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



Screenshot of Telltale's Game of Thrones computer game
Finished Telltale's Game of Thrones! Beskha is definitely one of my favourite characters from the game.

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 myself. 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.

Thaumistry: In Charm’s Way

  • Picked by Me
  • Percentage Complete = 51%
I managed to get a little bit further in the game after realising the only reason I got stuck was because I failed to notice there was another room I hadn't explored (reminds me of something similar I did in the most recent remaster of Leisure Suit Larry). I've now opened up quite a few more locations to check out but currently stuck with respect to a time travel puzzle: I need to get a letter open and read the contents to memorise a new spell but the letter disappears every 5 minutes (and then I end up forgetting the spell). I do like the fact you can stumble across easter eggs such as when I attempted to cast a speed spell on myself so I could copy the letter only to have the narrator to tell me it's not a bad idea but it won't work (you still get kudos though ;)).

Game of Thrones – A Telltale Game Series

  • Picked by Me
  • Percentage Complete = 100%
The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that Game of Thrones is no longer picked by Lanna but by me. There are a couple of reasons for this: (1) while Lanna originally agreed to pick games for me to play, she only really set out a policy instead which turned out being any game I felt like playing - so in effect, it really is just me making the choices and (2) After Thaumistry was released recently (which I made my pick) I found that striving to commit four hours in the week to playing Pile of Shame games instead of three was starting to become infeasible and the very reason why there's no review this week (sorry :( ).

Anyway, I finally finished Game of Thrones and it had a great finale that could take multiple paths. In fact, some of the endings are so different from each other (i.e. major characters that either live or die or being in one completely different place from another) that I'm not quite sure how they're going to make it all work in season 2 (and yes, there's very likely to be a season 2 since Telltale ended the game on a cliffhanger).

I ended up quite liking the game despite never watching the TV show or reading the books; I was also impressed at how many from the TV series reprised their roles in the game, such as Iwan Rheon as Ramsay Snow/Bolton, Natalie Dormer as Margaery Tyrell, Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister, Kit Harington as Jon Snow, Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen and Lena Heady as Cersei Lannister.

The Testament of Sherlock Holmes

  • Picked by Me
  • 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 Me
  • Percentage Complete = 10%
I haven’t made any further progress on this – it’s now on hold while I am distracted by Telltale adventures 😊.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

  • Picked by Luke
  • Percentage Complete = 90%
Urgh! I had to use a hint again - but it turns out I was on the right track anyway. The solution did require a lot of backtracking though as I needed a second lever to operate some ancient tunneling machine - and it turns out that second lever was again the damn hinge pin which was the missing inventory item when I got stuck figuring out how to bust Sophia out of a cage!

War Thunder

  • Picked by Choona
  • Percentage Complete = 50%
I found out again that I was shooting myself in the foot (no thanks to the complexities of the game and the interface) since I ended up buying extra slots when I didn't need to (maybe they did this intentionally since how are you going to get money otherwise as a Free-to-Play title? But maybe I'm just being too cynical...). Anyway, made some progress and actually did well when I played by myself on Air Arcade battles (got 2nd on the team and got 3 kills) and Tank Arcade Battles (got 5 kills and got 4th on the team). I also played a couple of games with Luke and Durzo (Arcade Tank Battles) - where I didn't do as well (which is how I usually play when playing tank battles :)). Still enjoying the game to a degree but I feel that like many MMOs, to get to that next level of expertise, you really have to invest a lot of time and energy into it - and it's even worse with War Thunder because it's part simulation (so you actually got to have a basic understanding of how tanks, aircraft and physics in general work - which I thought I did, but clearly not enough).

LINK:
[ The Pile of Shame ]


Comments