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

I feel a certain Toto song coming along...

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.

Wasteland 2: Director's Cut

• Picked by Me
• Percentage Complete = 16%

Well, I tried helping out the Rail Nomads but ended up failing abysmally. The Atchisons, arguably the weaker of the two factions, were wiped out by the Topekans which ends up being a major setback for the region. Dang.

I also managed to annihilate one of the gangs in the Wastes known as the Wreckers. It seems like combat isn't too much of a challenge on the easiest difficulty so at times I feel like I've toned it down too much. There are other times though where I'm glad I did pick it such as the boss battle at Ag Center where one of my squad members became unconscious. I also have misspent some of my character points so they're probably not operating as efficiently as they could be… another reason to be thankful that I'm playing on the easiest difficulty. And while we're on the topic of character points, sometimes I feel like the points I've invested in the surgeon skill are wasted, since my doctor seems incapable of removing most diseases. I'm not sure if this is a bug or if it's intentional (and he can only target particular diseases).

I also finally got access to Ranger Citadel and somebody there actually wanted my copy of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep!" NOICE! An item that would usually be considered a piece of junk actually has use as a museum exhibit!

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

• Picked by Luke
• Percentage Complete = 96%

2 down, 1 to go. I managed to eliminate both Woodes Rogers as well as Bart Roberts. I now only have Laureano de Torres y Ayala left. Again, the missions required a lot of sneaking around, although it turned out killing Woodes Rogers wasn't too hard to do in the end: in fact, I even completed the additional objective of assassinating him while I was sitting on a bench! Also, the Italian diplomat I got a disguise from (in order to get close enough to Woodes Rogers in the first place), was assassinated from a haystack, which means it's 100% unlocked for that "memory" :) (although it took me several tries to assassinate the Italian diplomat. Like I've said numerous times before, stealth is not my forte).

After dealing with Rogers, I tracked down Roberts to the African island of Principe. I ignored the warnings which said I should upgrade my ship but boy it made the final confrontation a bit harder: I had to go up against 5 Frigates plus Roberts's man-o-war! I somehow pulled through though, albeit barely, but the storm helped damage some of the enemy ships, I think. I finished Roberts in the cheapest way possible by firing a deck cannon at him mid-speech... that'll learn him.

Still encountered a couple of bugs such as getting stuck inside the ship again which meant I had to restore from the last checkpoint. I also had frustrations with using stealth during the mission since sometimes you just want Kenway to drop down from the ledge he's on, but depending on what sort of ledge it is, sometimes you'll need to hit another key and sometimes you don't.

Space Quest I

• Picked by Choona
• Percentage Complete = 52%

I've managed to get back to where I was last week since I had to restore from an earlier point in order to retrieve the data cartridge (which I irresponsibly left behind in a cartridge reader) and I also had to make sure I only sold the skimmer the second time I was offered money, since it's only on the second time that I'm offered a jetpack as part of the deal too. Funny thing is though, you're meant to go into the bar and come back immediately after if you want a second chance at the deal. If you stay in the bar for too long, it doesn't look like the alien returns! Wow. And just when I thought this game wasn't as harsh as King's Quest…

The walkthrough that I'm following states that I need to save up 230 buckazoids by playing the pokies and the only way to achieve this (since this is an early Sierra adventure after all) is through the dreaded save scumming: this means saving the game whenever you win money and restoring it whenever you lose (or die, in the case of this particular machine in Space Quest). I had to perform the save scumming for 15 minutes, so that's 15 minutes of my life I know I'm not getting back.

I also saw ZZ Top performing "Sharp Dressed Man" in the bar. Ahhh the good ol' days of copyright infringement when it came to music in games…

I'm now trying to save up enough money for a droid since the walkthrough strangely didn't tell me to save enough to purchase both the ship and the droid…

LINK:
[ The Pile of Shame ]