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

Roger Wilco's escape pod is captured by a junk freighter's tractor beam

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 = 60%

Wow. I feel like I'm actually making progress! I've now upgraded the rad suits which will allow me to travel to Seal Beach. This was all possible after I managed to secure a repeater on the Bastion's Radio Tower which allowed us to communicate with Ranger Citadel in Arizona. Neat!

However, I had to kill a lot of God's Militia in order to get to that tower. Also, since the faction was hostile to me, this stuffed up a couple of quests I had active, including one where I had to rescue some slaves: apparently since all chaos broke out, I could no longer complete it (although I thought the chaos I caused would've been a perfect diversion for them to escape… apparently not).

I do enjoy visiting landmarks in games and in this particular play session I got to visit the Hollywood sign (or what remains of it) while ascending up to the radio tower.

Fallout 4

• Picked by Luke
• Percentage Complete = 19%

You know, I'm kind of getting sick of Fallout 4. I'm starting to think that playing a game for about 2 months is about the tipping point where I start to lose interest. There are just so many quests to do in this game that I really want to start focusing on the main storyline (although the worry I have doing this is that I haven't levelled up enough yet to do so… but Fallout 4 might not be one of those sorts of games anyway).

Piper the news reporter is now following me instead of Dogmeat (I guess you can only have one follower at a time). However, with a human follower all the actions I take will have consequences on your relationship. For example, Piper is quite happy if I end up helping Diamond City citizens with their side quests but not so happy if I keep drugging up Mama Murphy with chems (since she apparently needs them to give her "visions")… come to think of it, nobody really likes it when I bring drugs to Mama Murphy (with the exception of herself).

Also, I gave Piper a big scoop by telling her my character's story, how he was a Vault Dweller and how his son went missing. By doing so, I've probably just drawn a target on my head by making the information public, but I guess I'll soon find out.

Space Quest III

• Picked by Choona
• Percentage Complete = 10%

Time to try another SCI0 adventure and this time it's Space Quest III. The intro sequences definitely get more cinematic as the years progress and the music is awesome thanks to Supertramp member Bob Siebenberg's efforts. The GOG version of the game even features digital audio samples (including Roger Wilco speaking for the first time) which is a welcome addition (in early Sierra adventures, sound effects were often generated using MIDI channels, so you were basically using musical instruments to make sound effects).

Unfortunately, after only getting about 10% of the way through the game, I'm already stuck and can't even figure how to get inside the Aluminum Mallard because apparently, it's so slick you're unable to climb into the damn thing. In the end, I had to resort to the Universal Hint System (UHS) for the game (since I want to make sure a walkthrough is a last resort). Turns out that there's actually a ladder I can carry with me but the only one I came across was one I thought was too big and pinned down… but I'm guessing that's the one I need to take. I will need to grab it next time I play the game.

LINK:
[ The Pile of Shame ]