What I've Been Playing This Week (aka Pile of Shame Sunday)

MOAAAR TELLTALE ADVENTURES

The following post is part of a series of posts that are published every Sunday to update readers on what Mark G has been up to with respect to finishing off games on his "Pile of Shame". The games to target are picked by Choicest Games contributors Choona, Luke and Lanna. As I'll be talking about my progress through these games, there may be spoilers ahead, especially for games containing a narrative. Consider yourself warned.

The Walking Dead: Michonne

• Picked by Lanna
• Percentage Complete = 100%

I managed to cross another game off my Pile of Shame this week - and again, it's a Telltale adventure: The Walking Dead: Michonne. While the first episode had minimal framerate drops, the animation got really choppy towards the end which is really frustrating. The game also ended up being very short at just under 4 hours long (so even the episodes themselves were shorter than your typical Telltale adventure). Music was fantastic though and so was the voice acting. Playing as Michonne feels a lot different to playing as Lee or Clementine in the main series as she's such a badass when it comes to taking out zombies; she does it with such finesse.

Anyway, if you want to learn more about what I thought, check out the review.

Minecraft: Story Mode

• Picked by Lanna
• Percentage Complete = 4%

Okay, so I thought why not play another Telltale adventure while I was on a roll? This week I started to play Minecraft: Story Mode and so far, it's not too bad. I never really got into the worldwide phenomenon that is Minecraft (I know, sacrilege, right?) so I'm probably not going to get a lot of the references in this game but it's definitely got the Minecraft style and lore intact. Music and voice acting are again top notch from what I've heard so far, although the story seems a bit, I don't know, all over the place at the moment. Like I'm not that far into the game and the main character is already wanting to ditch his friends - seems like a bit of a drop kick if you ask me...

The Testament of Sherlock Holmes

• Picked by Lanna
• Percentage Complete = 25%

I haven't made any further progress on this – it’s now on hold while I am distracted by Telltale adventures 😊.

Battlefield 1

• Picked by Lanna
• Percentage Complete = 10%

I haven't made any further progress on this – it’s now on hold while I am distracted by Telltale adventures 😊.

Company of Heroes 2

• Picked by Luke
• Percentage Complete = 86%

It took me 45 minutes to complete mission 12 in Company of Heroes 2 (the Battle for Poznan). I had lots of help from an AI ally at the start of the mission, perhaps a bit too much considering he was taunting me on how slow I was for half of the game. Eventually, you have to do the mission alone though as his army pulls out and you also have limited time to capture the citadel. Thankfully, using the forces I started the game with along with a generous dose of conscripts was enough to complete the mission (you start off with an ISU-152, heavy mortar crew, engineers and two SU-76s). I also made liberal use of the IL-2 Sturmovik strafing run ability - that saved my arse many times.

Mission 13 is next which actually takes place on German home soil. Not long until Berlin...

World of Goo

• Picked by Choona
• Percentage Complete = 90%

I finally finished the "scales level" that I got stuck on; the solution involved building a more stable base and somehow building up from that worked - or at least gave me just enough time before the whole structure toppled over to get a few goo balls into the exit. The final couple of missions for Chapter 4 were amusing and involved delivering a lot of spam in order to destroy a corporation. Monty Python would be proud...

I'm now on the epilogue and managed to complete the first mission through sheer luck - I managed to float the goo ball structure to the exit with balloons, but I'm pretty sure you're meant to make a bridge there instead - oh well, whatever works 😊.

LINK:
[ The Pile of Shame ]