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

Screenshot from Star Trek: Bridge Crew
And so the journey of the USS Sega Rally, comes to an end: "GAME OVER, YEAAAAHHH!"

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.

Star Trek: Bridge Crew

  • Picked by Me
  • Percentage Complete = 50%
Tried the third episode a couple of times and failed on both counts. Seems like the game's actually a bit of a challenge now. This mission involves hacking into sensor arrays to slow down waves of Klingon warships decloaking near you. You can quickly get overwhelmed so I'm not really sure if the best thing to do is engage them or just focus on the objective and zoom around the star system. I'm thinking perhaps trying the latter will be the way to go, or perhaps trying the mission again with a full complement of human players might do the trick (maybe the AI players are simply not good enough)?

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

  • Picked by Luke
  • Percentage Complete = 76%
This game really frustrates me. I've been trying to get the remaining three level 3 forts and managed to get two so I've only got one more left before I've "unlocked" the entire map (which means fast travel to everywhere 😊). These final forts are tough since you have to take them on during storms (at least that's what happened to me anyway, even after restoring the game): this means not only must you concentrate on fighting against a fort but you've got to dodge rogue waves too!

Also, swordfighting seems to be a lot harder despite me pressing the space bar to break defences: it only seems to work 50% of the time now. Also, one of the best aspects of the game is sometimes really annoying during combat, i.e. the Assassin's ability to perform parkour moves. Sometimes you really don't want to try to hang from a pillar when there's a mob of enemies chasing you since it just gives them more time to stab you in the back…

King's Quest IV

  • Picked by Choona
  • Percentage Complete = 54%
Despite this King's Quest being an improvement over its predecessors especially in terms of animations and music, it still suffers many of the same pitfalls, such as waiting in real-time for events to trigger (e.g. waiting for the ogre to come back in the house while you're hiding in the broom closet) or attempting to manipulate objects you don't even know exist (e.g. an eye that some witches pass amongst each other – it's really difficult to see, even if the resolution appears to be better than King's Quest III). Oh, there's also one part where you have to use a board to cross a chasm in the dark. Now the chasm itself is almost impossible to see unless you're standing right next to it (which means you'll often fall to your death as you approach the middle of the screen) and there's apparently a wooden board you can use to cross it, but you can't actually see it (so I'm not sure how you're even supposed to know it existed in the first place)! Why is King's Quest always like this?

LINK:
[ The Pile of Shame ]

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