February 3, 2010: Puck's Peak and Perfect Pair Solitaire

Perfect Pair Badge Challenge
Hearts on Fire Badge
Visit 7 ports this week! (Reach 7 spaces marked with a star on the game board)
Win this badge plus 3000 Tokens!

This was pretty tricky since Perfect Pair Buddy does not know how to land exactly on a star (that's right: to get this badge you have to land directly on top of a star space, not just pass it!). So I would help the bot by counting how many spaces it was to the next star and if it were, say 6, I'd "guide" the Buddy to get 6 hearts during the game. HOW? Well that was tricky and it's tricky to explain. But basically I had to use common sense and deduce / estimate at the beginning and during the game when to allow the bot to do "perfect pairs" (matching the couple directly across from one another which gives a full heart immediately) and when to use the K heartbreak cards to keep from getting another heart. Once again this requires use of the HINT options so conveniently displayed on the Buddy. Otherwise if you let it autoplay, it'll get too many or too few hearts.

Whew! Well I know that is kind of difficult to understand, but once you start playing you'll see what I mean and pick it up. Good luck! And may you finish faster than I - it took me an hour and 17 minutes but towards the end when I figured out a good routine, I landed on the stars back-to-back-to-back which wrapped things up quickly and finished up with an extra 3,886 tokens.

Puck's Peak Badge Challenge
Mountain Climbing Badge
Reach 30 checkpoints this week! (Checkpoints appear every 100 meters)
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens!

At 1 hour and 11 minutes this badge was another long one to complete (and not very rewarding: only an extra 1,088 tokens) since Play Buddy didn't have an auto. Thankfully I had never played this before so once I figured out that it was a glorified Tetris, it was just a matter of stack, stack, stacking away 'til I hit the marker. It's a lot easier if you're Rank 1 because the game is easier to play since the pieces are blocky. The last 10 of my checkpoints had to be aquired at the next rank and it was noticeably harder and therefore more time consuming (harder because the blocks turn into strange shapes). A pretty captivating game overall though - the hour I played seemed like no time at all!

A tip you might find helpful is to play the 1,000 meter game since you can complete more checkpoints without reaching a new rank (ranks are given after the round is completed), and you only need to build up and the pieces don't have to fit perfectly together. Just keep stacking things on top of eachother - make sure they're sound and stable though... no wobbles! - and you'll reach the levels faster than if you try to neatly fit every piece together like you have to do in Tetris.