gossip once more with listings of Kingdom Hearts 2.8 (correct), and that PS2 games were heading to PS4 (correct). We also had an unwelcoming first for video games, when Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 came with a day one patch that was larger than the entire game that had shipped on the disc.
Tearaway Unfolded landed on PlayStation 4, won numerous plaudits, and then sank without a trace – you can currently pick it up for less than a tenner. The floodgates were opened in September as the build up to Christmas began, and included the slightly meh Mad Max (7/10), SOMA (9/10), Destiny: The Taken King (9/10), LEGO Dimensions (8/10), Forza 6 (10/10), and the atrocious Rugby World Cup 2015 (2/10). We were also treated to the weirdest promotion of the year when Mariah Carey endorsed an iOS game.
German car makers Volkswagen were in the news when it was found many of their cars had cheated emission tests, whilst tragedy struck during the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, when a stampeded killed over 2,200 people and injured more than 900 others.
The world almost ended – or at least my bit of it did – when an asteroid big enough to destroy London made a “nerve-wrackingly close pass” of the Earth at the end of the month. Thankfully asteroid 2012 TT5 safely passed Earth at 9:40 am BST at a distance of around 5 million miles – phew! In other space news, NASA found liquid water on Mars, raising hopes that a human outpost could be established on the planet.
Over on the weird news desk, Moroccan authorities blocked the opening of an IKEA store opening because of Sweden’s plans to recognize a republic sought by the Polisario Front in the Western Sahara. We were also to treated to the “sheer-ly delightful” Anne Hathaway who looked “stunning in semi see-through top and very daring gypsy skirt as she turns heads at Intern premiere in NYC.” That’s from the Daily Mail, in case you couldn’t guess.
And now its time to hand over to Mark McCarthy in the TSA Weather Centre for a round up of the meteorological conditions during the month.