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

Yay! Finished Sid Meier's Pirates! again! 

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.

For Honor

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 10%

Didn't get around to playing this.

Stardew Valley

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 20%

On hold while I'm playing other games. 😊

Battlefield V

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 100%

Still having fun with this game; it's especially addictive unlocking stuff (but that's how they get you, eh?). I'm still getting occasional framerate drops which is annoying (or maybe it's microstutter?). I used to get this in BF1 although it did go away for a period of time, so not sure what's going on. It's quite frustrating because despite running the game on the "optimal" settings for my video card (according to NVIDIA's GeForce Experience) there are still issues. I even tried dabbling with the Windows 10 Power settings and tweaking graphics settings to no avail.

So yeah, the game still has issues such as the fact when you request a vehicle as a reinforcement, you have to actually spawn in it. i.e. it won't actually appear in the spawn until someone in your squad spawns in it and the vehicle will only be available for a limited amount of time before you lose the opportunity. So, if you as the squad leader are the only person available (or cognisant of what's going on) you have to redeploy (which means suiciding and contributing one lost ticket to your team).

Map transitions are also still causing me grief which means every third map transition I'm often found pressing Alt+F4 and restarting the game due to the game hanging. I also don't understand why there is no auto-balance or why you're not given the option to switch teams; there have been several games I've played now where the losing side is usually outnumbered 2:1 which makes it very difficult to recover.

Urban Empire

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 75%

I've survived to Era V which means I'm now living in the 1990s. One good aspect of this game is the music, which changes from era to era. Unfortunately, other aspects of the game aren't as positive and I'm still slowly losing money: I still have no idea how to generate income in this game and no idea what each of the icons mean. I did survive all the way through to the GFC though, but my first high density district is losing me even more money and contributing to my fiscal woes.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

• Picked by Luke
• Percentage Complete = 54%

I didn't get time to play Black Flag this week. Was mainly focusing my time on Battlefield V again.

Sid Meier's Pirates!

• Picked by Choona
• Percentage Complete = 100%

Yay! I finally made it to Duke with all colonial powers and retired at the ripe "old" age of 38. I became Governor of Nevis and married the beautiful daughter of the Governor of Santa Catalina (a Dutch port would you believe). Since Sid Meier's Pirates! is out of the way, time to move on to another of Choona's picks, and his current pick is "any Sierra adventure game" :O. That's a lot to choose from!

LINK:
[ The Pile of Shame ]