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

Making my way through Greece in Horizon Chase Turbo

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.

Master of Orion 2

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 60%

Well I ended up losing my game as the Bulrathi. The Antarans were relentless and kept on attacking me until my entire civilization was destroyed. They never attacked the Elerians at all which leads me to believe they keep focusing on whichever empire is the superpower at the time and continue to attack them until they're wiped out.

So, after another disappointing game of Master of Orion 2 I started up a new game as the Darloks, only to be disappointed yet again by their ineffectiveness; the Darloks are meant to be a race of superspies that have a bonus on spy rolls but every time I tried to commit espionage on the Trilarians, my attempts failed. So, I now only have one spy doing counter-espionage at home.

I trawled through some forums to see what I could do about the Antarans and apparently building up planetary defences such as fighter garrisons, missile bases, star bases, etc. should be sufficient in countering early Antaran raids since these structures are always automatically upgraded with your best technology. So, in theory it sounds like it should work – especially considering I never really paid much attention to building up these defences in previous games as I was relying on my fleet to do the defending instead. We'll see if it actually works out this time since if it doesn't, I think I'll have to unfortunately give up.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 80%

Yeah I didn't get to play Guardians of the Galaxy this week, but I'll hopefully get a chance to wrap this up next week 😊

Horizon Chase Turbo

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 41%

I almost lost NBN again this weekend but thankfully it came back up again on Saturday afternoon, which meant more Horizon Chase Turbo… but only 30 minutes of it. I made enough progress retrying old races to increase my overall score which in turn unlocked the Iceland Cup on World Tour mode. I also managed to give a shot at local multiplayer with my daughter and it worked perfectly; what's even better about local multiplayer is that anyone else who is playing with you can apparently help you earn points towards unlocking stuff in World Tour – neat!

Finally, I managed to give one of the Tournaments a shot: it involved four races from the California Cup and your score from previous races count towards the final tournament score: those who are first, second and third by the end of the tournament are treated to a mini-cutscene involving a podium finish.

Hand of Fate

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 91%

On hold while I'm playing other games. 😊

Stardew Valley

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 20%

On hold while I'm playing other games. 😊

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 😊.

Door Kickers

• Picked by Luke
• Percentage Complete = 51%

Yep, I'm still stuck on the same mission, despite trying what the devs suggested in using Stinger grenades to disperse the hostages. Unfortunately, it simply doesn't work and if you throw the grenades onto the hostage, you kill them. I tried throwing flashbangs at the terrorists who were hiding around the back (the ones who inevitably kill the hostages due to crossfire) but it's no use – unless my timing is off. Anyway, don't think I'll be spending too much more time on this mission and maybe I'll just move onto the campaign or something – or finish the other missions first.

Nothing

• Picked by Choona
• Percentage Complete = 0%

I'm still playing Town of Salem as it's that good, and Choona has still not picked a new game for me to play yet – oh well, means I get a break of sorts 😊 (and hopefully some time to catch up with reviews!)

LINK:
[ The Pile of Shame ]