Cute Chronicles – The Bingo Battle

Su-per happy multiplayer battle time!

“Let’s play Pikmin Bingo Battle, it’ll be fun.” That was my boyfriend’s suggestion one afternoon after we decided to spend some time together by playing co-op games. I agreed, thinking that we had worked our way through all of the other multiplayer modes on Pikmin so why not? Maybe it was time, instead of working together, to play against each other.

In Bingo Battle, you get a card with a number of spaces on it, each space labelled with either an enemy or a fruit. You have to find that enemy or fruit and drag it back to your Onion to complete that space – complete a line of spaces in order to win the game.

We opted for the minimum number of starter Pikmin, two characters each to control and the ‘Victory Macaroon’, Pikmin’s version of the ‘Capture the Flag’. If you capture the Macaroon you can still win the game even if you haven’t completed a line.

The game began. After building my army, I stumbled across a strawberry for an easy square to complete and then luckily, other things in that line were very close by! Unfortunately, one thing I needed was a giant Bulborb. I was a bit reckless with my Pikmin but they managed to defeat it and take it back to the Onion. One more square to go before a win!

The map showed the mango I needed… past a batch of Bulborbs, including another giant one stalking around right near the fruit. Oh no! I threw as many Pikmin as I could at the fruit, hoping to be able to sneak it past the Bulborbs. No such luck – the giant one went straight for us. It was then that I noticed my blue macaroon, inching away to one side.

Upon realising that he couldn’t catch up in terms of squares, my boyfriend had opted for the macaroon which I had foolishly left undefended. As fast as I could, I recalled my Pikmin and threw them at the rival army, causing them to drop the macaroon. My boyfriend had been using his character to run rings around the other Bulborbs to distract them. He ran back around to re-command the Pikmin, unfortunately bringing the Bulborbs with him and all hell broke loose. I frantically tried to attack the new threat but while I was busy doing that, he snuck the other character round, grabbed a small contingent of Pikmin and threw them at the macaroon.

No! It couldn’t end like that! I dashed for the mango only to find that I was three Pikmin short. To make matters worse, the Pikmin struggling to lift the mango were snapped up by the Bulborb. The macaroon waddled off as the Bulborbs went back to their business, having eaten everything in sight and the bingo battle was lost.

When the final whistle blew to announce victory for the other side, the stream of expletives that came from my mouth isn’t suitable for Cute Chronicles.

In my opinion, this is when multiplayer is at its best: when everyone involved is in the same room and when the match is won in the end by good gamer skills. It’s a sign of a particularly good experience when you can be simultaneously gutted at the loss but dying with laughter because of how it actually happened.

Still, it’s a good thing that we went back to Pikmin’s co-op modes after that, cheerfully gathering treasure and defeating enemies, all smiles while we worked together towards a common goal. Next time I’ll be more prepared…