You may have read why Chris won’t be playing this year’s big shooters, but I’m not quite ready to trade my holster for a pipe and slippers yet. I’m still holding out hope for a couple of big shoot-‘em-ups, so allow me to offer a brief rebuttal. As for the season’s big players already mentioned by Chris, I’m firmly in Infinite Warfare’s corner. The Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2 betas cooled my anticipation for their respective releases, which piles pressure on the shoulders of the unexpected underdog to fly the FPS flag on my console this winter. Like many others, I dropped out of the CoD scene once I’d had my fill of the Modern Warfare trilogy, and I’ve since been hoping one of the franchise’s many developers would come up with something to pull me back in. It’s a series that provided - much like in Chris’ case - my first experience with an online shooter, and one that holds some of my fondest gaming memories as a result, so it hurt to have left it behind. Popular as it may be to hate on Infinity Ward’s latest effort, Infinite Warfare looks to be that game. It has a lot of potential; the ability to pick and choose missions whilst commanding your very own starship sounds like just the type of innovation the franchise was crying out for, and the future setting allows for some outlandishly fun weapon, gadget and narrative design.
The addition of Modern Warfare Remastered in the Legacy Edition is also a nice bonus, of course. No, I don’t buy into the controversy surrounding it. But that’s enough of me trampling old-man Brand’s freshly mown lawn… Now it’s your turn! Will you be picking up any of this year’s big shooters? If so, which one(s)? Let us know in the comments or head on over to the forums and share your thoughts with us. Community Round-up | week of 30/09/167/10/2016 Seeing as ImmaturityRules was the only person to post a screenshot this week, he gets the honour of having his image take pride of place at the top of the round-up, and what an image it is. It’s been a long time coming, but he’s finally managed to get a naughty word past Letter Quest’s “fun-free censorship”. Kudos to you, sir. After going back and forth between Samsung’s KS8000 and KS9000 models, Sam eventually went for a 49” curved KS9000 (I’m not jealous…) and it sounds like he’s very happy with the purchase. “…the upscaled resolution was very noticeable, and the superfast response time in game mode also makes a notable difference. The curve worked brilliantly with this particular game, as travelling at high velocity applies a kind of speed distortion to the edges of the screen and gives a real sense of depth, like you're actually travelling into the screen.” What game is that? We’ll never know, due to it being one of the games Sam is currently testing, (I’m definitely not jealous…) although we can safely assume it’s not the latest Earth Defence Force, a title Sam thinks is very much Underrated and Underappreciated. One game that we can chat about is Mafia 3, which released this week. Johnbhoy69’s New Bordeaux adventure didn’t get off to the best of starts - “Started Mafia 3 this evening and not even an hour in and it's crashed on me... Doesn't bode well but I'll see how it goes.” Early technically hitches aside, Johnbhoy seems to be having good time save for a specific type of mission. “One problem I've experienced is in the missions where you have to reduce a rackets income to zero. First you go to the place where an informant is, get info, head to the racket main operating area… You cause some damage and then you head off to take out some enforcers to lure the main guy running the racket out. But he appears in the main racket area, the area you just trashed... This has happened twice so far and not only did I have to fight my way through these areas twice it got boring fast.” If racketeering isn’t your thing, then maybe Paladins: Champions of the Realm will take your fancy, a game PTC Crisco describes as “basically a free-to-play Overwatch clone from the developers of SMITE”. News of it's impending arrival on Xbox One and PS4 piqued the old SMITE crew’s interest, with Metalrodent, Sam, and Plasma wing all signing up for the console closed beta, which seemed to please Chris - "It'll be just like the old days!" Speaking of the old days, MrkDhn10 has been enjoying a remastered blast from the past in The Bioshock Collection. “Just finished The Bioshock Collection. Infinite is definitely much better than I remember. Still great games, even when you know how they end. Only downside was Infinite's frame rate. At times it was truly abysmal.” I still need to play those games at some point, but with Gears of War 4 releasing next week I probably won’t be able to give them the proper time they deserve. BAMozzy is going all out for The Coalition’s first effort in the Gears series, and has purchased the limited edition Xbox One S bundle. “Just accidentally pre-ordered the Gears of War 4 limited edition bundle from Amazon for my Birthday.... OOOPPPSSS!!!” What a lovely gift, although Rodent didn’t seem to think so. I have to agree with Sam on this one, Rodent, that bundle looks awesome. I think I’ll stay on topic and make this week’s duke box selection the main them from Gears of War 2, aka, ‘Hope Runs Deep’. Just before I go, let me pass on my congratulations to the three lucky winners of our Awesomenauts Assemble! competition - Filipe Cristiano Freitas, Bart Vincke and crippyd - each of whom walked away with a copy of the game.
Community round-up XXXII29/9/2016 There is nothing wrong with your monitor, do not attempt to adjust the picture. This is just a case of Metalrodent breaking Halo. He didn't say whether this glitch only affected himself, or if he ruined everyone else's fun too, but we're sure it wasn't intentional. Almost sure, anyway.
Two new members have joined our team; Gabriella, our Multimedia Reporter, and Alberto, our new Video Editor. You may already have seen their work, as Alberto assisted James with his review of ReCore, doing loads of video editor-y things that only the initiated are able to understand. Meanwhile, Gabriella revisited an old favourite. Well, a remastered version of an old favourite in Bioshock: The Collection. Watch her fearlessly stalk her way through Rapture in a Let's Play that's chock full of brilliant commentary. If you want more audio-visual content then you're in luck, as we have some big things planned to delight both your eyes and ears. After the Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare beta schedule was released, Timmeh555 and MrkDhn10 both confirmed that they had pre-ordered. Timmeh has high(ish) hopes for the game's story, due to some ex Naughty Dog staff being on team and Mrk is looking forward to "that little known indie release" Modern Warfare Remastered, which you may have heard about. That other shooter, Battlefield 1, was also talked about in the forums following the release of a story trailer. Sam, Mrk and Rodent agreed that it looked impressive. Whilst it's another one for Mrk's pre-order list, Sam won't be joining in on the fun; "Looks good, though like everything else releasing in October, it's taking a back seat whilst I focus on PlayStation VR." You poor, poor man. I'm sure we all feel terrible about the unenviable position you've found yourself in... I suppose it's only fair to mention the other, other, big FPS set to release this year - Titanfall 2. It also has a brand new story trailer, which tells the story of a Militia soldier hoping to become one of the venerated Pilots. Other pilot-y things have been going down too, the latest instalment of our Taken for a Quickie feature was Battlefront's Death Star DLC. Not only has Liam been valiantly thwarting Darth Vader's plans to bring you the aforementioned piece, but he's also been attempting to make a name for himself in Mount and Blade: Warband. Would you like to know how that turned out? "I lost all my men and most of my wealth, plus a bucket load of weapons, armour and horses. Not the most profitable campaign. My troubles seemed to start when I tried to raze a village to the ground and then got immediately jumped by a local Count, who didn't take kindly to such actions." We feel like there's an important lesson to be learned here. Something about the futility of war? Something about the merits of a non-violent approach to conflict? What do you think, Sam? Once you've trained up your army people won't want to engage you, meaning they'll stop coming to protect villages and you can raze to your heart's content. Or that. Either way, lesson learned. If you'd like to bag yourself a copy of Awesomenauts Assemble! on Xbox One, we're currently running a competition. All you need to do is leave a comment on the thread, like our Facebook page and share the pinned post, or follow us over on Twitter and retweet the pinned tweet. You could even do all three to triple your chances of winning! The contest ends on Monday 3 October at 23:59:59. Winners will be drawn and announced on Tuesday. No, thank you for entering, Ian! The more people enter, the more likely it is we're able to run giveaways like this in the future. It seems to have been very well received thus far, so massive thanks also go to Sam for running it. Ian may, however, have stiff competition from Plasma Wing, who's attempting to bribe his way to victory. Nice try, Plas, but we are morally upstanding members of society. If you think that bribery in the form of kind words will get you any special treatment at PTC then... ... We're listening. He does have a point. We are all sickeningly handsome/beautiful. (We're aware that this is going to look very bad if he happens to win a copy.) It's almost time for us to go, but first, here's my personal Clip of the Week! We have a video of Rodent, Plas and Ninjadan attempting the Lab Rats mission from Payday 2. I don't think they were expecting to see this... That's all for this week. We leave you with the hauntingly beautiful opening track from Bioshock. If you'd like to get in touch, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter and in the forums - you may even feature in a future round-up as a result. Have a great weekend everyone!
Community Round-up XXXI25/9/2016
The new race known as Tree-Romulans, recently discovered by Metalrodent
What’s that? No, I think you're mistaken, I mean being the absolute professionals we are at PTC, I think it’s highly unlikely that we simply forgot to post a Community Round-up last week. I’m sure you were just out and didn’t see it, but I can absolutely assure you that we did not forget.
Balls. Well at least Emily was apologetic about it, Crisco wanted to delete the post and ban Rodent for a week! That’s what we like to call ‘Plan B’.
Taking a break from spelling dirty words in Letter Quest, Immaturity Rules showed us exactly why he’s been waiting to for PS4 4.00 firmware update to arrive:
It turns out I’m not the only yet to play CD Projekt RED’s award laden RPG, The Witcher 3. Crippyd is pondering whether to commit to what sounds like a pretty hefty commitment if PTC Bezza’s experience is anything to go by:
“Finally finished this mother trucker. Its brilliant…My problem with it is it is soooo big and its quite slow too. It’s overwhelming at times and I could never do big sessions with it getting boring quickly… I ended up rushing the game mostly, skipping a lot of cut scenes. I wish I could play it again but it’s such an undertaking I’m not sure I’ll ever get around to it.”
Bezza was also very pleased with the recently released Bioshock Collection, and would “really recommend them especially if you’ve not played them”. That’ll be me then, and it’s probably going to stay that way for the time being as Battlefront’s Death Star DLC has been taking up a lot of my time.
The launch of the highly anticipated expansion got Itchy Rash wondering whether the three DLC’s released so far have improved the game: “Its always just felt like a missed opportunity to me. I played the demo and was underwhelmed and then recently have been making use of the 10-hour free trial, minus the DLC, but struggling to find much to get excited about. The graphics and sound quality are great but not sure there's much under the surface.”
This fella would like a word with you:
I always enjoyed the base game, but I can understand why people feel it’s a little light on content. Saying that, if you can find the Season Pass at the right price I would highly recommend it, it makes the game feel that much more complete.
Another of DICE’s games, Battlefield 1, will be getting a few tweaks to the multiplayer after feedback from players who took part in the recent open beta. Probably the biggest of these is that kills in Conquest will now deplete the enemies ticket score, instead of just objective points. SkinnerChinner didn’t mind the new focus on objective score, but thinks the horses need to be nerfed in the health department: “Personally, I didn't mind the changes to the ticket system too much, liked the focus on objectives but it did make the Medic redundant - I didn't particularly get along with the semi-auto rifles (until the very last one anyway) so there wasn't much incentive to play as that class. Let’s hope they increase the ticket count to accommodate the old system otherwise I can see matches being over way too fast. And horses should probably go down after a direct hit from a tank shell...”
In the gaming bargains thread Sam noted that Gears of War 4 and Mafia 3 are available for pre-order at the reasonable price of £35. While the price may be agreeable, unfortunately Amazon have burned Johnbhoy69 one too many times for him to take advantage of the deal:
“£35 is a good deal but Amazon have lost any good faith they had with me, so many messed up pre-orders that don’t arrive until days after the release date.”
A pain I know only too well. I recently pre-ordered Mount and Blade: Warband for Xbox One, but rather than heading out on a vast medieval adventure upon release day, I instead found an empty mail box and apologetic emails from the online store I had purchased it from.
Probably not something Metalrodent would be bothered about, if his thoughts on the game are anything to go by: “My god those graphics, it looks like the biggest bit of difficulty in the game is holding down your lunch while playing.”
Are you still playing Pokémon GO? Me neither, but James is still plugging away at it, and wrote a few thoughts on how the game is holding up now that he’s reached the very impressive milestone of 100 Pokémon.
Max is one trainer who’s Pokédex isn’t collecting dust, and posted a snap of this specimen he caught recently:
TV’s have been the topic of choice in the technology thread over the past few weeks, and Sam has finally chosen one that’ll be gracing his home in the coming months.
Although if he had listened to BAMozzy in the first place, he probably could have saved some himself some trouble: “Finally decided on the Samsung KS8000, so the same model as BAM, after some more research. Nothing really comes close to touching its 4K/HDR gaming performance - mostly looking great with just 22ms of input lag - which sealed the deal. All of this he told me a while ago, I just had to do some more digging. I'll take your word straight away next time, BAM!”
Now, I haven’t played much World of Tanks, but even I know there’s a certain level of stigma following those who choose to play as artillery. That didn’t put off resident tank-nut Metalrodent however, who has been dabbling in the darker arts of armoured warfare, claiming “it feels so dirty yet so good”.
I think the best bit about that video was the props Rodent received from ShartZnGiggles7. Now that’s a gamertag.
Do you remember when SMITE used to dominate these round-ups? I think we’ll finish up with the main theme from the game to see if it can’t stir up some nostalgia for the free to play MOBA. Community Round-up XXX8/9/2016
"Limbo is relentlessly grim and dark, but there are moments of sheer beauty" - Metalrodent
“I just hope that Microsoft get their balls out soon”.
Out of context the above quote would probably sound a bit odd, but that was PTC Crisco’s reaction to this week's PS4 Pro announcement, which earned a fair bit of chatter on the forums. At least he didn’t ask them to show their Red Ring of Death.
PTC Bezza was “not sure about the point either”, but did see how the Pro’s relatively low price point could appeal to someone yet to buy a PS4, while BAMozzy was more concerned about the benefits to gaming than the lack of 4K Blu-ray support:
"I am disappointed in the lack of 4k HDR Blu-ray player but then I haven't watched a Blu-ray disc in years on a console…I buy a console to game and that always takes priority. The PS4 pro is the same price as the XB1s but over 3x as powerful. Given that 99.9999995 of the time I will be looking at games, I pre-ordered the PS4 Pro because I don't want 720p games on a 4K HDR TV."
It took the appearance of Plasma wing for someone to finally echo my thoughts on the matter:
“Correct me if I'm wrong, but the PS4 Pro is just runs games a little shinier and smoother, no other improvements? Entirely pointless for someone that doesn't have 4K capable TV? So which will be better, regular or slim? I'll pick one up in the inevitable Christmas 'sales'.” Saying that, if the Pro is going to deliver a better PSVR performance, I could be tempted… On the subject of virtual reality, Sam and I teamed up to bring you three game franchises we think would benefit from the addition of VR, and opened up the floor to forum members to add their own suggestions. Metalrodent thinks Dishonored VR would be pretty “neat”, Crisco was impressed with my own idea for a VR take on Batman, while MrkDhn10 opted for Portal. I wholeheartedly agree with the last one. The Aperture Science demo I tried just left me wanting more, and if a fully-fledged Portal VR experience ever came to fruition it would have me throwing my money at a headset. PTC Hetty set about defending Beyond Eyes this week, a game she felt was underrated and underappreciated. Jamie Rodriguez wasn’t quite on the same wavelength:
Away from the world of gaming, Crisco and Hetty reached a milestone in parenting as their respective children headed off to secondary school for the first time.
"My eldest started Secondary yesterday as well. I was more worried than he was... he's having a whale of a time. I got up at 7.30 this morning and he was sat in the kitchen, dressed and eating breakfast O_o" - Hetty
Talk of school got people reminiscing about their own educational experiences. Sam, Rodent, MrkDhn10 and I all ended up in the same friendless situations at the start of our proper educational careers, but who needs friends when you’ve got skills like these:
That was my very first attempt flying a bi-plane in the recent Battlefield 1 beta, which also received a mixed reaction in the forums (the beta that is, not my flying skills, which I’m sure were universally thought to be rubbish).
Plas has been strangely silent on the fail front recently, so the above clip will have to do for your fail of the week. I can only assume that over the past few weeks his gaming skills have improved drastically, so here’s a stock fail I had in the back burner in case of such a drought:
Back to the beta and Jam felt things were a little too slow for a Battlefield game, and thinks Titanfall 2 may be more his bag. DE4N MUFC is going all out and ordering the Ultimate Edition, and Jonbhoy69 thought the whole thing was great and felt “very authentic”.
Crisco didn’t fare too well, saying that while he would be interested in the campaign he has “better multiplayer games to play”, although he does concede that “chopping someone from horseback does feel awesome”. Metalrodent is taking the commendable approach of playing the game in the most historically accurate way he can: "For the record I'll be playing it vintage style the whole way - no quasi historical full auto guns just bolt action rifles (and pistols). The Gewehr is already clearly the weapon of choice for this; total beast, two shot kill and you can cock a second shot quicker than they can react often"
It turns out Rodent’s a bit of dab hand with artillery, as the below clip shows when he was testing out the shell drop physics:
We’ll finish up with screenshots supplied by the ever reliable Rodent, who graced the thread with some Dead or Alive action shots, including this one of Marie:
To be fair, he did balance it out with the following image of a “buff guy kicking a teenage boy”. We’re all about balance at PTC.
Seeing as the Battlefield 1 beta wrapped up this week, I thought it would be rather fitting for our duke box choice to be the main theme from my first ever experience with the franchise, Battlefield 3. Enjoy!
Community Round-Up XXVIII26/8/2016
It’s taken 28 weeks (and now an almost unreadable Roman numeral, sorry about that) but it’s finally time for me to bring you a Community Round-up, so what’s been going on?
Have you been feeling the urge to get back to Minecraftery? I have, so keep a look out for a resurgence of the PTC Minecraft world; add Team PTC on Xbox One and keep an eye on Twitter (@pass_controller), and the forums, to see when we’re on.
Sam and Plas (a.k.a. Sabre wing 2) have been continuing their quest through Resident Evil 6 and, it seems, there’s been a breakthrough on the pair’s teamwork:
Not only did Plas avoid accidentally shooting Sam at any point, there’s even synchronised head-stomping on display, a critically important tactic for the franchise. That might all change with Resident Evil 7 next year of course, which could mean a second series of Sam and Plas’ antics may have to take on a different challenge, Just Dance 2017 perhaps? (Leave your suggestions in the comments).
The biggest release of the week has been Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, which some of you are already digging into. Johnboy69 is suitably impressed: Played a good chunk of this over the weekend and it’s great so far, I did start off thinking I’ll go for a no kill playthrough but I’ve decided I won’t hold myself to that on my first playthrough. Found myself reloading saves quite a bit and got annoyed.
Sam was slightly less impressed:
Started the game guns blazing and found the combat to be really sloppy and unsatisfying. I'm going to restart and stealth my way through.
And Bezza hasn’t even started:
I’m looking forward to playing this, loved the first, however I might hold off buying until completed witcher 3, which I’m still playing ha.
I’ll be reviewing this one over the next few days, providing all those augmented baddies don’t prove too overwhelming, so keep your eyes peeled for that - if you’re lucky I might even do a video review as well, if you have requests of things you’d like me to cover, jot them down below.
Speaking of video, don’t forget there’s [one already out there] reflecting on the first weekend of Titantall 2’s technical test. It didn’t go down all that well with players, but [Respawn are addressing a few issues straight away, as you’ll find if you participate in the final test this weekend]. Look out for a second look video on that too, to find out if the team’s changes have made a substantial difference. In irregular happenings news, there was some Rocket League multiplayer taking place during this week’s regular Thursday night slot with me, Dan and Plas (feel free to join us any time - GT Decent Jam), and a peculiar thing happened:
Finally it’s time for the traditional tune to play it out, and this week it’s one of my all time favourites from back in the day, Return to Planet X from Timesplitters 2:
Let us know what you’ve been up to, multiplayer or otherwise, all through this week by sharing your screenshots and videos in the thread in the forums, tweeting us @pass_controller or spamming us on Facebook.
Community round-up XXVI11/8/2016 I should start by pointing out that the image above is not a photograph. Nope, that's a picture I drew using Paint because nobody's posted any screenshots this week. You see that sad looking sun in the corner? That's because of you, you did this. If there's no screenshots for next week, I'll be drawing a picture of two villains, complete with top hats and monocles, dropping sacks of puppies into a volcano. You have been warned (I feel like this may be put to a vote, but I know you've got my back).
In between bouts of not getting achievements and unadulterated rage , Sam managed to explore the city of Wellington Wells to address some issues with We Happy Few. Bear in mind that this isn't a critique of the game, merely a heads-up of what to expect in this early stage. You can look forward to our review when it releases next year. Despite the lack of significant new releases (on Xbox, at least), everyone's still found something to keep them occupied. Max has been playing The Elder Scrolls: Legends and a mobile game called Stellar Wars, MrkDhn10 has completed the first episode of BATMAN: A Telltale Series, and Liam has been cooking up a storm with Overcooked. Liam almost managed to get 3 stars on a level, but missed by a measly 2 points! Even just watching that was bum-clenchingly tense, so it pains me to award fail of the week to the first person not called Plasma Wing and break the streak, but alas, it must be done. A very high accolade indeed. If that looks a little hectic, don't worry, it will all make sense when you read Rob's upcoming Overcooked review. Also, be on the lookout for Hetty's review of No Man's Sky, which should be with you shortly. However, most folks seem to have made up their mind already. Sam is not impressed: "Early feedback pretty much confirms the fears I've had since it was announced: resource gathering gets boring quickly, combat is limp, planets are same-y." Rodent believes that the Peter Molyneux-esque promises were always going to be hard to live up to, and that the massive hype surrounding it didn't help. Bezza - although liking the concept - can't see it staying in his playlist long if he picks it up on PC. Plas and Johnbhoy are not opposed to grabbing it somewhere down the line, but it's not a priority. Plas has Elite: Dangerous for his space-sim needs and John isn't sold on the idea that gathering resources and naming wildlife is enough to keep him engaged. My clip of the week is my own, but I assure you no bias played a part in the decision. Feast your eyes on 104 seconds of pure luck: How do I do it? By playing casual with a bunch of people who haven't quite put in the 370 hours that I have. No, you need to start playing other games. Before we go, we'd like to remind you that the position for a Video Editor is still open, so please share it and apply yourselves if you have the relevant skills. This weeks track is NOFX's The Separation Of Church And Skate from Tony Hawk's Underground. If you like what you hear, check out their official website. If you want to join in, you can type mouth-words at us via Facebook, Twitter, the forums, or the comments below.
Community round-up XXIII21/7/2016 This haggard chap's from Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, and he's just as surprised as I am that his game garnered a decent amount of discussion on the forum this week.
"That's the very definition of treating fans with contempt, given that CoD has a large and casual player base." Well said, Rodent. Don't worry too much, though, as Bezza's guaranteeing it'll be available standalone next year! He's probably right, but if he isn't, feel free to tell him he sucks. Whilst the marketing decisions caused some friction, everyone largely agreed that Infinite Warfare actually looks decent. It's hard for me to get excited about Call of Duty, even the beloved Battlefield 1 hasn't done much to grab my attention. The two mammoth franchises feel passé nowadays, despite their best efforts to diversify.
Whilst you might sigh and wonder why I just don't bother, that isn't a mindset that would've seen me surpass 300,000 Gamerscore this week!
Elsewhere, the community once again fell back on old favourites in World of Tanks (no points for guessing who), Overwatch and GTAV. We'll finally start seeing some decent new releases with the arrival of We Happy Few's preview phase, Headlander, Hyper Light Drifter and more next week, followed by the digital release of BATMAN - The Telltale Series' first episode the week after. What's more, these round-ups will be much easier to write with actual games to discuss; we've almost weathered the storm, people! Soon after that we'll be able to get our grubby mitts on Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, though Johnbhoy questions whether it's actually worth getting excited about. The undeniably awful lip sync and rigid animations he cited won't hamper the signature gameplay, though we have some bad news for Rodent even on that front. "Having mini cutscenes and using energy each time you melee attack was naff." Yeah, that's kinda still in there... Something so befitting of the community round-up that it pains me it can't be included occurred Thursday evening. Whilst I realise bringing that up and not delivering is a "dick move" of Activision proportions, maybe someone will point to this down the line when I'm able to disclose it.
Anyway, if you think I let you down there, just take a look this woeful fumble from Chris. Whilst discussing the recently announced NES: Classic Edition console, he asked "There's no Alex the Kid?" ... Oh dear. It's Alex Kidd, and the game was for SEGA Master System. He saw himself out with an appropriately grovelling apology, so we've since let him back into the fold. Passed that along like a pro. We'll close this week by having Song of the Deep's lovely main theme whisk us away to an aquatic realm of adventure. Community round-up XXI9/7/2016 Chris shared some impressive Minecraft pixel art that his son had rustled up this week; Darth Vader, Deadpool, Wolverine and more are accurately captured, leading him to ponder where the lad got his artistic flair. Chris can't even paint a room without getting most of it on his face, after all. In need of something to break up the monotony, I also opted to make a start on the Xbox One remaster of Resident Evil 6 - in co-op with Plas - because I really am a glutton for punishment. The game isn't actually bad when taken at face value, though having Plas as a co-op partner doesn't do much to combat the infamously bad friendly AI. He needed to press B to help me open the door. In his defence, why it takes two to open a door is beyond me... Many a purchase was pondered on the forum this week, from games in the Xbox Ultimate Sale, to an Elite controller and 4K TVs. I can recommend the games that've been brought up for consideration - Metro, The Evil Within and Layers of Fear - as well as the Elite controller, but I'll leave the television talk to BAMozzy and his extensive tech knowledge. I know who's input I'm asking when it's time to upgrade. There's no purchase necessary when it comes to the approaching Xbox Avatar update, yet everyone can agree that something isn't quite right about it. Max (who passed his first year at uni this week) thinks they'd do better flogging Dolmio cooking sauces, whilst they're a little more ventriloquist-dummy-looking to me. Either way, they chill Chris to the bone. The update also introduces an inclusive wheelchair option, though Jaime Rodriguez likens adorning one to slapping a target on your back in an online setting. There's no further purchase necessary for Xbox 360 owners of Red Dead Redemption that want to revisit the Wild West, now that it's finally been made backwards compatible. It's been a long time coming, which has left none happier than DE4N MUFC; "my son can shut up and stop constantly asking when it's coming now." We should really feature a parenting section, I'm starting to feel this community has invaluable tips that need to be shared.
For anyone that's justifiably stricken him from memory, Mattrick was the bumbling former Head of Xbox that claimed backwards compatibility was impossible. As was playing offline - Xbox 360 was for those unconnected, unwashed peasants. I regret to say we have a similar sort of person in our midst, but rest assured they'll soon be cleansed. Liam hasn't played Bioshock. Liam didn't mention this in his application, he'd naturally have been stricken from the list if he had. Liam's kindly been prescribed a dose of The Collection to set him straight. You needn't worry about Liam anymore. Everyone else was glad to have reason to revisit the acclaimed series, albeit with different entries in mind. Myself and Bam find Infinite the weak link, craving the rusty oppression of Rapture, whilst Heavyarms_Kai favours Infinite. Why so? Because it doesn't feel like "rehashed System Shock," though I wouldn't know as I haven't played it. Shut up about black pots and kettles, they're hardly relevant here.
We'll wrap up with a track for everyone who's looking to delve the depths of Bioshock: The Collection come September. Welcome to Rapture.
Community round-up XX2/7/2016
Well, that was quite a week.
First, Britain voted to leave the European Union, then the England players also decided they wanted out from the continent by way of a limp performance against Iceland in Euro 2016. I don’t know about you, but after all that I could do with getting back to some semblance of normality, preferably by talking about games.
“I just pulled a worm out of a pig's arse - 10/10!
Imagine the lovely wallpaper you could have if there was an accompanying achievement!
Speaking of achievements, Chris had a few things to say about some of his least favourite ones this week. It seems everyone has their own take on what makes a bad achievement; whether they are ridiculously difficult, unnecessarily grindy, or even a source of regret – much like Douthy’s choice:
PTC Bezza and Sam are loathe to partake in collectable achievements that don’t improve gameplay, while Fifa 09 took the brunt of BAMozzy’s anger:
“Least favourite is easy - having to play 50hours (yes HOURS) of Fifa 09 for 1 gamerscore!!! All that just to get a gamerscore divisible by 5 after scoring in the 89th minute (19 gamerscore)”
TippiestRook found issue with ‘Ultimate Spiderman’ in The Amazing Spiderman 2, DE4N MUFC’s blood pressure got dangerously high as he tackled Goat Simulator’s ‘The Flapmaster’, and both Metalrodent and crippyd were united in their frustration at Halo Reach’s ‘If They Came to Hear Me Beg…’ achievement. You know, the one which required you to survive a deadly fall by assassinating an Elite? Yep, I couldn’t do it either, and crippyd even had to outsource to unlock it:
“I had to get my mate to log on as me and get it for me. I tried hundreds of times and never managed it. 2 minutes after my friend had logged in it popped!”
My own choice was Titanfall’s campaign achievements, but I also share in Plasma wing’s annoyance at lazy achievement artwork. Over on our Facebook page, Jaime Rodriguez shared what it would take to for him to even begin to care:
I think we’d all become avid achievement hunters if Microsoft actually made this a thing. Go on Nadella, you’ve got billions in the bank!
Away from achievements, Max set up a vote so people can help him chose what to play over the summer. See the main image above for the choice of games on offer and have your say here. Personally I voted for Overwatch and Rise of the Tomb Raider (twice), but Metalrodent reckons Max should pick up Metro Redux and Fallout 4 in aid of “spending your summer playing gloomy atmospheric post-apocalypse games.” How cheery. At the time of writing there isn’t a clear frontrunner, so it’s probably best just to buy them all, Max. There was news this week that Mass Effect will be getting another four books set between the events of ME 3 and Andromeda. Sam will be avoiding them, but hopes the story of the game will still make sense, while the choice based multiple endings from the original trilogy led Metalrodent to beg the question - “which ending will it choose to continue things from?” Is it just me or would these games be the perfect fit for a Choose Your Own Adventure book? Let’s make this happen, BioWare (for a percentage, of course). Heavyarms_Kai kept up his and Rodent’s dominance of the Models thread with this latest acquisition:
One day I’ll actually get around to building the Guardian statue I got from my Halo 5 Xbox and break up the monopoly you two have on this thread.
Metalrodent also had a clip from Fallout 4 to share, proving that you really don’t want to mess with the Brotherhood of Steel:
I like how Dogmeat is completely unperturbed by the horrific battle engulfing him, that’s a well-trained hound!
I also had a ‘record that’ worthy moment in Warzone Firefight when it launched on Wednesday:
I’d like to think the Jackal who made that shot would have uploaded it as part of a kill montage to the Covenant’s own version of YouTube. #Kig-YarFTW #SpartanGetsPwned
Lastly, I have no idea what a Golden Kappa is, but Sam managed to pick one up during a Twitch stream. Not being an avid Twitch viewer…I think this is a good thing?
That’s it from the Community Round-up and me this week, but as always, if you’d like to feature in one yourself, or just want to chat games with some lovely people, then join the discussion in our forums or leave a comment below.
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