What have you ACTUALLY played tracker - Modern Edition (2021)

[+wongojack]

PC

Pinball FX2 53 

 

X360 

Bionic Commando Rearmed 566 

Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 388

 

Bionic Commando season is here!  I started playing BCR2 earlier in the month.  I'm still working on the main campaign, but the game features challenge rooms that let you work through difficult simulator rooms/areas with the bionic arm etc.  I got through all of the challenge rooms in BCR2, so I decided to load my 12 year old save game of the original BCR and try some of its insane challenges again.  They are hard! Totally different than the sequel, these things are brutal.  I had remembered giving up, but I think I might be able to push through this time.  I've already completed at least 5 challenge rooms that I had previously decided were impossible.  Only a handful left to clear them all.  On challenge room 39 (Zig Zag), I scored the 11th fastest time ever on XBox live, but it took me a whopping total of 1106 attempts!  Never mind that I overlooked a MUCH easier way to complete the room - DOH! Another insane one was challenge room 51 (Going Down).  I tried 800+ times before eventually succeeding, and there was no overlooked or easier way to do that one.

[carlsson]

Week 42

 

Top games

 

1. Metroid Dread (Switch) - 1216 min. (#1)
2. Sakura Taisen: Atsuki Chishio ni (PS2) - 687 min.
3. Tetris Effect: Connected (Switch) - 600 min.
4. Magic the Gathering Arena (PC) - 596 min. (#9)
5. Bionic Commando Rearmed (Xbox 360) - 566 min.
6. MLB The Show 21 (Xbox Series X) - 557 min. (#5)
7. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch) - 420 min. (#10)
7. Littlewood (Switch) - 420 min. (#2)
9. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (Xbox One) - 398 min.
10. Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 (Xbox 360) - 388 min.
 

Top systems

 

1. Switch - 3616 min. (#1)
2. PC - 1202 min. (#3)
3. Xbox 360 - 954 min.
4. iOS - 782 min. (#4)
5. PS2 - 687 min. (#8)
6. Xbox Series X - 677 min. (#2)
7. Xbox One - 442 min. (#7)
8. Oculus Quest - 351 min. (#6)
9. Browser based - 223 min. (#9)
10. PS4 - 202 min. (#10)

 

Total 9136 minutes and 26 different games on 10 different systems, with 8 participants.

 

After a few weeks of dominance in the classic tracker, Sakura Taisen enters the modern tracker (though I know many in the younger generations would hesistate to call PS2 a modern system). Yet Metroid Dread holds out for first place by a margin of almost 9 hours. Systems wise the Switch takes another title, ahead of the PC and the 360 which is the most played Xbox system this week.

[Steven Pendleton]

Sakura Taisen finally comes to America, both in the in-game setting and in real life. Also, Im@s is here. Yay~

 

PS2
Sakura Taisen ~Atsuki Chishio ni~ - 477

Done. Sakura's ending, as usual. This remake is not bad, but the Dreamcast version is still the best version. Still not sure what to think about the part in the intro where Ogami and Sakura get launched into space (!!!) and fighting in space despite the game taking place in 1923.
Sakura Taisen V Episode 0 ~Kouya no Samurai Musume~ - 441

This game is the sequel to Sakura Wars: The Movie, which itself fits in between Sakura Taisen 3 and Sakura Taisen 4, and of course it's the prequel to Sakura Taisen V. This game is also trash. Don't play it. Unique among all of the games in the entire series because it's the only one where every single line in the game has voice acting. Seeing all of the American stereotypes is funny, though, like Gemini's ridiculously hilarious OOO MAI GAAAAAA death scream and the healing items being French fries and cheeseburgers. As an American, I get healed in real life by French fries and cheeseburgers, which means this game is 100% accurate to real life. Good job, Sega! Yeah, this game is still trash, though. Don't play it.
Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love - 140

lol here it is, finally released outside of Japan for the first time (not counting that horrible machine translation of the PC version of the first game that Russia got). I am of course playing the Japanese version, Sakura Taisen V ~Saraba Itoshiki Hito yo~, which has the save file transfer thingy from the previous PS2 games, which of course are Japan-only, so of course that probably got removed in localization. I remember a time when I was in the PX at Camp Foster on Okinawa with my friends about 11 years ago and saw the localized version for sale there, but I didn't buy it, something that I regretted for many years, especially now that the US version is relatively rare and expensive for a PS2 game. I'm now kind of glad that I didn't buy it then, as it's easily the weakest game in the series so far aside from its horrid prequel.

 

Switch
Gleylancer - 7
Metroid Dread - 402

 

PS4
Love Live! School Idol Festival ~after school ACTIVITY~ Wai-Wai!Home Meeting!! - 200 (estimate)

 

PC
THE IDOLM@STER STARLIT SEASON - 72
R-Type Final 2 - 34

[carlsson]

Android Phone:
Ingo Rondellen - 10 min.

 

Yes, I got the app working again. Perhaps I had too little free memory last week or some other random error. My best time this time was 22.635 seconds which equals position 2000 or something on the top list. I'm fully willing to think the results are rigged so the top entries that are awarded free fuel are bogus, but better play the game and have a go than forfeit the attempts. Also you get 10 attempts each time you refuel, regardless if you top up 2, 10, 20 or 40 liters so those who really like the game can refuel a few liters every day instead of a lot in one go.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (October 25th through 31st) on modern systems:

 

Browser based:

Taonga: The island farm - 727 min. in 16 sessions

 

I've continued to play Taonga - The island farm this week, actually more intensively than last week. I've switched strategies twice... it seemed to me that to be able to get jewels, you need to fill ship orders, which means having various goods on stock because you can't produce them quickly enough once the ship arrives. Doing that for all sorts of materials, though, is pretty expensive. So I've switched strategies again and now try to do all the tasks on the left side except for the timed ones from top to bottom, doing what's ncecessary to get to their objective, which mostly means you have to break them down to sub-tasks and fulfill those to finally finish the task at hand.

[DragonGrafx-16]

Raiden IV x Mikado Remix (Switch) 47 mins

[StormSurge]

Xbox Series X
MLB The Show 21: 513 minutes

 

Xbox One

Call of the Sea: 55 minutes

PGA 2K21: 97 minutes

PUBG: 593 minutes

 

iOS

Microsoft Mahjong: 132 minutes

Pop! Blitz: 18 minutes

Zen Match: 100 minutes

 

 

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Small week for gaming around here this week! I downloaded and played Resident Evil 4 on the Switch yesterday for Halloween, and... uhhh, that's pretty much it

 

The Switch port of RE4 is alright, though I don't think the jump from 480i to 1080p does many favors for the graphics. Resident Evil 4 was a really beautifully atmospheric and moody looking game on pre-HD consoles, but the HD upscaling kinda makes the graphics look a little rough and jagged. I definitely miss the Wii port's motion control aiming too, so as far as I'm concerned the Wii version is still the definitive way to play Resident Evil 4, but it is nice to be able to play RE4 on a modern console (and portably no less) so I can forgive it for not being the best version.

 

That's all for me this week, and I'll see you guys and gals on Thursday when the new season of the Atari 2600 High Score Club kicks off!

 

 

 

 

Nintendo Switch
Resident Evil 4 - 380 minutes

 

[digdugnate]

45 minutes ago, Skippy B. Coyote said:

Small week for gaming around here this week! I downloaded and played Resident Evil 4 on the Switch yesterday for Halloween, and... uhhh, that's pretty much it

 

The Switch port of RE4 is alright, though I don't think the jump from 480i to 1080p does many favors for the graphics. Resident Evil 4 was a really beautifully atmospheric and moody looking game on pre-HD consoles, but the HD upscaling kinda makes the graphics look a little rough and jagged. I definitely miss the Wii port's motion control aiming too, so as far as I'm concerned the Wii version is still the definitive way to play Resident Evil 4, but it is nice to be able to play RE4 on a modern console (and portably no less) so I can forgive it for not being the best version.

 

That's all for me this week, and I'll see you guys and gals on Thursday when the new season of the Atari 2600 High Score Club kicks off!

 

 

 

 

Nintendo Switch
Resident Evil 4 - 380 minutes

 

I have only one (well, two) words when it comes to RE4: Ugh, Ashley.  lol

 

The rest of the game is a lot of fun

[digdugnate]

No time this week from me- just too many plates spinning.

[Agamon]

PC

Age of Empires IV (203 min)

Hero Realms (216 min)

Magic the Gathering Arena (942 min)

 

OQ

Beat Saber (322 min)

 

Really busy week, so getting a few games of MtG or HR fit my schedule more than any longform games. I don't want to give up on Disco Elysium, but my time with it so far hasn't grabbed me.  Usually both puzzle-y and narrative games are my jam, but I find DE a bit tedious.

 

I did update the PC to Windows 11, and I wanted to test out the auto HDR function, so I tried out the recently released AoE4, despite RTS being one of my least favorite genres. Only finished the first couple chapters of the tutorial Norman campaign, but it's not terrible.

 

[+wongojack]

X360
Bionic Commando Rearmed 75
Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 150
 

Still working on these . . .

[+jgkspsx]

Very little on modern systems this week, but perhaps a whole new platform?

 

Tiny/Micro Arcade:

 

These look like the arcade games but sometimes play far differently. They are newly developed clones exclusive to these devices. Therefore I think they should count as a separate platform. (The upcoming “Tiny Atari 2600” plays the same ports I will be reporting here with only small bug fixes, for what it’s worth, even though they are obviously not Atari 2600 versions.)

 

Centipede - 45 minutes. Call me crazy, but the fact that the centipede moves fast and fluidly given the low framerate and the rest of the arthropods (spider, scorpion, flea) move at a glacial pace (one or two seconds per frame) almost makes this a whole new game that I rather enjoy. It is always the spiders what kill me in the real game, so actually having to worry about the centipede is a new one on me.

 

 

Pong - 10 minutes. The computer is pretty hard to beat if you’re not holding the turbo button and ridiculously easy if you are.

 

Missile Command - 10 minutes. Usually playing this with a D-pad doesn’t bother me too much but in this case I don’t enjoy it much. The collision detection for explosions is way too forgiving to make up for the cursor being so slow. When I first got this handheld I liked this the best of the six games on 1 and 2 , but the me of today does not understand why. (Super Breakout and Asteroids are very very bad, so do not bother with that one.)

 

iOS:

Konami Pixel Puzzle Challenge - 261 minutes. Almost done with this, 88.6%. Most of what’s left is not my thing, though there are a lot of non-Gradius/Parodius shmup puzzles left for some reason. Almost all of the remaining puzzles are boss tiles, so the time reporting is going to crash this week once I finish the regular puzzles.

[carlsson]

Got it! (also got your updated entry in the classic tracker)

 

It made me think about the Evercade. Is that all through emulation of the various old systems, or does it ever reimplement games natively? So far nobody listed it here, but with the buzz it is getting I would suppose someone has one and plays on it. If it is total emulation, it won't ever show up in the tracker regardless how commercially relevant it is, but if it has unique games or reimplements classics in a retro fashion, it would.

[+jgkspsx]

It is totally emulation so far, though evidently they are sending out dev kits and may be releasing native games for it in the new year. That would be neat to see.

[TheGameCollector]

In the modern section I just played

 

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance for Playstation 2 - 53 minutes 

[carlsson]

Week 43

 

Top games

 

1. Magic the Gathering Arena (PC) - 942 min. (#4)
2. Taonga: the Island Farm (Browser based) - 727 min.
3. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (Xbox One) - 593 min. (#9)
4. MLB The Show 21 (Xbox Series X) - 513 min. (#6)
5. Sakura Taisen: Atsuki Chishio ni (PS2) - 477 min. (#2)
6. Sakura Taisen V Episode 0: Kouya no Samurai Musume (PS2) - 441 min.
7. Metroid Dread (Switch) - 402 min. (#1)
8. Resident Evil 4 (Switch) - 380 min.
9. Beat Saber (Oculus Quest) - 322 min.
10. Konami Pixel Puzzle Collection (iOS) - 261 min.
 

Top systems

 

1. PC - 1482 min. (#2)
2. PS2 - 1111 min. (#5)
3. Switch - 836 min. (#1)
4. Xbox One - 745 min. (#7)
5. Browser based - 727 min. (#9)
6. Xbox Series X - 513 min. (#6)
7. iOS - 511 min. (#4)
8. Oculus Quest - 322 min. (#8)
9. Xbox 360 - 225 min. (#3)
10. PS4 - 200 min. (#10)
(11. Tiny/Micro Arcade - 65 min.)
 

Total 6747 minutes and 31 different games on 12 different systems, with 11 participants.

 

As both Metroid Dread and Sakura Taisen fall down the list, Magic the Gathering Arena takes the chance to be the most played game by a margin of 3.5 hours ahead of the browser based game Taonga: the Island Farm. Systems wise all top 10 formats remain on the list with the PC ahead of PS2, but with a new system entry in form the Tiny/Micro Arcade as seen above. Clearly new systems in 2021 don't have to have gazillions of polygons and GPUs running so hot that you can boil eggs on them.

 

On the all-time stats, MLB The Show 21 (36804 min) finally overtakes Beat Saber (36691 min) as the fourth most played game ever, though the margin is slim. It was 78 minutes to Beat Saber's advantage before this week and now it is 113 min advantage for MLB. Just ahead of both of them is Animal Crossing: New Horizons at 40913 min, which was absent this week. Also, PUBG is "only" 2761 min away from the grand 100K mark.

[Steven Pendleton]

Sakura Taisen 25th anniversary marathon is almost over, as I am 62.5% through the newest game. I skipped the DS game because I'm too lazy to go find any buy a copy.

 

PS2
Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love - 1,143

I didn't like this game much at first, but I liked it more as I played it more. This game is good, but it's nothing more than a rough approximation of the Sakura Taisen experience. The game itself is inferior to 1-4 in every way except graphics and I don't care about any of these characters at all aside from Gemini. The writing in the beginning is complete garbage and there is a huge problem with Gemini. She was the player character in V Episode 0, but even though she's supposed to be the main heroine here, she is barely present until the very end of the game and she acts like a completely different character for the entire duration of the game when she does show up. Her ending was cute, though. Not a bad game, but play the other games in the series instead..

 

PS4
Sakura Wars - 944

Shin Sakura Taisen is here, and yes, I am of course playing the Japanese version. I'm not sure what to think of this game yet, but I can say that the music is absolutely beautiful (I am probably going to buy both of this game's 2 soundtracks in the next few days) and that the character design is both horrible and inconsistent. Almost none of these new characters look like they belong in this world at all and they don't even mix with each other because Sega had a ton of different character designers work on this game and their styles all clash horribly with each other. Fortunately the new main character dude looks cool and he looks like he actually belongs in this world and his voice actor is really good. I think that's about all I can say about this game for now.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Here are my times for this past week (November 1st through 7th) on modern systems...

 

Browser based:

Taonga: The island farm - 261 minutes in 13 sessions

 

I continued to play Taonga: The island farm this week, again slightly altering the strategy with the primary goal being completing the buildings and the secondary one making money by filling orders. I also try to progress on that island where you have to chase a squirrel.

 

[+wongojack]

X360

Bionic Commando Rearmed 118

 

XOne

Minecraft Dungeons 67

[+jgkspsx]

Starting with the modern side as it’s easier…

 

Say, do mobile “games” like Duolingo and Pikmin Bloom count? Duolingo has points, and Pikmin has experience and levels and such.

 

iOS:

Konami Pixel Puzzle Collection - 159 minutes. All regular puzzles done, now I have to wait for boss puzzles to appear. 
 

 

The last regular puzzle, a miniboss, was appropriate:

 

Tiny/Micro Arcade:

 

Frogger - 36 minutes. Most of which was spent trying to figure out exactly what the bug is that decrements a life when I get a frog in on the fourth stage. Really truly horrendous music, does not resemble the arcade soundtrack at all. Looks nice, though.

 

 

Q*bert - 40 minutes. This plays really well and looks great. Definitely one of the biggest winners of the collection. Unfortunately the sound is deadly - I think the sound chip was salvaged from a dial up modem as that is what all the sound effects sound like. Leave it muted and it’s a great little time killer. Nb: I have never really given Q*bert its due and I don’t really know how it should play, so if you are a purist you may think I’m crazy.

 

 

 

Centipede - 25 minutes. I dunno, this one just speaks to me somehow.

 

Missile Command - 15 minutes. Gets unmanageable in a hurry.

 

[digdugnate]

I spent some time in several games this week, the notable one being Forza Horizon 5.

 

With new content, I spent more time than before diving back into Animal Crossing, though much to my dismay a good bit of the stuff is gated behind having a three-star island.  More time to be spent there.   I picked up my wife's FF12 cart and started a playthrough of the game, not having played since 2006 (but surprised at how much I remembered from then).  This game and DQ8 single-handedly kept my wife sane when our Youngest was born, lol.  A new month means a new Ranked Match unlock for Mario Golf, so I spent some time dorking with this to finish it out.

 

Forza Horizon 5 is the elephant in the room for game time this week since early access was unlocked Friday.  It looks and plays amazing on the Series X (which, I was told it plays well on the One also), but if you've played other Horizon games it doesn't bring anything 'new' to the table other than the Mexican setting.  That being said, I love the Horizon games and it's a really really nice game.

 

Switch:
Animal Crossing: New Horizons -- 420 minutes
Black Widow: Recharged -- 120 minutes
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age -- 570 minutes
Littlewood -- 420 minutes
Mario Golf: Super Rush -- 240 minutes

 

XBox Series X:
Borderlands 3 -- 120 minutes
Forza Horizon 5 -- 1620 minutes

[Agamon]

PC

Hero Realms (174 min)

Magic the Gathering Arena (974 min)

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (199 min)

 

OQ

Beat Saber (229 min)

 

My MtG playing is increasing each week. So many cool games I want to get to, and I keep going back to my ftp card game chicken soup, lol. Innistrad: Crimson Vow comes out this week, so it probably won't be less next week...

 

I did start GotG, which is both amazing and infuriating. The story is great, the acting is great, the graphics are great. The soundtrack is amazing! The gameplay is...mostly pretty good? But I got to a part where I was stuck with just Star Lord in a fight and it was insane. I think I spent about a 45 mins on what may in fact be the most stressfully frustrating gameplay sequence I've ever experienced (and I did the Spider-Man DLC Screwball chase 37 times before beating it - not an exaggeration). Hopefully these split-up-from-the-group scenes don't happen often...I've stubbornly refused to drop the difficulty, but if that's the only thing stopping me from really enjoying the game, might need to do it.

[StormSurge]

Xbox Series X
MLB The Show 21: 587 minutes

 

Xbox One

PGA 2K21: 401 minutes

PUBG: 499 minutes

 

iOS

Microsoft Mahjong: 334 minutes

Pop! Blitz: 20 minutes

 

 

I am looking forward to diving into Forza 5 this week @digdugnate! Perfect timing, as I pushed my Extra Life gameday(s) to this coming weekend.

[Flojomojo]

3 hours ago, digdugnate said:

Black Widow: Recharged -- 120 minutes

I'm gonna try and catch you on that game, but I need to put in the hours. ?

Rediscovered Mario Odyssey on Sunday afternoon and kicked myself for not playing more of it when it came out!