Mission Improbable: Clear the Pile

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Here's our first set of goals for the Pile of Shame. If you don't have any of the games listed in your pile, feel free to play something else. The goal is to decrease the backlog, have an area to discuss and have fun playing through some of these great games that a lot of us bought and for some reason never played or finished. The goal is to finish ONE game on this month's list. If you have all of the games below on your list, don't feel compelled to complete all of them.

I'm not listing every single platform, as there are some that have very few games, or the systems are very old. If those grow in the number of titles, I'll add them in subsequent threads.

Without further ado, the first games:

[b]PC[/b]
Fallout - Wanderer, buzzvang, Wick
Half-Life 2 - Prederick
System Shock 2 - DarthB0b0

[b]Xbox 360[/b]
Dead Rising - Podunk, Chumpy_McChump, armedbushido, Rubb Ed, wordsmythe
Marvel Ultimate Alliance - Mystic Violet (next!)
Rainbow Six: Vegas - Vrikk (next!), The Fly
Perfect Dark Zero - Fyedaddy (next!)

[u]Wii[/u]
The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess - Mystic Violet, The Fly

[b]Nintendo DS[/b]
Advance Wars DS - Edwin
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin - Mystic Violet
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 - Hemidal

[b]Playstation 2[/b]
Shadow of the Colossus - Azure Chicken, oldmanscene24, Hemidal (next!)
Okami - Mystic Violet
Metal Geal Solid 3: Subsistence - Trachalio
God of War 2 - Trachalio (next!)

[b]Xbox[/b]
Mercenaries - Edwin (next!), Fedaykin98, Hemidal

[b]Gamecube[/b]
Metroid Prime - Mystic Violet, Duoae

[b]SNES[/b]
Chrono Trigger - Mystic Violet

[b]PSOne[/b]
Final Fantasy VII - Mystic Violet

[b]GBA[/b]
FInal Fantasy V - Mystic Violet

Since this is the first one, let's go until the end of July. We can always move to the next if the majority completes their games. I would suggest putting the game name at the top line of any posts so people will know what title you're talking about.

I'll be tackling Shadow of the Colossus. I'm probably about halfway through. If I remember correctly, I got stuck trying to find the path to the next colossus. Frustration and a lack of decent map at the time led me to the next bright and shiny game.

Alright, I'm gonna shoot for Fallout. Anyone know the location of the best patch?

Dude, I have 4 of the 6. You're killing me here! I think I can eliminate Fallout and Mercenaries because I have barely started them. I think I'm about halfway through Advance Wars and SotC, so I have a better shot and getting to the end of one of those(I think).

Here are the obstacles in my mind.
SotC: Poor map, I don't want to spend (literally) 30-45 minutes trying to get to the damn colossus each time. It's also plugged into my PS2, which means my Guitar Hero controllers are plugged in. That means swapping the controllers a bunch. Man I'm lazy, but since I'm in the thread you already knew that.

Advance Wars DS: The dialogue/plot is just irritating. The battles also got a lot bigger without getting much more interesting. It seems like the challenge comes from controlling and coordinating more units, not fighting more challenging AI/scenarios. It's also on a portable, which means it's competing with my PSP (2 months old) and my book backlog. All three compete for attention on my commute.

Anyone want to break down my excuses and tell me which games really need playing?

This can only end in heartbreak.

I'm gonna pass on Mercenaries. I've made several attempts on the final level and don't care to beat it.

I'll try Dead Rising.

I'd give Mercs a shot but I hear it's a bit crashy on the 360.

I want to finish SotC, but I am stuck on the 10th Colossus. I know what I'm supposed to do, I just can't seem to be able to do it. It's to the point where I'm going to send the game to my brother.

This is a fantastic idea, Hemi. My reactions to your game selections:

Fallout - HA! Beat it years ago!
Dead Rising - The demo just didn't do for me what it did for everyone else, and I never bought it. HA!
Advance Wars DS - Does it count as part of my pile if I've been meaning to sell it? It definitely doesn't count if you get it out of your house, right?
SotC - Never bought it, but I still feel ashamed that I haven't played it or Ico. Still, for the purpose of this thread, not a candidate.
Mercenaries - HA! Like McChuck, I only have the final mission to go! ...but also like McChuck, I found it very challenging. Funny that I can get credit for this "mission" by finishing one level, though.
Metroid Prime: HA! Beat it years ago!

Man, I can't believe this list includes two games that I've ACTUALLY beaten, and one game that I nearly have. Holy statistical anomaly.

Scaphism - I'd say Metroid Prime, but you don't own it. It's an incredible game, a must for any Metroid fan. Just typing this I suddenly felt a sense of withdrawal, and a need to play through it again. Failing that, Mercenaries is utterly awesome. Fallout is also totally awesome, but it takes a level of commitment that I don't think the others do.

Pretty good selections, Hemi.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Scaphism - I'd say Metroid Prime, but you don't own it. It's an incredible game, a must for any Metroid fan. Just typing this I suddenly felt a sense of withdrawal, and a need to play through it again. Failing that, Mercenaries is utterly awesome. Fallout is also totally awesome, but it takes a level of commitment that I don't think the others do.

What's this? Encouraging me to buy more games?! You must be from the GWJ Enabler Squad, not the Finisher Squad.
Thankfully I don't even own a GC or a Wii, so Metroid is completely out of the question. Phew.

Maybe we can get a rough estimate of how long each game takes to complete? I suppose we'd have to ask people who have actually beaten them...

Like I said, try to finish one. After a couple of months, Mercenaries might be back as the Xbox title, if there's still a bunch of people who haven't played/finished it. For the first month I grabbed the titles that had the most people. I didn't want to go niche right out of the gate. Nothing better than to alienate everyone who might participate by grabbing titles that have only one person listed after them.

Edit -

Fed, you may not speak in this thread until you take 6 hours and beat Gears of War on any difficulty.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Dead Rising - The demo just didn't do for me what it did for everyone else, and I never bought it. HA!

The full game is much better than the demo. Much. Worth a grab if you can find it, especially if you can find it cheap.

(This will be my game for the month, as I'm already in the middle of it. Not really shamed yet, as I haven't put it away since I started it, but I might as well avoid that when I can.)

I've beat Shadows of the Colossus and I think I have beat or almost beat Metroid Prime

I am on the last mission of Mercanaries and I have barely started Dead Rising, though I love the game I don't play it that much

Your killing me, with all the games/demos/betas - now I have to actually finish a game? Well since I finished Fallout and Merc, I am going to shoot for Dead Rising.

x-fingers.

All I have on that list is SotC, but I'm stuck on the second colossus.

I'll figure it out. This will be the Month of the Colossi!

I'll get on Fallout. I spent too much time in the Glow last time without any Radaway or whatever, and I'd die everytime I left. Just couldn't bring myself to go far enough back in the saves.

Hemidal wrote:

Fed, you may not speak in this thread until you take 6 hours and beat Gears of War on any difficulty. :wink:

Hey, I'm not ashamed of that one - I simply decided it was a multiplayer-only title. Speaking of which, will this be the week that I finally return to Gears and Beers, or will my resurgent WoW addiction / my wife's need to sleep win out? Tune in and see!

buzzvang wrote:

I'll get on Fallout. I spent too much time in the Glow last time without any Radaway or whatever, and I'd die everytime I left. Just couldn't bring myself to go far enough back in the saves.

At least you HAVE saves that go far enough back. Also, I dunno if this is in the spirit of the thread, but there are Fallout savegame editors out there where you can probably just give yourself some Radaway. I generally frown on cheats or guides, but I also hate a game that lets you paint yourself into a corner after 40 hours (or whatever substantial amount of time).

Excellent idea Hemi. If I have fellow Goodjers trudging alongside me each month through their backlog then hopefully it gives me the steam needed.

Sadly though, I own none of those games listed (even though I have owned them all in the past), but I am tempted to Ebay a few of them since they would be relatively cheap. But to stay on par with the "dwindling the pile" I should stay away from buying more games. It would sort of beat the purpose to buy more, no?

So this month I will take some time out and try to play through one of the few games I have right now that I've not beaten or played to the point that I'm ready to move on. Care to help me decide what I should tackle? I'm only a few hours into each of them:

Forza Motorsport 2 (does this really count? Don't think you can beat it besides do all the races)
.hack //G.U. Part 1
.hack//G.U. Part 2
Final Fantasy X (never beaten a FF to completion actually )
Call of Juarez
Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Rainbow Six: Vegas
Oblivion
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary

Also, are you making a new thread each month so we can keep track of when to start a new project? And are we supposed to update this thread when either a.) beat the game we select, or b.) time runs out and we tell if we passed or failed?

Vrikk wrote:

Also, are you making a new thread each month so we can keep track of when to start a new project? And are we supposed to update this thread when either a.) beat the game we select, or b.) time runs out and we tell if we passed or failed?

I was planning on making a new thread with different games each month. Those that complete a game can remove their name from the Pile 'o Shame thread. Hopefully, we can shrink the list down. I would use this thread to discuss what you are playing. If the games this month aren't on your list, pick one that is. There's probably some Goodjers who will be happy to discuss with you. Looking at the ones you've listed here, I'd say R6: Vegas, Oblivion (main quest, to keep it simple) of FF X would be good candidates.

Vrikk, please explain how you have two .hack games in your pile of shame - did you start playing part 2 without finishing part 1? That's craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy!

Okay then. I'm going to give this a try. Wish me luck!
[u]
Xbox 360
[/u]
Marvel Ultimate Alliance

[u]Wii[/u]
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

[u]Nintendo DS[/u]
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

[u]Playstation 2[/u]
Okami

[u]Gamecube[/u]
Metroid Prime

[u]SNES[/u]
Chrono Trigger

[u]PSOne[/u]
Final Fantasy VII - I beat this game years ago but I never defeated the Emerald or Ruby Weapons.

[u]GBA[/u]
Final Fantasy V

Good luck everyone!

The goal is one per month, but more power to you, Mystic. That's a whole lot of 30+ hour games in there. We'd still like to see you on Gears and Beers Fridays, bringing the chainsaw power.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Vrikk, please explain how you have two .hack games in your pile of shame - did you start playing part 2 without finishing part 1? That's craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy! :lol:

Let's not forget, I've got all three Xenosagas and I've never started any of them. You pick stuff up on sale and it sits there. I completely understand having .hack 1 and 2 in your pile.

Okay, I'm in for Dead Rising. I suck at it, but I'm gonna give it my best shot to finish it off.

Okay, confession: I own Twilight Pricess, but haven't started it because I haven't finished Wind Waker, which isn't even a real pre-requisite. But that's because I had to buy a bundle to get a Wii blah blah blah total hypocrite blah blah.

Hemidal wrote:

The goal is one per month, but more power to you, Mystic. That's a whole lot of 30+ hour games in there. We'd still like to see you on Gears and Beers Fridays, bringing the chainsaw power. :)

No way. It's like I said before, I started all of them but never finished. I'm halfway through a few of them so I don't expect a 60 hour experience for each. I'll most likely finish FFVII first because that's where my attention is concentrated right now.

And I am ALWAYS READY FOR GEARS. But you guys had to go out and get yourselves the Shadowrun and the Forza 2, right?

To be fair I've only started the first G.U. game. The other one is still shrinkwrapped. (I do, however, love the game so far. It's a lot darker than the first series, very well animated, and beautiful to watch. The dungeons are still a little tedious like the last games, but not nearly as bad.)

I think I'll try to conquer Rainbow Six Vegas this month since I don't feel like tackling a large RPG just yet. I'm going to wait until my summer class is over before thinking about taking the trek into Tamriel or Tidus' laugh scene again. Chalk me up for some Clancy lovin'!

I'm going to edit the main post and add the names of the people playing. Below the "official" games, I'll add the one-offs. That way, you can know at a glance who's playing what without having to dig through 20 posts.

Edit - I lied. I worked the other titles into their corresponding platforms, or I tacked them on underneath.

Edit 2 - lost the update due to a loss of connection to the MySQL db during query. Good times. Here we go again.

The sheer amount of content in the .hack world guarantees I will never try it, even though I might indeed like it.

I want to throw this out there.

What do you all think about leaving a platform title on the list until it gets some traction? Right now it looks like Mercenaries for Xbox is not going to get any play. Should I pull it next month and put another Xbox title, or leave Mercenaries on there until someone plays it?

I'm leaning towards leaving it up there, but I don't want it to be the last kid picked for dodgeball. Month after month, "Oh hi, Mercenaries. Yeah, it's good to see you too. Look, I'll be over hear catching up with some of PS2's friends."

I'll try and kill Dead Rising this month.

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