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Pick four games to finish in the month of February, and do so. A few gaming communities on the net are trying to see if they can make it a yearly event like NaNoWriMo.

4 in February was first described in a podcast with one Kotaku writer and one Joystiq writer; here's the Kotaku post detailing it. The idea is you set aside four games that you haven't finished, and are particularly embarrassed not to have finished. February is typically a barren month for major video game releases, so it's the perfect time to cut through your backlog.

So here's my plan. I've owned three of these four games for several years, and one of them for about one year. I've never played any of them, so now I'm going to try to beat all four in four weeks. My birthday is the last day of February (really), so knocking these off my list is going to be a little gift to myself.

laszlow's 4 in February

Heavy Rain
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Metroid Prime
Psychonauts

So who's with me? Anyone else want to try and finish 4 in February? If yes, then post your games and progress here.

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
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Alright lazzy, I'm game =]

..have enough time on my hands lately to actually do it, too.
I'm not 100% on these yet but:

Half Life 2
Shenmue
Amnesia: The Dark Descent


Edit: as for the 4th slot.. it's a tossup between Portal 2 and Zelda: Minish Cap
I know which one i'll actually enjoy...

This post has been edited by Blinge Odonata on 31st January 2013 17:15

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www.youtube.com/blinje
The victor sacrificed the vanquished to the heavens

Quote (laszlow @ 31st January 2013 13:19)

February is typically a barren month for major video game releases, so it's the perfect time to cut through your backlog.

Sadly, not a barren month for school :/ Hopefully I will be able to finish at least one game (Pkmn Black 2), but right now 2 would he hoping for too much

Having beaten NaNoWrimo, I have to feel this is less of a challenge .

Anyway:

Saga Frontier 2
Kingdom Hearts
Cave Story
and lastly, Windwaker, if I can find a copy of it to borrow.

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If you've been mod-o-fied,
It's an illusion, and you're in-between.
Don't you be tarot-fied,
It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean?
~Frank Zappa

Sins exist only for people who are on the Way or approaching the Way

Cave story? nyaha, one could easily finish it in a day!

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www.youtube.com/blinje
The victor sacrificed the vanquished to the heavens

I might jump in on this and see if I could do it.

Wild Arms 5 - I think I'm very close to the end, but I put it away once Borderlands 2 came out. I could get back into it and finish it.
Ys Origin - Certainly want to start this.
Torchlight 2 - It's going to happen anyway, since I started it recently and am loving it.

Not sure about a fourth, but I always wanted to play Twilight Princess, so I might give that a shot. Psychonauts could also be a good one to try and would at least be another one that I haven't started yet.

I might try to beat WA5 next weekend.

This post has been edited by Neal on 31st January 2013 23:33

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

This SHOULD be something I dive into, given that I have about 15 games in my backlog that I have either not started or not finished (or, technically, both!)

However, the reason I haven't finished them is because I don't have time to play them, and picking the shortest day of the month isn't going to help me.

I'll probably try to at least finish Walking Dead. Beyond that... probably nothing.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Quote (Blinge Odonata @ 31st January 2013 13:11)

Edit: as for the 4th slot.. it's a tossup between Portal 2 and Zelda: Minish Cap
I know which one i'll actually enjoy...

I can't speak to the pros/cons of Minish Cap, but I can tell you that Portal 2 is a gaming experience which everyone should undertake. It's really an incredible game, an improvement on the original in every way - and that's saying a whole lot.

As for doing this myself... goodness, I'd like to give it a go, but I'm certain I'd fall so flat on my head that it'd wouldn't even be funny.

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Currently Playing : Final Fantasy V
Most Recently Beat : Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Favorite Game : Final Fantasy X

The newest CoNcast is up! Have a listen!

Welp. That's Shenmue out of the way, I hadn't realised I was so close to the end but it was still a big effort to force myself through the last disc... It had become rather arduous

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www.youtube.com/blinje
The victor sacrificed the vanquished to the heavens

Hmm, I think I do have at least three juicy targets:

Recettear: an Item Shop's Tale (condition: succeed on first loop)
Trauma (this game is so short I should just sit there for another two hours and finish it completely) COMPLETED!
Shaman King: Master of Spirits (the first of the two GBA games. I've been almost done with it for a long time now.) BEATEN!

Dunno what to do for the fourth. Here are the choices:
* Metroid Prime: While I'm over half-done already, I'll have to start over since I've forgotten everything I wanted to do.
* Aquaria: I started this a while back, and it seemed really interesting, though also a bit immense in scale and more than I had the time to deal with back then.
* Nostalgia: I've played through much of this DS RPG; while the gameplay is a bit tedious, at least I DO have frameskip to help me.
* Lufia 2: I stopped a playthrough of this game a long time ago after finally getting to the Master Jelly of the Ancient Cave. The next thing to do should be to go to those triangular islands. Very close to the end. But I'm afraid I've forgotten how the controls work and such.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 24th February 2013 10:13

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

heh GMH, you impress me with your slew of games I've mostly not heard of.

How's everyone doing? I'm surprised more people aren't on this here bandwagon.
As for me, I've had a quiet weekend blasting away at these games, finished Amnesia and at long last, Half Life 2. (A game I began in 2009...and kept beginning over the years)

Also, being the only person I know in the flesh to have finished Amnesia: The Dark Descent, I've developed an awful arrogance and am calling myself a 'horror expert.' any objections?



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www.youtube.com/blinje
The victor sacrificed the vanquished to the heavens

I'm falling a little behind, in large part thanks to playing a ton of Persona 4 Arena online. That game is great.

BUT, I think I'm near the end of Psychonauts (just finished Milkman Conspiracy) and I've already done one cycle in Majora's Mask. It was a slow, exploratory cycle, and I'm not going to embarrass myself in revealing how little I accomplished during it.... I think I can finish Psychonauts tomorrow and Majora's Mask by next weekend.

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
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I think the first cycle in Majora is mandatory anyway, its no big deal man the first timer can expect to do countless cycles, its part of teh gaem

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www.youtube.com/blinje
The victor sacrificed the vanquished to the heavens

I've done...none of my goals, and instead goofed off playing Spelunky over and over.

I wonder if "not playing Spelunky anymore" can count as a substitute goal...

@ Blinge Odonata: Oh, I tend to find my games from all sorts of random sources. There's the fact that I don't have newer systems or higher-end computers, so I can't actually keep up with the newest releases anyway. Add to that the fact that I have a strong taste for retro stuff, and nowadays, indie stuff.

Trauma is a small indie puzzle game. I got it at Playism. It's also available at Steam.

Shaman King: Master of Spirits is a GBA game that I would not have discovered had I not been bored one night and looked through the TV Tropes list of metroidvania games. I've never been interested in the Shaman King anime series, and I don't think this game has made me interested either. But the game itself is pretty good.

Recettear is another indie game, though it's gotten some prominence for being one of several examples of "the little indie game that could", having sold over 100K copies not too long after its release -- rather befitting its memetically famous theme of "Capitalism, ho!". It's one of the more famous JRPGs on Steam, and one of the earliest ones to appear on Steam, too.

Aquaria is an indie metroidvania that takes place underwater rather than on land. It's also quite big for an indie game (albeit not as big as La-Mulana, though that game is just insanely immense).

Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals is the prequel to Lufia and the Fortress of Doom (i.e. Lufia I). Both of these games are SNES JRPGs developed by Neverland, and published by Taito (later sequels were published by Squenix, Natsume, and Atlus). They're set in a rather generic JRPG fantasy world, but were, like FFV and FFVI, among the earliest JRPGs to have internally coherent settings. Lufia II also famously features a 100-level procedurally-generated dungeon called The Ancient Cave.

Nostalgia (a.k.a. Wind of Nostalgeo) is a DS JRPG by Red Entertainment and Matrix Software, published by Tecmo, with a lot of older JRPG conventions (and lots of airship riding -- in fact, the entire world map (which is based on the real world) is traversed by airship! Set in a steampunk fantasy 1880s, you get to explore various sites of archaeological importance while solving a conspiracy mystery.

Metroid Prime is a gymnastics planet exploration simulator for DS GameCube starring Olympic athlete Shawn Johnson intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran. You get to create your own gymnastics routines speedrunning routes, and there are multiple play modes self-imposed challenge ideas.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 11th February 2013 11:23

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 11th February 2013 11:04)

Aquaria is an indie metroidvania that takes place underwater rather than on land. It's also quite big for an indie game

Sold.

Also I'd be so up for Spelunky if there was a Steam release, I imagine the multiplayer would be better/more populous.

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www.youtube.com/blinje
The victor sacrificed the vanquished to the heavens

^ FYI I just noticed that it's half-off on Steam until the 21st.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/24420

--------------------

Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Sorry to double-post, but it seems to be justified by the premise of the thread.

I just finished Trauma.

It took longer than I expected. Actually needed a little help getting the last objective (the small seed one), but in return I found the last two photos without the photographic sense. That said, the game itself wasn't too bad.

As I was describing earlier, Trauma is an indie puzzle game, available from various sites, including Steam (base price $6.99) and Playism (for just $1, DRM-free). It's about exploring the dreams of a young woman as she sleeps in a hospital bed recovering from a car accident. As such, it is non-violent and non-sexual, though it does propose some philosophical musings which may be hard for young children to grasp.

It's a point-and-click adventure, with a twist. You nagivate yourself through a set of photographs that effectively map out a locale. There are four locales. Go places by clicking adjacent photos or using mouse gestures to move -- for example, draw an upside-down U to turn around. Click features to examine them. Each locale contains 9 photos, as well as four objectives that can be accomplished by using four special gestures; each locale teaches you one of the special gestures. You can play the four locales in any order, and you'll be revisiting them a few times each to get all the photos, though you get the main ending by completing the main objective of the last locale, and the alternate ending by getting everything.

The graphics are a seamless mix of photography and CG. The music is mostly ambient, but pretty fitting.

status: Completed (accomplished all 16 objectives and found all 36 photographs)

Total playtime: about 3 to 4 hours. (Just "beating" the four main objectives will probably take half to one hour.)

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 15th February 2013 09:56

--------------------

Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Heh, you seem to have gone for a rather difficult or time consuming 4iF, Glenn.
Thanks for the heads up about Aquaria, although I can't really justify buying more games at this point due to some nasty status ailment attack i got hit by, I think it was called 'unemployer'

Anyhoo, due to that I've finished my 4. =] Although I admit I chose shorter games

Edit: Yaknow what, Shenmue hardly counts as I hadn't realised I was so close to the end. So replacing that with something that bugs me, and other people too apparently. I haven't finished FFVI once since the first time, so I might try doing that this month..

This post has been edited by Blinge Odonata on 15th February 2013 16:38

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www.youtube.com/blinje
The victor sacrificed the vanquished to the heavens

Well I'm in the middle of my semester; the games really aren't that time-consuming; it's just getting around to playing them that is.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Blinge Odonata @ 15th February 2013 10:39)

I haven't finished FFVI once since the first time, so I might try doing that this month..

Not your brightest idea, Blinge...

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www.youtube.com/blinje
The victor sacrificed the vanquished to the heavens

Wow, I may not even finish one of my games. I've been so busy this month and I'm going to be out of town for the final weekend...I'll try to make a push on Torchlight 2 if I get the chance, but it is not looking good. Maybe I'll turn it into "3 in February (and March)"

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

Well, I've finally finished Shaman King: Master of Spirits (the first of its two games for the GBA).

This game is best described as a piecewise metroidvania. The world map consists of interconnected nodes, and each connection between the nodes is a level. Barriers to passage are located within these levels.

In the game you gain a large assortment of spirit abilities. These include active abilities (such as an ice punch), and sustained abilities (such as hovering in mid-air), and passive abilities (such as ones increasing your mana furyoku recovery rate). Sound familiar? Yeah, this sounds like the Castlevania Sorrow games. You get to equip up to five spirits at a time, three slots only make use of passive souls but two (L and R) are for active or sustained souls spirits (I kept on making this mistake, seriously). Furthermore, you get to flip between four sets of spirits, a bit like how you get two sets of souls you can flip between in Dawn of Sorrow (or three sets of glyphs in Order of Ecclesia). However, you have to go back to the menu to use them. Which is a bit annoying considering that there are well more than two mobility-enabling spirits (dash/longjump, homing pendulum, slide/smallsize, skip old level) that you'll be using quite a lot.

The game is a little frustrating at times due to the player-character's momentum not quite stopping on a dime, and the resultant ability for things to combo you. So it's a tiny bit clunkier than say Aria of Sorrow. But not too hard. The game is quite generous with healing items, but not generous with HP -- watch it carefuly. You can save between each level, though (i.e. at each node).

There are a few other places that seem oddly reminiscent of Castlevania, especially the western cemetery area. And just for added fun, this is indeed a Konami game. And the music is actually pretty good.

So, overall, a pretty decent lesser-known metroidvania game. It's enjoyable even if you've never seen/read Shaman King before (I definitely haven't!), though if you have, some of the features might make more sense. Especially the spirit combo feature, where certain sets of spirits result in different effects when used together.

Edit

So apparently there's a backdash in this game. For some reason I never learned of its existence. Would make life a little easier in this game.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 24th February 2013 12:20

--------------------

Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

I'm doing an extremely poor job of trying to bring this "movement" to CoN. I think I'll finish Psychonauts tonight, as I'm in the home stretch, but those others aren't getting finished. I wasn't particularly busy with work, but I've had some surprise visits and trips for my weekends in recent days and I showed poor judgment in deciding to start a new game of Persona 3 and a first-ever game of Skyrim in the past three weeks.

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

I'm not going to come even close to finishing four, but at least I finished one! I beat Plants vs Zombies a couple days ago, which is a game that I randomly picked up again after finishing my normal iPhone game. I'd wanted to finish it for awhile, so I'm happy about it.

Come to think of it, I guess I could include catching up on every single daily puzzle in Pixelogic's history as a completed game, but they keep on coming...daily. I'll do it anyway to pretend I was halfway decent at this.

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me