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

This chap is Benjamin Hornigold. He's an actual pirate from history.

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.

Hand of Fate

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 92%

Yep. I failed to complete the final level again. It is so difficult. You get cursed at every floor of the "dungeon" and the final confrontation involves fighting four waves of bosses you've already defeated! You also have no opportunity to heal between these waves which makes it even more challenging.

If there's anything positive to be said, at least I managed to get further than last time (I survived to the third wave instead of the second), but it's still hard going. Maybe I should drop the difficulty? Although I'm hesitant to do so, plus I'm not actually sure if it'll help much.

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 😊.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

• Picked by Luke
• Percentage Complete = 21%

I've managed to reach the port of Nassau which is apparently a town ruled by pirates: I looked up the history of the place and sure enough, it actually was a town run by pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy – so it looks like Assassin's Creed can be educational sometimes. I had to save some pirates to help bolster the numbers of my crew and I also purchased some mortars for my ship (hah, some pirate I am: purchasing goods from a store).

After that, I did some raiding of merchant vessels but I actually died at one point, probably because I was outnumbered and I didn't really know what I was doing (a commonly recurring theme for me and this game). Not only did I not know what I was doing during ship combat but during melee combat, I was somehow unarmed and not using my swords – I'm not quite sure how.

Before I clocked off this week, the final thing I did was to upgrade my ship's armour to intermediate armour, so hopefully that means it can survive a few more hits as I fumble my way through this game.

Hacknet

• Picked by Choona
• Percentage Complete = 66%

Yes, my "Percentage Complete" has decreased slightly because I didn't realise I actually have the expansion to Hacknet called Hacknet – Labyrinths meaning there's at least another couple of hours of gameplay here if the estimates on HowLongToBeat.com are anything to go by.

I believe Hacknet – Labyrinths starts when you complete these trials called "the Kaguya Trials"; successfully completing these trials means you get to work with three 1337 h4x0|25. One good thing about the expansion is that it seems to have cleared up my very busy netmap which is a relief. In the expansion it looks like you're able to download a whole bunch of new tools like an SSLTrojan tool which allows you to tunnel through another opened port to hack the SSL port. The last mission I played this week involved all three hackers (including yourself) attempting to breach the same systems: I love the camaraderie in the chat room, even if it's all staged.

LINK:
[ The Pile of Shame ]