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

Very Episode IV-like

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 = 20%

I don't have much left to do in my logbook so I headed over to Prison Valley to hopefully find someone who knows about this fabled placed called Damonta. There's lots to explore here and plenty of enemies to kill. Seems like the Red Scorpion Militia has got organised and it's only made things worse for just about everyone living around the former Rangers base. I also came across my first enemies that wielded energy weapons and dynamite! Dangerous! Thankfully, it wasn't too much trouble taking them out. I also upgraded my main character to use a Meson Cannon (it looks sick) and switched the pistol for one of my characters from the .38 calibre Makarov (although it's called a Marakov in this game) to the 9mm FFS Benetto (which just looks like a Beretta 92FS).

Homefront: The Revolution

• Picked by Luke
• Percentage Complete = 5%

So, I move on from one open-world action-adventure to another! Although to be fair to Assassin's Creed IV, this game seems rather linear, at least from what I've played so far. Despite the game only coming out maybe 3 years after Assassin's Creed IV though, it looks so much better (not sure if it's because Homefront: The Revolution uses the CryEngine or if it's just because those few years make all the difference in terms of improved graphics technology).

Anyway, I'm liking the "Red Dawn" premise of this game (except with North Koreans instead of Soviets). Your comrades get treated rather brutally in the first few minutes of the game which is unsettling.

In terms of gripes I have with the game so far I'm not enjoying the long load times and the fact there are the occasional graphical glitches (like assaults rifles floating in mid-air).

I'm currently playing the game on easiest difficulty but the game does punish you if you don't use stealth (at one point, I somehow got spotted by a blimp despite hiding under debris. This resulted in about 20 soldiers converging on my position and there was no way I could handle them all by myself).

Space Quest I

• Picked by Choona
• Percentage Complete = 100%

Yay I finally finished the game! Somehow, I didn't get full points and ended up with only 191 out of 202 points :/.

Anyway, the final part of the game was relatively easy and straight-forward (i.e. I didn't need to use a walkthrough – or maybe I just remembered what I did last time when I played the VGA version many years ago). So overall, despite this game being pretty tricky like a lot of older Sierra adventure games, it still seems like child's play when compared to the likes of King's Quest.

Oh well, on to Space Quest II after this and then Police Quest I after that: two games I definitely remember playing before, but will I remember enough to not use a walkthrough :)?

LINK:
[ The Pile of Shame ]