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

The city of Brooklyn in Gold Rush! Classic

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 = 34%

So, I went to Silo 7 where I found a man named Brother Wright attempting to disable the nuke but not having the technical know-how to do it. His reasoning behind his actions is that he didn't want something so powerful to be placed in the hands of the Servants of the Mushroom Cloud. Despite the Servants of the Mushroom Cloud making a request to send the nuke to them, I conceded that Brother Wright's course of action was, um, the right choice.

Unfortunately, my bomb defusal expert isn't actually that good with bombs and only had a 16% chance of defusing it. Funnily enough, the first time I tried defusing the nuke it ended up in a critical failure which meant everyone got blown up and it was game over. After reloading though and trying again another five times, I managed to successfully defuse the thing although I suspect the Servants of the Mushroom Cloud aren't going to be too happy about it.

After Silo 7 I finally discovered the town of Damonta. Apparently, it's actually the remains of Davis-Monathan Air Force Base which is a real place known as an aircraft boneyard for the United States. I love it when sci-fi games refer to real places and Wasteland 2, like Fallout, seems to be one of those sorts of games.

Unfortunately, it seems that most of the inhabitants of Damonta are dead and the town taken over by robots. My team has bumped into the scrap merchant known as Red again and he's offered us a mission to search for buried treasure in the aircraft graveyard.

Homefront: The Revolution

• Picked by Luke
• Percentage Complete = 47%

Managed to finish up with the Ashgate Zone by taking over a police station and finding a shipping manifest that has given the location of a Goliath (basically a six-wheeler robotic tank). So, the following mission has you using fake IDs to infiltrate the dock where you can see the old hull of the USS Nimitz. You eventually find the Goliath with Brady and install the new brain into it. Heather tries her best to control the thing but at several times it's vulnerable to enemy infantry and vehicles, which means Brady and your character have to fight off waves of enemies with whatever you've got.

Unfortunately, since I was trying for the stealthy approach, I had the crossbow equipped which is pretty useless at long range or against many enemies. I eventually ran out of ammo for both my SMG and the crossbow so yeah... that LMG I unlocked earlier could've been handy.

Anyway, I managed to get through in the end. The next mission is to infiltrate the Lombard Red Zone to establish a new forward operating base.

Gold Rush! Classic

• Picked by Choona
• Percentage Complete = 1%

Unlike Space Quest II or Police Quest, Gold Rush! is a completely new experience to me, so you can imagine my surprise when I discovered that I hadn't died yet (this is a Sierra adventure after all). Okay, I did lose two points for walking on grass in the park (harsh) but so far it seems all I can do is explore the various shops and workplaces in Brooklyn. I'm guessing the aim of the game is to make it to California to participate in the eponymous gold rush but it's at least $200 to get half way there by stage coach and over $1,000 if you want to take a ship. Since you only start off with $15 I'm guessing the first goal is to find some way to make money in Brooklyn. You do have a job as a journalist but every time I attempted to work in order to earn money, the parser didn't understand what I was talking about.

One good thing about the game are the animations and colour palette. It's probably one of the better looking AGI engine adventures I've ever played (which makes sense considering Gold Rush! was one of the last Sierra adventures to use it).

LINK:
[ The Pile of Shame ]