Clear the Pile Before Summer - Pile of Shame May 2016

Short and sweet, because I'm losing ideas on thread titles. Next month will be nine years of doing these threads.

If you're interested, m0nk3yboy, has the 12 month 2016 pile plan thread over here.

If you want to play the same game with a group of Goodjers and discuss. This May we've got Mirror's Edge over in SallyNasty's Game Club thread.

If you have a ridiculous JRPG backlog, Damnable Bear and co. has got you covered in the Quarterly JRPG Club thread. This quarter is Final Fantasy X-2.

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 is

Remember Me


IMAGE(http://hdwallpaperia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Remember-Me-Game-Wallpaper-Widescreen.jpg)
"Neo-Paris, 2084. Take on the role of Nilin, a former elite memory hunter with the ability to break into people’s minds and steal or even alter their memories. Arrested, and with her memory wiped clean Nilin must now set out on a mission to rediscover her identity." (Official Site)

Multi-Platform
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - kstress71
Bastion - benign1
Borderlands 2 - Demyx
Broforce - Hemi
Cyber Core - AUs_TBirD
Darksiders 2 - ClockworkHouse
Dark Souls - benign1
Dark Souls 2 - Malkroth
Dishonored - brokenclavicle
Divinity: Original Sin - Farscry
Dragon Age Inquisition - jdzappa
Earthbound - bobbywatson
Fallout 4 - kergguz, jdzappa
Final Fantasy X-2 - Farscry
Firewatch - Bubblefuzz
Game of Thrones: Season 1 - jdzappa
Persona 4 - Malkroth
Phantasie III: The Wrath of Nikademus - AUs_TBirD
Remember Me - benign1
Rise of the Tomb Raider - Hemi
Sine Mora - AUs_TBirD
South Park: The Stick of Truth - AUs_TBirD
Toukiden Kiwami - bobbywatson
The Witness - benign1
XCOM 2 - kergguz

PC
Attila: Total War - jdzappa
Blade of Darkness - Dwango

Xbox One

PS4
Killzone: Shadow Fall - Damnable Bear

PS3
inFAMOUS - Damnable Bear

WiiU
Xenoblade Chronicles X - brokenclavicle
Yoshi's Woolly World - mrtomaytohead

Wii
Metroid: Other M - Marchantia

3DS
Mario and Luigi: Dream Team - kstress71

DS

Working on Divinity: Original Sin (PC) and Final Fantasy X-2 (multi)

AUs_TBirD in April wrote:

South Park: The Stick of Truth (PC/multi) - just started and can see myself really enjoying it.

Sine Mora (PC/multi) - picking this up again, now that I have a pc where the game doesn´t constantly crash on the second stage.

Cyber Core (TurboDuo...and technically "multi" since it was also on the Sharp X68000) - one of the primary reasons I wanted a Turbografx back in the day.

So yeah....just carrying them over. I made a bit of progress in South Park and am about halfway through Sine Mora.

I´m also going to add (because it´s what I played the most of by far in April...):
Phantasie III: The Wrath of Nikademus (c64/multi)

Time for me to stop playing Blizzard games quite so much and work on this pile thing. Starting with Fallout 4. It feels like I'm near the end. Is XCOM 2 (PC) eligible yet? If so I'll add that as a stretch goal.

kergguz wrote:

Time for me to stop playing Blizzard games quite so much and work on this pile thing. Starting with Fallout 4. It feels like I'm near the end. Is XCOM 2 (PC) eligible yet? If so I'll add that as a stretch goal.

LOL - Blizzard completely sidetracked me as well. Carrying over the main games from last month and adding Game of Thrones cause tis the season for some GoT:

1. Dragon Age Inquisition
2. Fallout 4
3. Atilla: Total War
4. Game of Thrones Season 1

I guess I might as well carry over Infamous (PS3) and Killzone: Shadow Fall (PS4), but, lol. We'll see.

My schedule (and my life) has completely been changed for the next few months thanks to me being assigned to a new mega-project at work (which will likely require a sh*t-ton of travel). So, I will tentatively declare Earthbound (multi) for this month (yay for 3DS SNES VC). I will also declare Toukiden Kiwami (multi), now that I own it on a portable platform (thanks, Golden Week PSN sale).

Yoshi's Woolly World (WiiU) will be finished this month! Oh, yes, it will be.

List should be current.

Well, Pile Failure that I am, I will be carrying over the two games I declared last month. I've played them a good bit, but not enough, and not going straight for the ending, so, the jury's out on whether I'll kill them off this month or not.

Xenoblade Chronicles X (WiiU)
Dishonored (Multi)

*sigh*

55 hours into Divinity: Original Sin, and I just can't do it anymore. The tedious elements of the game have simply done me in. I'll keep my save available in case I get the urge to return to the game in the future, but the last several sessions have felt like a chore as I've simply forced myself to keep playing through sheer stubbornness.

I love the exploration and combat of the game, and building the party to have diverse and complementary abilities is a lot of fun. But the story isn't much to write home about, the dialogue is much the same, and the utter tedium of the puzzles and traps (because in the mid- to late-game, it isn't enough to have just a couple traps or a short-ish puzzle for flavor, no; we have to have f*cking trap & puzzle marathons to slog through), as well as how much time I waste going back and forth chatting to uninteresting characters and solving quests that are equally uninteresting... just ugh. I can't take it anymore.

I'm playing Borderlands 2 but I kind of doubt I'll finish it this month. I'll probably get distracted by something shiny.

Haven't posted in these threads before, but I'm hoping it will help keep me a bit more focused. This month I'm carving out of the pile:

Bastion (Multi)
Remember Me (Multi)
The Witness (Multi)

Also slowly pecking away at the perpetual carryover:
Dark Souls (Multi)

Put me down for Darksiders II (Multi), please.

Fallout 4 goes down! Unless I'm forgetting, this may be the first time I've ever declared a game and finished it in one of these threads. I usually get distracted by something unfinishable, like Hearthstone. Go me!

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Put me down for Darksiders II (Multi), please.

Is that any good and what would you say it's worth?

...Say $5?

Finally finished Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag!

Also, I'm going to declare Mario & Luigi: Dream Team (3DS) and A Boy and His Blob (various) for the remainder of this month. Thanks!

Hemidal wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

Put me down for Darksiders II (Multi), please.

Is that any good and what would you say it's worth?

...Say $5?

:D

It's almost a really good game, but the designers made some pretty mystifying decisions that keep it from getting all the way there. In some ways, it's an improvement over the first game, and in some ways it's a step back. I would say that overall I like it more than the original, and I'd play another game in the series if they were able to make one, but I continue to be frustrated that these games come so close to being great but still fall short.

I paid $20 for my copy, and I'm happy with that price. I wouldn't have been thrilled to pay full price for it, but it's a good bargain game.

Spoiler:

I bet you weren't expecting a serious response.

I have failed pretty spectacularly at clearing the pile since I jumped in back in October. I am feeling pretty good about this month though since I have two weekend trips which will force me to play my Vita more.

I will be finishing Dark Souls 2 (PC/Multi) and Persona 4 Golden (Vita) this month.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Hemidal wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

Put me down for Darksiders II (Multi), please.

Is that any good and what would you say it's worth?

...Say $5?

:D

It's almost a really good game, but the designers made some pretty mystifying decisions that keep it from getting all the way there. In some ways, it's an improvement over the first game, and in some ways it's a step back. I would say that overall I like it more than the original, and I'd play another game in the series if they were able to make one, but I continue to be frustrated that these games come so close to being great but still fall short.

I paid $20 for my copy, and I'm happy with that price. I wouldn't have been thrilled to pay full price for it, but it's a good bargain game.

Spoiler:

I bet you weren't expecting a serious response.

Nope, you got me there. I paid at least $20 for it as well. Been in the pile for a while, played about 15-20% of it.

And I have finally completed Dark Souls 2, was a really fun game after I learned how to play. Now to go back and finish Dark Souls 1 sometime... Not this month though.

I actually put in some time on Woolly World and made it two stage closer to the end. Up to 6-4 now. These stages need to be about 1/3 as long as they are.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

I actually put in some time on Woolly World and made it two stage closer to the end. Up to 6-4 now. These stages need to be about 1/3 as long as they are.

I agree with that sentiment completely. It's a wonderfully charming game, but the stages, even with the easy mode where you get those wings, feel a bit too drawn out. And don't get me started on how they feel when you try to find every tchotchke in every stage.

I'm jumping back into the pile. I've started to play Metroid: Other M (Wii).
Yes, I know, what you're thinking and you're right. The story is terrible, a total destruction of everything that made Samus look cool. Even though I'm not so close to the franchise it hurts me to see the main character reduced to this mess. The feminist in me is constantly searching for a skip options during the cut scenes.
But ... I like the gameplay so far.

So while waiting for the final chapter in The Witcher, I've got a bit of time to wait. So, I'm going back to a real oldie on the PC that I grabbed from GOG before they pulled it, Blade of Darkness. It's kind of a real old school Dark Souls with the amazing graphics of the early 2000s, but it is hard as steel and a lot of fun. Took me an hour to figure out how to beat the first major enemy, and that wasn't even a boss. Enjoying dying a LOT!

And just like that, the Bastion fell. Kid felt like he'd won a significant victory, but the pile just filled in the space like it was never there. </narrator voice>

Finished Dishonored. Fun enough, but something about the stealth gameplay in it didn't quite gel with me in the end. Doubt I'll be dipping into the sequel.

One less on the pile!

Will hopefully have played through Firewatch on ps4 these final few days of May. Hopefully saying it will be so, will make it so and I'll have at least completed something finishable this month, even if it is short.

Second month of fail in a row. I´m still going to take a stab at finishing Sine Mora and maybe Cyber Core, but South Park and Phantasie III are most definitely not happening. I seem to have lost the save of Phantasie III, even though I was most of the way through after 20 hours. If I can´t find the save, I may never pick up the game again.

Part of the reason for this second bad month in a row is just a lack of time, even though at the beginning of the month I always think it will get better soon. Free time that existed was then spent one of three ways - 1. not doing anything since I didn´t feel up to it and instead just dabbling on the web, 2. reading books, or 3. finally playing the (for me) new hotness, since after 9 years I finally built a new PC a week ago, and have been sampling one graphically advanced title after another, all of which I´ve owned for months and years, but just couldn´t play until now.

I've got some vacation coming up and will be posting the June thread tomorrow. That one may be spotty on updates until I get back. I'll see what I can do while away.

Second month of fail in a row for me too, and I've got Dark Souls 3 to blame. Only a little more than one playthrough left until I can continue with my life.