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

They may give us flesh wounds, but they'll never take OUR FREEEEDOM

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.

Cally’s Caves 4

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 55%

I completed another level of Cally’s Caves 4 and it took me almost an hour to complete – so the game is probably going to take much longer that I originally thought (at least another 3-4 hours by my estimate). This week, the game introduced me to a new character called Bera which I assume is Cally’s pet bear (what kind of girl keeps a bear as a pet anyway?). Bera gets her own levels.

Still enjoying it. It’s a good casual time waster.

Hand of Fate

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 91%

On hold while I’m playing Cally’s Caves 4 😊

Stardew Valley

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 19%
On hold while I’m playing Cally’s Caves 4 😊 HLTB 49 hours

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… well… a lot of other games 😊.

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… well… a lot of other games 😊.

XCOM 2

• Picked by Luke
• Percentage Complete = 36%

I managed to make up for not playing XCOM 2 last week and the game has progressed quite nicely (I am so glad I switched to Rookie difficulty). I’ve finished the Shadow Chamber and completed a couple of “Shadow” research projects (complete with cutscenes) and I even managed to upgrade my troops to new “Predator” armour. I also came across my first Berserker – a hulk of an alien that takes quite a few hits to put down: I encountered it on a terror mission and almost lost one soldier in the process (she was unconscious and bleeding out but thankfully she was stabilised in the nick of time. Most of the squad were injured except one Scottish sniper that came out unscathed).

In terms of upgrades to the Avenger, I’ve almost excavated all sections of the ship and have built a new Resistance Comms centre – which unfortunately only adds one Contacts slot, but no matter, it turns out it’s enough for me to make contact with New Indonesia where the next Blacksite mission is. I was sad when they revealed the new territory to be New Australia but Western Australia wasn’t included – so not only does Canberra not care about Western Australia but neither do our alien overlords :P.

Oh, I also managed to finally research Gauss weapons which means I can now upgrade all my cannons and sniper rifles to more powerful versions. Aw yissss! 😊

Fortnite

• Picked by Choona
• Percentage Complete = 20%

I played a bit more of this game with a mate and man, are all these missions just variants of the same thing? i.e. build a fort and defend? It will get a bit dull if that’s the case; the game must be a turtle's dream since it’s all about building traps and defending – a bit like a first person shooter version of Tower Defense to be honest.

Anyway, in terms of the characters, I’m liking the robot Ray: she’s like a female, less snarky version of Claptrap. I also like Lars since the first mission you’re introduced to him is called “Ride the Lightning” which features him playing music which sounds very similar to a certain Doors song...

(/me sings Riders on the Storm)

Also, what’s with games nowadays and lootboxes (and in the case of this game, piñatas)? There’s lots of things going on in the background which makes the metagame a bit confusing but I’m sure if you invested the time it would probably make more sense (time I don't have, I'm afraid).

LINK:
[ The Pile of Shame ]