Most years – and I’m talking 75% of all years, here – the 28th of February would be the last day of the month. 2016 isn’t like most years, and is daring to be different and stand out from the crowd, with a 29th day at the end of its second month.
Only a few news stories this week managed to get you tip, tip, tapping away on your keyboards and smartphone screens. Of course, Sony holding a PlayStation VR event on March 15th is one of the bigger news stories, as people wait to see how their product will stack up against Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
Of course, not everyone’s super excited for VR. Spurs78 said, “Am I the only one who really isn’t remotely interested in this at all? I hope it doesn’t take off, personally. It just seems too much away from what i like about playing video games, chilling out after work or night time not meandering round my front room with a bit of plastic on my head, as well as incredibly unsocial. Sorry but this is definitely not for me but each to there own!”
Chibber responded, saying that he “wasn’t particularly interested in VR until I tried out Google Cardboard this week.
“Even though the quality of that is much lower than these headsets, Google Cardboard blew me away! I found myself staring open-mouthed into the viewer, my wife did the same when she tried it. It made me feel a kind of child-like wonderment – I totally fell for it.”
RudeAwakening hopes that it sparks the next evolution in gaming, kicking on from 2D and 3D graphics in a meaningful way, but also that “These comments about hoping VR doesn’t take off, because they feel the present gaming set up is been threatened are ridiculous. Gaming on a TV will be here for a long time. Hell, even PSVR is incorporating the TV as a second screen to make things more sociable.”
Is the sociability aspect that much of an impediment to VR technology? Especially when we consider gaming’s shift away from couch multiplayer and toward online multiplayer.
And, of course, the PlayStation Plus games for March have sparked a long and hard discussion over the quality of games on offer.
BroForce won the Vote To Play scheme, with Amphlett saying, “I would really like them to change the Game Of The Month option slightly. Instead of putting three games up to a vote, why not have those three games all made available and we each pick one, and only one, of them to download and play. That way we all get our individual game choice rather than, for instance, looking at BroForce as this month’s voted offering and not being interested in it.”
Beyond that, with games on PS3 that hedge more towards the kind of games that have already been bought by millions, Tomhlord said, “I’m hopeful. The gradual winding down of the PS3 content, or the cost of the PS3 content, can only be a good thing going forward for the PS4 offerings. Fingers crossed.”
Even Bunimomike is starting to hope that Sony kick on to bigger games soon. “I’m usually patient with PS+ offerings,” he wrote, “but it would be nice to see launch-period titles starting to filter through more often. I assume they’re still making far too much money to be an option for PS+ at the moment. A shame for consumers but good for the developers.”
That’s the stark reality of the situation. If developers and publishers look at PlayStation Plus and don’t see value in either the short or long term for putting their games on the service, then they won’t.
We’ll kick things off with theberserka this week, who’s managed to get himself the Fallout 4 platinum, before trying to fill the void in his gaming like with Just Cause 3 and Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2.
There’s no end to Fallout 4 in sight for TSBonyman, meanwhile, but he did manage to finish playing through Unravel and returned to finish Leo’s Fortune. Andrewww’s busied himself finishing Virtue’s Last Reward, before hopping into inFamous: Second Son, which he’s found rather enjoyable.
Forrest_01 was a busy bee at the tail end of last week, as he nabbed the platinums for both Need for Speed and Dying Light, before popping to the shops to trade them both in. He’s also been chipping away at Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel with Pixel and R1MJAW, the latter of which is just the one trophy away from yet another platinum.
Eldave0’s looking forward to Bungie pushing out more content and expansions to Destiny, as he now has three level 40 characters, but has tired of the same old strikes over and over. He’s also got 100% of the trophies on Titan Attacks, and edged ever-so-slightly closer to the platinum from Resident Evil 6.
MrYd’s put a marker down for the fastest platinum for Hitman GO on PS4, but we’ll finish with The Lone Steven, who went and played through the Deadpool game from a few years ago. You know what? He seemed to enjoy it and would like to see a sequel made.
There’s no trophy leaderboard updates this week, so we’ll finish things off today with the usual submission form for photos and accomplishments. See you in March!