can you actually kill the guy? what happens? i was trying to squash him, it seems like he just pops into a lower hole. I could see the items being useful if you have some bad luck at the top of the level and need to recover. like when the little man turns his back on the goal and a piece spawns on him knocking him down a bit.
Wow, I never even tried pointing the Wiimote. I'll have to see how that works. So far I've found the items useful in the later stages where the pieces are falling fast enough that they can accidentally box in your guy before he's finished climbing, which is more of a problem towards the top of the well, so it's not so bad that you don't get the flags till half way up. I love how they fail to explain any of this stuff in the Field Climber instructions. Yeah, it's pretty frustrating when you're kicking ass and then you get screwed with a bad set-up or accidentally squish the climber. When I get a lot of skyscrapers I usually just start sticking anything that will help to nibble away singles or doubles in the lowest wells, because I find it simply takes too long waiting for all the I's you'll need to get the situation under control. The top times are going to require a lot of luck, so it's too bad they didn't just always use the same starting set-ups for everyone so that people's times make a fair comparison. There's a 4:26:06 on the Europe leaderboard now. m, you haven't managed to kill the guy ever? When you crush him he makes a sort of splat sound, and you see his poor little soul rise up to heaven through the top of the well.
I can't believe you've never killed the guy o.o Pointing the wiimote at the screen doesn't sound like it'll make that much of a difference. It's easy enough to build stairs from flat ground with very little loss in time. Since usually you use the item when he gets boxed in, most of the time you'll be pointing it at him anyways. If you just messed up your stair halfway and he's still climbing, you won't lose that much time from clearing everything above him and then rebuilding. The one way I've been using the flag consistently is if there's a path for him to a flag, but you keep building stairs for him to climb when he gets back from the flag, and instead of grabbing the flag and coming back he just turns around and starts climbing your steps. Then just block him with a ceiling or a 2-block wall so he turns back to the flag, and use the item as soon as he grabs the flag he was supposed to in the first place. Situational again, but it is a use besides just correcting a mess-up. This is probably common sense to most people, but with the way the harder starting positions often are, it's almost always best to use a LJ if you can't find an I, then use the rest of the blocks accordingly. You really have to dig smart, but I find that things usually work out and they aren't as intimidating as they are in the beginning. Managed a time just over 7 minutes today. Then I had a run where I was well on my way to break 7, but then I crushed him on stage 9 when he randomly decided to turn around in the middle of a stairs and head down >=( They were the nicest setups, and I had them at 6, 8, 9. I almost threw my controller through my TV.
Geez, 3 days in, and there's still only 173 times up for North America, so maybe we won't see 1000 times posted for North America either. Well, maybe there will be more action on the weekend. It just occurred to me, but haven't they violated some sort of cardinal rule of video games by not giving the climber 3 lives? Usually it makes sense that you only get 1 life in Tetris because the well acts kind of like a life meter where you can see your death gradually coming, but when 1 hit kills, games almost always give you 3 lives.
I'm sorry if I offend any fans of Field Climber...BUT I HATE IT SO MUCH. I want to just skip out of this round and hope that I can get better scores for the last two rounds. I tried so many times, the farthest I can get is to level 5, then I just epic fail. I was reading through the tips, and they helped a bit, but I'm still stuck on five. It could be too that I was trying to work really fast, I thought the times were going to be really competitive.
Yeah, there don't seem to be many fans of this mode. Just try to take your time to at least get through it and post a time, because just completing it may very well be good enough to make the top 1000 and pick up some tournament points. The safest method would be to make staircases back and forth across the screen for your climber to climb so that you don't have to risk crushing him by dropping pieces on top of him.
I'd be shocked if a full 1000 people submitted scores. The mode is just too unforgiving. On the other hand, it should be quite possible to skip a round of the tournament and still finish in the top 500. Since there's no real distinction between placing 10th and placing 500th, there's no reason to force yourself to keep playing if you really hate field climber that much.
I'm finding this mode strangely addictive. I just played it for nearly an hour, trying to better my score. I did it in under 10 minutes for the first time for 45th place on the leaderboard. I actually had the guy walking on a falling tetrimino at one point, just before it locked down - I wonder what would have happened if I'd tried to rotate it with him on it? Or put it in the hold queue? I get the feeling that there could be a lot of things we don't know about this mode yet. EDIT: okay, now I'm really curious about the falling tetrimino thing. I'm going to spend a bit more time trying to make it happen again and see what happens when I do something other than just lock it down. EDIT 2: seems like he just follows his regular movement patterns, just with a moving block as his floor. If he needs to climb on the moving piece (say, on a T piece that's upside down), he'll appear to be climbing in mid-air while the piece continues to fall; once his climbing animation is finished, he'll drop back onto the piece. Moving it too quickly horizontally, rotating it certain ways, and using the hold queue all seem to just make him fall off the piece (nuts - I was hoping that the hold queue thing might actually make him appear on the next piece at the top of the screen for a quick win ).
This mode isn't bothering me as much now that I have some idea of how it works, but it's still pretty annoying to play for more than half an hour at a time. I've been playing on level 10 on local play to try to get used to that (since I rarely make it that far on wi-fi when I'm trying to go as fast as possible), and I had been using the hold to swap pieces when I was about to box or crush my climber, but now I notice you can slide the piece off him and slide it back for him to climb onto, and then often you can rotate him up on the piece too as long as you rotate it the right way. For anyone having a hard time finishing the game, it's probably a good idea to practice on level 10 for a while, because the last few levels seem to play quite a bit differently than the first few.
Yeah, this seems like good advice - once you get about 3/4ths of the way up the screen, the last few levels become pretty tricky. Looks like my estimate on fastest times was overly pessimistic - I see the leader has a time near 5 minutes. I managed to get my time down to around 5:30 - there is really just a ton of luck involved in what starting setups you get. There is also a lot of strategy in getting the guy out of suboptimal starting positions, though. As I practice more, it becomes pretty easy to get a sub 7 minute time - I'm very interested to see where the best scores end up when the tournament ends. --Chris
the way it works is 1st place gets 1000 points and 1000th place gets 1 point. your place does determine the points you get for the round.
I meant in the tournament as a whole; everyone in the top 500 gets the same prize. Apologies for being unclear.
BTW, has anyone noticed the bug that it doesn't show your record time when you're playing, but it seems to just show your time from whatever your last game was? Also, on one game I restarted while playing on level 9 or 10, and it took me back to level 1 with no starting garbage, but the pieces were still falling at the same rate as on level 9 or 10 for some strange reason.
Yes, the "new record" thing is bizarre. It seems like the game remembers how long it took you to reach each level in your best game. Whenever you start beating that pace, or when you reach a higher level than in your old "best" game, your current game becomes your new "best". For example, if you start up a new game, and clear level 1 in less time than it took you to clear level 1 when you set your 10-level record, then the game thinks this is your new best game ever, even if you go ahead and die on level 2. If you then start another game and play very slowly, but reach level 3, then that game's your new best, because you made it to a higher stage. It's awkward, to say the least. And yes, I've also noticed that when you restart, the speed doesn't reset to the proper level 1 speed. If you die and start a new game, this doesn't happen.
You really think I could just skip this round? I know I'm good at shadow and stage racer, so should I just skip?
I'm skipping this round. I'm in England and can't play. Even if I could, Field Climber is just too difficult for me and I think my 19th place result in the first round will carry me through OK.
... not really. But its very likely. Say for the top 500 people they place... 1-500-1-500 2-499-2-499 .. .. .. 499-2-499-2 500-1-500-1 Then each person would have 3004 points, and that would be the minimum. I'm not sure if there's any situations worse than this, but I'd say its very unlikely to happen where all top 500 people score the same amount.
