The New Sherman Tank of Piles - Pile of Shame July 2019

Veering into P&C territory with this title, but YOLO

I will confess I've only been playing Fortnite and Clash Royale, neither of which end, or qualify for the pile. Maybe I can find something this month that gets my attention.

If you're interested, m0nk3yboy, has the 12 month 2019 pile plan thread over here.

A quick reminder, in order to be considered "Pile of Shame" the game needs to be at least three months old. Otherwise, it's just a new game you haven't gotten to playing yet.

Also, if you are curious about some of the previous threads, Picks of the Pile, etc... Please go here and check out the spreadsheet I setup.

Let's get on to the games!

This month's Pick of the Pile

To The Moon


IMAGE(http://www.stevenvanlijnden.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/To-the-Moon-cover.jpg)

"There exists a technology that allows doctors to weave artificial memories, such that a patient can request attempts to alter their mind, and wake up with memories of things that didn’t actually happen.

However, since these new memories are permanent, the conflict between them and the existing authentic memories clash in such a way that it ceases the person’s ability to properly function.

Thus, the operation is only done to people on their deathbeds, to fulfill what they wish they had done with their lives… but didn’t." (Official Site)

Multi-Platform
Assassin's Creed II - absurddoctor
Baldur's Gate EE - absurddoctor, Godzilla Blitz
Curse of Monkey Island - AUs_TBirD
The Darkness - AUs_TBirD
The First Tree - Eleima
Flower - LastSurprise
The Journey Down: Chapter Three - Eleima
Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel - LastSurprise, Malkroth
Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 2 - JohnKillo
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX - Forlorn Hope
Mother 3 - JohnKillo
Old Man's Journey - AUs_TBirD
Rebel Galaxy - Stele
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together - JohnKillo
To The Moon - bobbywatson, Eleima, Godzilla Blitz
Transformers: Fall of Cybertron - AUs_TBirD
The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt - Blood and Wine DLC - Forlorn Hope
Wolfenstein: The New Order - AUs_TBirD

PC
Bomber Crew - absurddoctor
Tavernier - Eleima

PS4

Xbox One

Nintendo 3DS
Metroid: Samus Returns - LastSurprise

Carrying over The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt - Blood and Wine DLC (PS4/Multi). I said last month I didn't think I'd beat it since I was trying to get all the trophies but now all I need is to get the remaining grandmaster diagrams and fulfill one last quest related virtue requirement before getting back to the main storyline.

The second game I want to beat is The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (3DS/Multi) since the remake is coming out in a couple of months. I got lost when I started the first time so this might be a "guide dang it!" sort of game for me.

I'm working on Bomber Crew (PC). I think you can play this endlessly, but I'll consider it beat once I've downed all of the enemy Fighter Ace's and have completed both the original and the USAAF campaign's. Every time I play, I'm expecting an update that includes microtransactions. The game really feels like it was made with them in mind, and then they just decided not to add them after all.

If I have extra pile clearing time, it will be split between Assassin's Creed II (PC) and Baldur's Gate EE (PC)

I'm going to carry over Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS), and declare Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel (multi) and Flower (multi). I'm pretty close to the end of the first two, and the third is really short, so this should be doable.

I've been piling on the new games like crazy lately so I need some success stories. Therefore, this month I'm going to work on:
Wolfenstein: The New Order (PC/multi) - over 50% done. This is the month. I can feel it!
Transformers: Fall of Cybertron (PC/multi) - It has been on my PC for 4 years now. Time to go buddy.
The Darkness (360/multi) - about 33% through and liking it lots.
Old Man's Journey (PC/multi) - because of its appropriate title, this will be the game for my upcoming birthday. Also, it's supposed to be really short.

Knocked off one pledge already:

Started and finally finished Curse of Monkey Island for the first time ever during the past week. First played it upon its release and made it most of the way through. There have been a few aborted attempts since. This time I was determined to persevere, and the credits rolled on July 1st.

It holds up. Mostly. "Try every inventory item with every other inventory item" and "find the small usable object in the scene" gameplay was something we accepted back then because we didn't have anything better. Time has been understandably harsh to that.

Everything else was mostly pretty fantastic when seen as a unified whole, though. Also, I didn't realize this until the credits rolled, but Gary Coleman did some VO work on this game.

Only one short thing for me this month: To the Moon (PC/Multi), as part of the Adventure Game Club.

I have got other things ongoing, but either I don't think I can finish them this month (Nier Automata), or I don't intend to play them to the end (GTA III, Tomb Raider 1996) since I've already beaten them in the past.

Put me down for To The Moon as well. With Camp NaNoWriMo and leaving on vacation later in the month, I don’t know how much gaming I’ll get done.

Love it.

I've been working on Rebel Galaxy (PS4, multi) the last couple weeks, so I'll finally declare it.

Trails in Cold Steel 2
Mother 3
Tactics Ogre: Let us cling together

Metroid: Samus Returns is down!

And so is The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel

Nice work, Last Surprise. Two games down!

I've lost containment. So many good games to play.

I'm currently playing a handful of things, but I want to declare two games for this month:
Baldur's Gate (PC/Multi)
To the Moon (PC/Multi)

I better get moving. Chop chop.

absurddoctor wrote:

I'm working on Bomber Crew (PC). I think you can play this endlessly, but I'll consider it beat once I've downed all of the enemy Fighter Ace's and have completed both the original and the USAAF campaign's. Every time I play, I'm expecting an update that includes microtransactions. The game really feels like it was made with them in mind, and then they just decided not to add them after all.

If I have extra pile clearing time, it will be split between Assassin's Creed II (PC) and Baldur's Gate EE (PC)

Ooh, I didn't realize there was DLC for Bomber Crew. I bought it last year on sale, and had an unreasonable amount of fun with it. Learning that there's a new campaign is very good news. Even better is that, apparently, I bought the Season Pass. Even though it was massively discounted when I picked it up, they included everything. Very nice of them; they could have loss-leadered the main game, and sold the DLC separately.

It doesn't really count as a Pile game for me, since I'm gonna fire it up in the next day or two, immediately after finding out it existed. But I would encourage anyone else who has it in their libraries to check it out, as it's surprisingly engaging and interesting, for such a relatively simple game.

Damn, I wish I'd have known about this a little sooner, I'd have talked it up in the Steam Sale thread a little.

I am going to go ahead and declare The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel (multi) for this month. Just finished the chapter 6 school house so I should be well on my way to wrapping this one up this month.

So I forgot to declare them, but I wrapped up The Journey Down: Chapter Three (Multi), Tavernier (PC) and The First Tree (Multi). I'm on a ROLL!

Oh, right, yes... To the Moon. Gotta replay that too.

Cross off The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt - Blood and Wine DLC for me. I grossly underestimated how much time it'd take to complete all the quests. Unfortunately I haven't even started my other goal this month, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX. Hoping to at least make some progress on it.

To The Moon (PC/multi) is done! Pretty short, but really good!

Not a very "productive" month overall, but hey, it's better than nothing!

And Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel completed with an entire day left in the month. Great game with an enjoyable cast of characters and a slow but interesting story. The ending probably overstayed its welcome by a couple hours, but the second chapter will tell whether its necessary or if it could have been the opening to that chapter instead. More thoughts will be in the JRPG club thread for that game.

End of the month report.

Beaten:
Although it never got marked as such, I had beaten Curse of Monkey Island on July 1st.

Wolfenstein: The New Order - credits rolled on the 17th. In general I thought it was really fun in an interesting alternate-60's world. The glut of collectibles and my compulsion to search for them destroyed the pacing unfortunately, and turned an "excellent" 12 hour campaign experience into a "good" 20+ hour one.

The Darkness - just under the wire last night at midnight. I really liked this a lot! It had a great mix of action and reflection, so the pace was much slower - as such, the many collectibles here didn't destroy the pace. The Darkness powers were lots of fun to play with. The story was pretty decent even if it was a bit tropey. What made my jaw drop was the moment I realized that I could literally watch all of "To Kill a Mockingbird" (in super-low resolution) on an in-game TV. Then I discovered that there was another full movie ("The Man with the Golden Arm", with Frank Sinatra), several cartoons and music videos, all selectable by merely changing the channel!
It had some problems and I wish I could have played it with mouse and keyboard instead of a gamepad, but I'm really looking forward to starting the sequel.

Made progress in:
Transformers: Fall of Cybertron - not much progress, but I feel that now is finally the right time for me to be playing this - I've declared the game at least 3 times. I'm really digging the homages to 80's Transformers (pretty sure many of the voices are the original actors!) while at the same time feeling very modern.

Didn't even start:
Old Man's Journey - the plan was to play this on my birthday. Things were too crazy though, and I never got around to it.

Carrying over to August:
Transformers: Fall of Cybertron
Old Man's Journey

Dammit I didn't finish. So close and then new Fire Emblem released and I forgot.