Topic: Four on four

[M.K.Ultra]

Four on Four is a community event for April.
The basic idea is to complete four games from four different systems in during the month of April. This will encourage us to play more games and games on different systems. Feel free to modify the rules as you see fit. Don't have four systems? Then pick four games from the same system. Don't complete games? Then just pick four games to play and don't worry about finishing them. You can pick them ahead of time or choose them as you beat them. I am going to pick some that I have already started and plan to finish in April

Just post the games you are playing and what system you are playing them on and have fun!

[M.K.Ultra]

Here is what I am playing and hoping to finish in April.

• Pushmo World - playing on Wii U
• Astro Bot Rescue Mission - playing on PSVR
• Mutant Mudds Deluxe - playing on 3DS
• 20XX - playing on Switch

[Order.RSS]

I don't know about four, but I'll try for fourth place in Pac-Man 99 this month.

[TOPHATANT123]

Definitely going to finish a Switch and PS4 game, maybe a 3DS game. Last spot will either have to be PS3 or Wii U.

[Khushrenada]

Hmmm, four games and four systems... tough stuff.

I think I shall play:

1. The Legend of Zelda on my NES console
2. The Legend of Zelda on my GBA
3. The Legend of Zelda on my 3DS thanks to the Ambassador program
4. The Legend of Zelda on my Switch through the NES Online App

That should make for interesting trip through gaming history as I play through these different periods of Nintendo hardware and software.

[Order.RSS]

Cool to see Khush supporting obscure indie devs.

I played some mainstream stuff:
- Pac-Man 99 on Switch: Really pretty fun, and I can pretty consistently place in the top 25. Helps how rounds are shorter than in Tetris 99. Finished 2nd a few times, but usually choke on some unforced error when I do.

- Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams on Wii U: I really don't like the visual style of this game, it tries for a fairytale style with too much bloom lighting so you can't see where you're going in dark caves. Similar to Trine 1 & 2 in that regard, which I also didn't care for. However, it's a surprisingly decent 2D platformer where you switch between dimensions a lot. Feels a bit like Sonic at times, but with the collection elements of Rayman. Not finished this one yet, and it gets pretty difficult, but so far it's exceeding my expectations.

Will reach the other two systems through virtual console/Switch Online later this month.

[M.K.Ultra]

Helps how rounds are shorter than in Tetris 99.

Coming off of Mario 35, I was very much enjoying the brevity of the rounds.

[Khushrenada]

Cool to see Khush supporting obscure indie devs.

I heard these games were inspired by Ittle Dew and Oceanhorn so I'm looking forward to checking them out.

[Khushrenada]

But in seriousness, I'm already playing three games on three systems:

1. Picross e5 on 3DS
2. Clubhouse Games 51 on Switch
3. Xenoblade Chronicles X on Wii U

Not sure if I have room for a fourth. But I'm close to wrapping up Picross e5 so maybe I can switch to something on the DS. I have been meaning to charge some batteries for my Wii Balance Board and try out the original Wii Fit so perhaps I may end up doing that in a little while as the month goes on. I'll come back when I finally know what a fourth might be.

[M.K.Ultra]

I finished my non-tendo selection with Astro Bot Rescue Mission. As I have stated before it is awesome and just became free to download for a limited time. This is the best PSVR game I have played and has a very Nintendo feel to it. The music is also amazing. Check out this track Discotree. I had played this before but this was my first 100% run and my third platinum trophy. 1 down, three to go!

[pokepal148]

Fine. I'll throw my hat in the ring.

1. Monster Hunter Rise (Switch)
2. Sonic Adventure (PC)
3. Freedom Wars (Vita)
4. The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (DS)

The only problem is that Monster Hunter is stupidly addictive, to the point where I'm still listing it even though I have already cleared the village quests and completed the last Hub urgent that's currently available.

I might have a problem.

[Khushrenada]

Well, wrapped up Picross e5. Clubhouse Games is progressing along. 27 games played and 20 of those Mastered so coming up to the halfway point on that.

Meanwhile, XCX remains untouched for probably over 3 weeks now. Getting flight and reaching some of those out-of-reach places to discover they just have higher level enemies seems to have killed my momentum in the game. Should get back into it at some point as I could probably just get on through the rest of the story at this point but fatigue with the game seems to have set in. I also dislike how I can no longer jump in a skell. I don't always wanting be switching into flight and then trying to land right after.

For whatever reason, I decided to go back to my Streetpass games and refresh myself with those. I needed just three tickets over three games. There was one fish I still need to catch in the fishing game, I need to battle 20 Monarchs from afar in Warrior's Way and I need to beat Arcade mode in Mii Force. The Warrior Way is frustrating. So close but so far because streetpass tags have been so rare over the past 3 - 4 years and when I have encountered some, there's just not many monarchs in the bunch. Might work away at Mii Force. Played the Arcade mode after not touching that for a few years and got to 2-3 which seems to be my new record for that mode. I've got all these play coins I haven't done anything with for years so maybe I'll see if I can't finally conquer that game.

Then I decided to go back to Animal Crossing: New Leaf after not playing for 6 plus years. The AC Amiibo cards ended my time playing that game as I had plans to use them to get villagers I wanted and lock them into my town to finish the landscaping and town planning I'd been doing. Then the Welcome Amiibo release happened and I've had everything but 1 character which I wanted so that I could get all that furniture added to the catalog (and there was the Sanrio Cards which just got released here). With the Welcome Amiibo update and time away, jumping back into the game gave it more of a feeling of progress and changes that would happen in any town. Some people moved away and there was a new person moving in. A camping area had been constructed and Meow tickets are the new fad. I checked around to see some old familiar faces and remind myself of what I was doing and where I'd left off on things. That experience of going back to a place you spent a lot of time at for awhile and seeing the mix of old and new since you've been gone.

Then it was Sunday and I decided to get back on the Stalk Market train. Woo-woo!! Maybe I'll end up spending more time on this old game again after all.

[M.K.Ultra]

I just saw the credits roll on Learn Japanese to Survive Kanji Combat on PC. It took abut 20 hours to complete. I certainly increased my recognition of the basic kanji but like all of these world language games it requires a lot of effort on the part of the learner beyond what is required to complete the game. Still, if you are learning Japanese and like turn based RPGs then the low price on steam seems worth it to me.

I also started Metal Gear Solid: The Definitive Experience recently. This is my first exposure to MGS, other than playing with Snake on Smash Bros. Ultimate. Apparently there was a prologue called Ground Zeroes that released before the main game Phantom Pain. It plays like an extended demo (2-3 hours) and was a little too fast of a learning curve for me to fully appreciate it, but it set up the story quite nicely. So if you consider Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes a game in and of itself, and consider PS4 a different console from PSVR then I am up to 3 on 3.

[Order.RSS]

Congrats on learning useful language skills!
Meanwhile I've been learning uh... survival skills... in Don't Starve (Giant Edition).



Gotta be honest, this game ain't for me, but it is neat. It procedurally generates a world for you, and the goal is to, well, Not Starve. You're managing things like constantly increasing hunger, slowly depleting sanity, crafting systems, health, resource gathering, etc.
During the daytime things are mostly fine. You run around picking berries, chopping trees, trapping rabbits and such. When nighttime hits monsters come out (think Pikmin or Minecraft), so you'll want to build a campfire to fend them off. Of course as seasons begin changing nighttime gets longer and daytime more limited, and you'll have likely strip-mined your surroundings for easy pickings already, necessitating trips through the dark anyway.

My issue with the game is it's very obviously dense with systems, and encourages players to trawl through wikis and cooperate to figure them out. But if you don't want to put in that work, it's easy to get stuck in a loop. I can pretty reliably set up camp near 10 rabbit holes and a forest, continuously capture rabbits every day, chop down & replant trees and use those materials for new traps & campfires... and just rinse-repeat?

Meanwhile going out of my way to explore mostly results in finding spiders and monsters, less hospitable environments and some more mysterious things I can't really use yet. I'm sure it's the wrong approach to just sit around and slowly build a home base with farms and berry bushes, waiting for new wolf attacks, since that runs counter to the central goal of escaping the wilderness... But it sure is easier than relocating every 2nd day. Feels like the systems inadvertently reward a sub-optimal play style, if that makes sense.

[M.K.Ultra]

Congrats on learning useful language skills!
Meanwhile I've been learning uh... survival skills... in Don't Starve (Giant Edition).

Does the game have an end or is it an endless survivor?

[Order.RSS]

Does the game have an end or is it an endless survivor?

There's an ending, yes. There's a door/portal you can find, which supposedly makes you lose all your items and basically makes you start over in a stage. There's 5 of these stages in a row, and they culminate in a boss fight. I haven't found the door yet in the hours I walked around the world, presumably because I'm not exploring far out enough. Not sure if it only appears during specific seasons or something.

To be honest though, I've already mentally written this game off so probably won't go back to find it. This might be a weird comparison, but it reminds me of playing ToeJam & Earl. You walk around somewhat aimlessly, vaguely aware of your goals, and learn mechanics through trial and error.
Kinda wish you could just start the 5 stage campaign thing straight from a menu, especially if it's so divorced from the sandbox anyway. Maybe they're more interconnected than I'm assuming.

[M.K.Ultra]

Were you playing Don't Starve on Wii U? Good use of the gamepad?

[M.K.Ultra]

I finished Mutant Mudds Deluxe yesterday. The game appears short at first as you only have 20 levels, but then there is collecting all the diamonds, finding all the secret exits, playing a ghost version of each level, a then a second set of secret exits using Grannie instead of Max. The gameplay stayed interesting until the end because of these different approaches. I am really glad I did not get the Wii U version as the 3D effect really added to my enjoyment. I am looking forward to more atooi games on my 3DS. That also gives me four on four!

Khushrenada and I finished Joe and Mac 2 on the SNES Switch online which will replace my initial pick for Switch 20XX. I tried to like this game but as they say, "this is not my Mega Man". While the gameplay and theme are like Mega Man X, the game is a rouge-like and after playing for about 7 hours I feel no closer to beating the game than when I started. Sadly I will have to retire this one without completing it. Oh well, plenty of other games to play.

[M.K.Ultra]

I just solved the last puzzle in Pushmo World on Wii U getting my score up to six on six! This was my first Pushmo experience and what a great game. Nice art style and puzzles that start easy and gradually work their way up to brain busters. Even the toughest puzzles that took me upwards of an hour never made me too frustrated to give up. Probably the best puzzle game I have played since The Witness. A 100% run took me about 25 hours, which was more than I expected from a download only title. Highly recommended to puzzle game fans. Hopefully this franchise comes back.

I am pretty sure I solved all the puzzles (Papa Blox told me so) but I am missing a stamp, the one in the bottom right. Anyone know how to get that last stamp?

[Khushrenada]

I should since I finished that game last year in Backlaugust and was also missing a stamp. Thinking about it, I think it has something to do with the end credits. As the credits are playing and Mallo and the gang are walking, you can tap the touch screen and collect stars. I think you need to collect all the stars (have a perfect credits run) to unlock that stamp (which is the most useful reward one can earn in a Wii U game nowadays).

[M.K.Ultra]

That was it. I now have all the stamps! If only I could use them for something 

[M.K.Ultra]

Here are my final results:

• Pushmo World - played on Wii U
• Astro Bot Rescue Mission - played on PSVR
• Mutant Mudds Deluxe - played on 3DS
• Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeros - played on PS4
• Joe & Mack 2: Lost in the Tropics - played on Switch
• Learn Japanese to Survive! Kanji Combat - played on PC

[Order.RSS]

Finished nothing, but here's some shady statistics to get me to 4 on four:

1. Pac-Man 99 - Switch. Never won a round, but placed second a bunch of times. Isn't the real prize the friends we made along the way?
2. Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams - Wii U. Kinda lost interest towards the end as it gets very difficult.
3. Don't Starve - Wii U as well, but I'll count it as a PC port to get a third system.
4. Sega Ages Thunder Force AC - Switch again, but this is an arcade port. Four on 4 baby! I'm super bad at this game and got absolutely nowhere so dropped it within the hour.

Can only conclude the experiment was completed entirely successfully!

[RABicle]

ALRIGHT SO if I can just barge in here.

So. I've seen this little competition you're all doing without me and I just thought I'd pop by to say that I have already met your requirements to beat 4 games on 4 different platforms.

According to my Backloggery I beat The Last Campfire on Switch on the 2nd of April, Titanfall 2 on PC on the 4th of April and The Stillness of the Wind on Macintosh just then.
Also, I didn't add it to my backloggery out of shame until just then but earlier this month I got hopelessly addicted to a licensed match 2 puzzle game/garden maker on iOS. It's called Simon's Cat Story Time and I played over 500 levels of increasing difficulty to save the public garden from destruction form the mean developer ex-boyfriend of Simon's new neighbour who he also develops a crush on. It was a beautiful game and maybe the Apple Arcade killer app. We'll see. But I played through that in one very dark week before my birthday sometime this month.

"But RABicle" I hear whichever of you has the most annoying voice whine. "PC and Mac are basically the same platform, especially to someone like you who just restarts his iMac into Windows". You know what? Fine. So, tomorrow, in maybe 12 hours from making this post, I will stream Terranigma, the PAL SNES sensation, which I have never beaten, from my newly arrived SuperNt and I will beat it. I understand I only have a few hours to go and you can all shower me in glory.

[Pandareus]

Hmm.

Finished Yakuza Like a Dragon on XSX.
Played all I'll ever play of Resident Evil Revelations on 3DS.
Played through Bowser's Fury on Switch.
Fingers crossed that I can manage to finish Panzer Dragoon Zwei by tomorrow.