Do it for the Pi-le - Pile of Shame March 2023

Not on time this month! Managed to curse myself.

It seems I'm more interested in eating pie, than playing pile games, but there's hope yet. I'll try to finish a game this month before 3/14, National Pi Day.

What there isn't hope for are my dad joke titles for these threads.

Let's hope it's a one off (a guy can dream, right?). While no one is interested in excuses, my baby girl turned 17, so I got caught up with birthday stuff.

Some housekeeping notes.

If you're interested, trueheart78, has the 12 month 2023 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.

This month's Pick of the Pile

God of War: Ragnarok


IMAGE(https://wallpapercave.com/dwp2x/wp6911491.jpg)
"Embark on an epic and heartfelt journey as Kratos and Atreus struggle with holding on and letting go" (Official Site)

Multi-Platform
Condemned: Criminal Origins - AUs_TBirD
Elder Scrolls Online - jdzappa
God of War: Ragnarok - Hemi
Grandia 2 - JohnKillo
A Plague Tale: Innocence - Forlorn Hope
Return to Monkey Island - brokenclavicle
Saints Row IV: Re-Elected - AUs_TBirD
Spiritfarer - Forlorn Hope
Super Mario Galaxy - Chesterfield
Tales of Arise - Malkroth
Toem - bobbywatson
Trails in the Sky SC - JohnKillo
Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition - brokenclavicle
Yakuza 3 Remastered - Forlorn Hope
Ys IX: Monstrum Nox - LastSurprise

PC
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak - AUs_TBirD
Legend of Grimrock - kstress71, brokenclavicle
Old World - jdzappa, LastSurprise
Star Traders Frontiers - Stele
Warhammer Total War 3 - jdzappa

Wii
Metroid Prime: Corruption - kstress71

3DS
Kirby Planet Robobot - brokenclavicle
Metroid: Samus Returns - Forlorn Hope

Star Traders Frontiers (PC). Guess it's available on mobile but no other consoles. Had this one for a couple years but finally really dove into it the last 2 weeks and it's great. I'm not sure what constitutes finished since there are multiple stories and eras. And harder difficulties your captain dies so it's more rouge like. But anyway I'll play for a while and call it done I suppose. Maybe when I get 50% or 75% achievements?

I'm going for Super Mario Galaxy on the switch.

Titanfall 2 only for me. Don’t know if I will add anything else later.

Well, in the interim from the February thread and this one, I managed to beat one of the games I'd been carrying from month to month: Solatorobo. I may write something meaty for the Finished Games thread, but it was quite the interesting gem.

What am I carrying over, then?

Return to Monkey Island (multi)
Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition (multi)

Well, I'm already doing better than last month since I've beat two of the declared games that I carried over. The first one was A Plague Tale: Innocence. I was worried about the gameplay since I am not good at stealth but it was mostly managable until the end. Liked the 14th century France setting and characters. Especially the sibling relationship between Amicia and Hugo.

The second game that I beat was Yakuza 3 Remastered. Loved the new Okinawa setting, cast of characters and dad Kiryu. Was not a fan of the janky combat, hard to avoid random encounters and chase sequences.

I'm hopeful about beating Samus Returns since I'm around the halfway point but I feel like I've just scratched the surface with Spiritfarer (just barely said goodbye to second spirit).

I'll roll over Metroid Prime: Corruption (Wii) from last month and also add Tales of Arise (multi, PS4) and Legend of Grimrock (PC).

Oh, and Legend of Grimrock was finished last night. What an amazing game. I started it a long time ago but hit a brick wall and didn't want to restart. This time, I powered through (don't discard those skulls!)

bobbywatson wrote:

Titanfall 2 only for me. Don’t know if I will add anything else later.

Turns out I will add Toem (multi) to my list. I started last night, and I should be done this weekend. Very charming! I might even go for the Platinum trophy...

Here’s what I got:

Elder Scrolls Online (main story)
Old World
Warhammer Total War 3

bobbywatson wrote:

Turns out I will add Toem (multi) to my list. I started last night, and I should be done this weekend. Very charming! I might even go for the Platinum trophy...

And Toem is now beaten. I still have a few quests (and DLC) to complete. Overall impressions: short and sweet!

Formatted list:

Spoiler:

Multi-Platform
Condemned: Criminal Origins - AUs_TBirD
Saints Row IV: Re-Elected - AUs_TBirD

PC
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak - AUs_TBirD

Declaring:
Saints Row IV: Re-Elected - (PC/multi) - Started this on a whim last weekend and have been absolutely obsessed with it. Such glorious, fun and funny carnage! The superpowers are incredible and they just NAILED the movement. 55% complete in 21 hours spread over 6 days so far.
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak - (PC) - Been installed and on my pile forever and it's time for it to leave my HDD. Never played past mission 3 before.

Declaring, but already beaten:
Condemned: Criminal Origins - (PC/multi) - I wonder if I would have liked this more when it was new. Condemned leaves a terrible first impression, mostly due to its unbelievably slow movement. Don't get me started on how much slower the snails pace gets on stairs, rubble, or anything else that presents any vertical change in the flooring.
Also, I had to spend over 2 hours with numerous downloads to get it to run correctly.
Eventually I got acclimated to it and began to derive some enjoyment from the game. The scare factor was mostly gone after the first two stages, though the excellent Department Store stage brought it back for a while. The challenge mostly disappeared with frights as well.
Story was somewhat interesting, but the main thing that kept me going was just wanted to say that I had finished it. Trying out all of the different weapons was somewhat interesting, even if most were just variations of clubs.
One thing that majorly bothered me, aside from the massively deformed character models, was the level design - with rare exceptions, nobody would EVER want to, nor be allowed to build buildings with these floor plans. Most of them make ZERO sense!
There are two types of collectibles - dead (or soon to be dead) birds, which kind of made sense with the story, and metal pieces, for which I never figured out a reason why I'm hunting them down. The investigation bits of the game were interesting, but felt very underdeveloped. It was basically just "push the indicated button or two while pointing at the thing you're being told to point at".
All in all, hard to recommend, and surprisingly disappointing, given that Monolith's other games during this time period were mostly real bangers. I imagine it could have been impressive as a 2005 Xbox360 launch title, but boy has it aged poorly.

Finished, but not eligible:
Managed to convince someone to move off the dating site in Five Dates, which was more interesting than I expected. I felt like I really hit it off with someone who wasn't my first choice. In fact, she was my third choice, and only because the game made me pick three, but her personality totally won me over.
Also, my best bud, with whom you video chat between dating sessions, is such a fantastic and well acted character!
Curios to take some other paths in other playthroughs. My third FMV "choose your own movie" game in a month, and I'm certainly enjoying them.

bobbywatson wrote:

Titanfall 2 only for me. Don’t know if I will add anything else later.

And... I'm going to drop it. I sat down to play some of it tonight (I think I'm about 60% done), and realized I just don't care for it.

Alright! First completion of the month! Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition is in the books and what a ride it has been!

After owning this on Wii back in the day and never quite getting beyond the initial few hours of the game after many false starts, I have finally made it through its story. Quite enjoyable, and the little twist at the end regarding the origin of the setting was something I didn't quite expect though their was some slight foreshadowing just a few minutes before the reveal.

Will be diving into Future Connected to see what that Epilogue chapter's all about and I might consider NG+ in the future, but for now, I will be taking a break from Xenoblade. Might pick up 2 later in the year.

Now, time to put the final coffin nails on Return to Monkey Island!

Since I'll be done with the island of monkeys and it's secret soon, I figure it's time to add a couple of games before the month ends.

Legend of Grimrock (multi)
Kirby Planet Robobot (3DS)

Please add Atomic Heart (multi), as I've jumped on it since it hit Xbox Game Pass and am very close to the end. As a result, please drop Tales of Arise for me though. Thanks!

kstress71 wrote:

Please add Atomic Heart (multi), as I've jumped on it since it hit Xbox Game Pass and am very close to the end. As a result, please drop Tales of Arise for me though. Thanks!

Not trying to be a buzzkill, but Atomic Heart isn't out 30 days yet, much less 90 days. I did remove Tales of Arise.

Return to Monkey Island is done. That ending was, well, vary Monkey Island, I guess. Really enjoyed my time with it.

As the month winds down, I'm going to declare two: Ys IX: Monstrum Nox (PS4/PS5) and Old World (PC). Fingers crossed!

I'll declare Mario Galaxy as 'finished enough'. Apparently you can run through the game again as Luigi, but that just seems like a make-work project.

My plan is to finish Tales off Arise (multi) this month. Probably won't have time for anything else though.

Hemidal wrote:

Not trying to be a buzzkill, but Atomic Heart isn't out 30 days yet, much less 90 days. I did remove Tales of Arise.

You know what, that is a really good point. I forgot that this is a "Pile of Shame" thread and not a "Finish Whatever I'm Playing" thread. Bringing Atomic Heart up would be better served over in the "What are you playing?" thread. You can remove it from my list. I'm just going to do my best to avoid rolling Metroid Prime 3 over again.

Oh, one other thing, you may have missed my message that Legend of Grimrock is done. Thanks

I got a couple
Trails in the Sky SC and Grandia 2. Keep at the grind…. JRPG grind

After nearly 41 hours of gameplay in just 3 weeks
in which I attained control over all of Steelport,
finished all missions and side missions,
completed 36 of 66 challenges and 93% of all content,
we have a bona-fide GOTY contender in Saints Row IV: Re-Elected.

What glorious, irreverant carnage! They literally took the incredible Saints Row III, asked "how can we make this even crazier?", and then did that. Times 10. And while about a quarter of the game feels like "hey, remember this great bit from SRIII? Let's do it again, but with a twist!" (usually), there is also tons of new content.

I mean, you have friggin super-powers, and did they ever NAIL the feel of moving about the city using super-speed and super-jumps, along with audio underscoring the awesomeness of especially high leaps that make them feel just that little bit MORE awesome! And of course weapons - lots of new weapons, including the much advertised Dubstep-gun, which really is a joy to use. At one point, while I was making a crowd of people dance to holiday-dubstep while wearing my Christmas sweater and Barry-O mask, I turned around and noticed that nearly a dozen 1950's cars behind me were bouncing about via hydraulics, lights flashing in tune to the beat. Utterly delightful!

On top of all this, there were several new musical segments hilariously integrated into missions, lots of faces old and new (Hey Ash, wanna come play? Bring the fam!), does some great spoofs (Mass Effect and Streets of Rage/Double Dragon stand out) and some fantastic DLC. It's one of the most fun and funniest games I've ever played!

Also:

Spoiler:

Rowdy Roddy Piper is in the game!
Why?
I don't know!
Who cares?
He's here, he's all out of gum, and it's awesome!!!

Go play this if you haven't.

Metroid: Samus Returns is done. Heck of a game. I was nervous going in since I did so terribly at Zero Mission which is considered one of the easier 2D metroids but I shouldn't of been. This game has checkpoints whenever you use elevators/transports and just before bosses so dying wasn't as frustrating. Diggernaut was the only sore sticking point. My hands were soo cramped after that fight.

It's probably a controversial opinion but I think the scan pulse should be in every Metroid game. I never 100% any game in this series before since I hated bombing every surface to find secrets but I got them all in this one.

If I had to complain, I'd say I hated how aggressive the enemies are and how you have to stop constantly to melee counter them. I hear that is fixed in Dread though. Something to look forward to.

Yes scan pulse rules. And correct on the stupid enemies and much better in Dread.

Samus Returns is fun but it is completely opposite of Metroid II that is based on. Entire rooms empty of enemies, you're just exploring this desolate planet and there's this feeling of isolation. So very good.

Slap a map on it and the original is better than Returns honestly.

I can see that. Tonally/atmosphere wasn't as good as the other entries that I've played so far (Prime Trilogy/Super Metroid/Zero Mission) but the gameplay was so fun that I forgave it a bit.

Kirby: Planet Robobot is done. So is Legend of Grimrock. A pile-productive month, March.

Metroid Prime: Corruption is in the books! Fantastic ride and finale to the trilogy. Not sure where they will go from here with the "Prime" sub-series. Hopefully someplace new, as

Spoiler:

the Phazon storyline is effectively closed.

I will say that I had far less confusion in this game as to what to do next. It pretty much holds your hand the whole way through, clearly simplified for a wider audience. That being said, please please please, Nintendo, don't strictly adhere to the motion controls in the next one. I was playing it with PrimeHack, and even with mouse and keyboard controls, some sections were a chore (curse you, SkyTown rails).

Yeah it feels they slotted Prime in to actually have Metroids existing before SR388 is wiped. I think they have run out of time with that small window.

But post Fusion, Samus has Metroid DNA. Surely they can come up with something.

Ys IX: Monstrum Nox is done!

I've got about 25 hours played in Ragnarok. I've been doing some side quests, but not all of them. That one is probably rolling into April.

Updates should be current. Chastise me if I missed something.