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

It's Blackbeard the pirate! YAAAAARRRR!!

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.

Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 21%

I've already finished Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption, actually even before the game was officially released, however I wasn't too happy with the ending I received. It took me 14 hours to complete the game so it does require a substantial number of hours played (even to perform poorly). Despite the investment of time required, before I write the game off completely, I thought it is only fair to give the game one more shot which is what I'm doing now.

I didn't originally feature Hero-U in the Pile of Shame segment since the game is new and I didn't want to reveal any spoilers (since anything's fair game in this feature), however, I will make a special exception for Hero-U so while I might talk about game dynamics and such, I won't go into any specific details about the characters or plot.

Anyway, let me just start off by saying getting the coveted Rogue of the Year award is actually pretty damn important: in fact, it's the real goal of the game (despite me somehow believing it was of secondary importance). I'm pretty sure my abysmal ending from my first playthrough is related to not gaining this achievement so my second playthrough aims to correct that. It seems that despite old Sierra adventure games being seemingly brutal with the multiple ways you could die, it was mercy in disguise since then at least you would know early on if you were going down the wrong path. Hero-U, on the other hand, feels like a casual game but in reality, it lulls you into a false sense of security.

Okay, playing this game again, I've now finally seen the introductory cinematic (I don't think this was ready yet during the beta or I somehow missed it): unfortunately, it's a bit laggy. Also, while I'm still talking about my gripes with this game, Shawn's running animation is still as goofy as the last time I played. Still annoyed that there aren't any true outdoor wilderness areas like there was in previous Quest for Glory games or the fact there's no voice acting (but to be fair, only the last two Quest for Glory games had this feature).

There have been some minor improvements though, like it's now easier to see where your relationships are at, Steam Achievements are now enabled and the font in the journal is now legible.

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 😊.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

• Picked by Luke
• Percentage Complete = 35%

The last mission I completed in Black Flag was tailing a man-o-war and then I went about upgrading my ship (even though I have no idea what I'm doing – half the stuff they mention I don't even use, I mean, when do you get an opportunity to use rowboats and harpoons? Oh well, they're cheap to upgrade so might as well do it I say...)

I also probably spent far too much time playing Nine Men's Morris. I think I've finally got the hang of it though...

Hacknet

• Picked by Choona
• Percentage Complete = 89%

Okay, I'm still not finished the game, so that “Percentage Complete” figure is definitely way off, so I've cautiously incremented it by one percent 😊. I completed another long mission that took over 45 minutes to complete: it involved a lot of snooping around systems and gathering passwords in order to gain access to IRC and email accounts. Once I got control of these accounts I was able to reset one and generate a new password, which I read using a hacked network administrator's email account. Maybe the "Labyrinths" in Hacknet: Labyrinths refers to how digging up this information through several terminals is a bit like navigating a one?

LINK:
[ The Pile of Shame ]