3DS XL Free Game Promotion

The following is a letter I sent to Nintendo today after some thought about their free game promotion announced on today's nintendo direct.  I submitted it through their support page.

Hi, I'm writing to express my disappointment over the free game promotion announced in today's Nintendo Direct.  Specifically, the detail that it is only available to 3DS XL owners who register their units after February 14th, 2013.  I purchased my unit in November, and have been enjoying it ever since. I understand that this is an incentive designed to encourage new customers to purchase 3DS XL units and Luigi's Mansion both, but it seems awfully unfair to loyal fans who already own the platform and are also planning on purchasing Luigi's Mansion.  Obviously, it's unreasonable to expect Nintendo to give away free downloads of titles such as Mario 3d Land to every XL owner who buys Luigi's Mansion, but in light of this promotion it would be nice if loyal customers such as myself were rewarded in some way.  I'm not sure if this is appropriate forum by which to express my disappointment, so if it is not, could you please forward my message on through the proper channels.  

Thanks very much! I'm otherwise a huge fan of the platform and am especially enjoying Fire Emblem right now! How about a new Kirby's Dream Course game for 3DS? It would be awesome, right? 

Best, 

-Christian

I've never written a letter to a game company before. I feel like such a nerd.   Oh! For more about today's Nintendo Direct be sure to check out the main site, Gaijin Densetsu!

Netrunner : NetDecking Anarch

So I've been playing a bit of Android: Netrunner in my time off.  I thought I'd post some deck lists. First up is a deck I've been enjoying quite a bit. It's probably not the strongest or most consistent runner deck, but it has been working alright for me in casual games.  It's funny, I like card games that have a lot of player interaction but in the end I'm always drawn towards decks that don't give a shit about what your opponent does. This deck is quite a bit like that, with a final goal of digging deep into your opponent's R&D, it doesn't care about their remote servers, and agendas or potential traps.  All it does is try to build an unstoppable running engine to grab those agendas before the corp even has them in the HQ.  Here's the list:

Identity
Noise - Noise is one of two available Anarch identities as of the time of this writing.  The other, Whizzard, is not suited to the strategy that this deck will run. We're going to be heavy on viruses, so we want to use Noise's ability to trash cards into the archive.  Assuming the corp has three 3 point agendas and six 2 point agendas in their deck, that's about a 20% chance of trashing an agenda into the archive every time we install a virus.

Hardware (4)
2x Grimoire
2x Cyberfeeder

Grimoire serves a dual purpose in this deck. It's a much needed +2 MU and also a free virus counter whenever we install a virus, which will help speed along our deck.  Opening hands with grimoire are great, but even if we don't have it from the outset we will have a good way to draw it with Wyldside.

Cyberfeeder helps with this deck's weak economy.  Without Magnum Opus, this deck can have trouble consistently earning bits, so anywhere we can save is good.

Programs (20)
3x Djinn
3x Datasucker
3x Parasite
2x Medium
2x Mimic
2x Yog.0
2x Corroder
2x Wyrm
1x Crypsis







Djinn is one of the key cards in this deck.  It's ability to tutor up viruses is going to have some redundancy with Wyldside, but sometimes you just really need a Datasucker or Medium.  The other advantage of Djinn is that it acts as a nice reserve of spare MU for your datasuckers and mediums, which you'll be needing.  Three copies might be one too many but I'd rather consistently draw into this card.

Datasucker might be the most important card in this deck. One is good, allowing you to efficiently use Mimic and Yog.0 which can't raise their strength.  It also can push parasite over the edge and allow you to blow up pesky ice that's costing you on repeated runs.  Lastly, it is the only really effective way to use Wyrm, which would be prohibitively expensive otherwise.  Getting virus counters on Datasucker is extremely easy, since you can usually run the archives or HQ which tend to be less defended, and then use the accumulated counters on the important R&D run.  I mentioned that one Datasucker is good before, but two is a wrecking machine. Use your Djinn to tutor up the second one and install it for free off of a Cyberfeeder.

Parasite is a pretty straight forward card. play it on annoying ice and force your opponent to waste a turn clearing virus counters or just take the loss.

Medium is crucial to this deck, but I only run two because they're expensive and one tends to be sufficient.  Digging deep into R&D is really the key to this deck, so install it early and start building those counters up.  If you're reveling 4 or 5 cards chances are you'll score an agenda.

Mimic, Yog.0 and Corroder are serviceable ice.  Yog.0 and Mimic are actually quite good once you find a way to lower ice's strength (i.e. datasucker), but Yog.0 basically requires a Modded to install without feeling horrible about it. If you can install all three of these, you're in good shape, otherwise there are some swiss army knives in this deck that can pick up the slack.

Wyrm and Crypsis are those swiss army knives.  Wyrm is bad, but it's cheap and can break any kind of ice so sometimes it'll just have to do. It also has an added synergy with parasite, allowing you to just blow up annoying ice without having to bother paying the expensive 3 bits to break subroutines.  Crypsis is in as a singleton because it is unique in its dual nature as a virus and an icebreaker. It's expenisve to install and cumbersome to use, but sometimes it's nice to be able to tutor it up with a Djinn and start running.

Resources (7)
2x Wyldside
2x Ice Carver
3x Armitage Codebusting
Wyldside is an important engine that this deck needs to draw into money saving event cards.  I lose a click, but basically never have to spend clicks drawing cards once I install this.  It's worth it, and I only run two copies because you can't install more than one anyway.

Ice carver enables a lot of our other programs. It's another unique card, though, and pricey to install so we only run two.






Armitage codebusting is just good click/bit economics.  It gives  us kind of a poor man's magnum opus, which we can't run because our MU are already strained by the tons of viruses we're going to be installing on top of our regular suite of icebreakers. It's got an added benefit of being cheap to install, so it's a good card to help you recover a stash of bits after a particularly expensive run.

Events (14)
2x Sure Gamble
3x Easy Mark
3x Modded
3x The Maker's Eye
2x Stim Hack
1x Deja Vu

Sure gamble, Easy Mark, and Modded serve the same purpose in this deck. All of them are there to save us money.  Modded is worth it even to install 2 cost programs and hardware because it does it all on the same click, albeit at the cost of the click it would have taken you to draw modded. However, card draw should not be a problem if we've landed a Wyldside.  Easy Mark is better than Sure Gamble since you can use it to quickly recover from being broke, however sure gamble does net you the most immediate bits assuming you've got at least 5 to pay its cost, which isn't always the case!

The Maker's Eye works well in this deck, and on against an early undefended R&D you can dig 3 cards deep and hopefully score something.  Late game the effect stacks with Medium so it's still useful.

Stimhack is included as a last ditch card that can sometimes just win the game.  You hate to play it, but when you know the corp is desperately trying to advance an agenda while you're low on bits this card can pull out a surprise run that takes it.

Finally theres a singleton Deja Vu.  This card exists for the sole purpose of recovering parasites from the heap after you blow up ice, or getting back a crypsis that you just had to use without any counters.  You can also use it to grab a resource that's all used up (armitage codebusting) or an important card that the corp trashed while you were tagged (like Wyldside).

Anyway, that's the deck. Try it out and let me know what you think. Like I said, this is probably not as competitive as the more straightforward Shaper/Criminal decks out there, but it has the advantage of not really having to care about what the corp does.  Let them build their remote servers and advance agendas there, you don't need to run those. You want the cards they haven't seen yet.  If they stack a ton of defenses on the R&D, there's nothing stopping you from then running their remote servers.  Next time we'll take a look at my NBN deck.

Hotline Miami Review - Trip On This

I'm not going to pretend that I can sum up what Hotline Miami is better than the game's publisher Devolver Digital, so here it is straight from the horse's mouth:

Gamers will step into the neon-soaked underground of 1980s Miami as bizarre messages on your answering machine seem to be urging you to commit terrible acts of violence against a nameless group of armed thugs. Overflowing with raw brutality and skull crushing close combat, Hotline Miami demands sharp reactions and a creative approach to navigate a gauntlet of 20 multiscreen missions. Wield 35 different weapons, collect 25 game-altering masks, and unveil a dark, surreal storyline that will force you to question your role in this murderous spree.

So there you have it: a nice basic summary of what this game is all about.  Hotline Miami that takes a very barebones story and wraps it around a few simple gameplay mechanics that have some depth in execution, and then presents them all with a perfectly tuned aesthetic that marries each element together into a cohesive package.  Three basic ingredients: Story, game, and presentation combined to make one game that is greater than each of those parts.

The Story in Hotline Miami takes place over the course of spring and summer of 1989.  The majority of it follows the same pattern: phone message, killing spree, brief encounter with a "friend" at the video rental or pizza parlor.  Most every day is like this.  Occasionally your character will meet in a darkened room with three other masked individuals who'll menacingly question him about what he's doing.  Somewhere around the midpoint of the game, it starts to get more and more clear that your character is becoming mentally unhinged or maybe has been all along.  How much of the story is really happening is unclear after playing through it once, and towards the end you'll wind up seeing some things that seem to directly contradict portions of the game you'd previously played through.  When it's done you'll probably have more questions than answers which really works in service of the story.  I'm not sure if there's any real depth to the story, or if it is merely the illusion of depth, but they've managed to make it so that one is just as good as the other.

The game plays mostly as a tactical twin-stick shooter.  Make no mistake though, charging in blindly guns a' blazing will just get you killed most of the time.  You'll need to sneak around and dispatch enemies quietly with melee attacks for as much of each level as possible, since melee kills won't draw attention like guns do.  Unless you're actively holding shift down and moving the cursor towards the edges of the screen, your field of view will be pretty limited. This gives the action kind of an up-close immediacy, forcing you to focus on one room at a time.  Punches, opened doors, and thrown weapons can knock enemies down, taking them out of the action briefly and also making them vulnerable to gruesome execution attacks.  Melee weapons are mostly one hit kills, and guns usually kill in one or two hits as well.  You're as vulnerable as the enemy is, so you'll die a lot, but respawns are instant, allowing you to jump back in the action quickly.

For the most part, the game plays really great. It gives you a limited toolset and then allows you to use it in an almost sand-box fashion to plan your rampage across each level.  It's very tactical and precise, but still occasionally devolves into a furious firefight or all out melee that'll have you improvising like mad in order to survive. It's challenging and unforgiving, but the penalty for failure is basically non-existent, so you won't get frustrated often. That's not to say the game is without any problems, though.  The mask-powers are a cool idea but in practice you'll wind up sticking to one or two masks for the majority of the game.  Boss fights are a frustrating low point that wind up requiring sheer luck and repetition in order to get through.  Enemy AI is also somewhat unpredictable, with some enemies spotting and shooting you from off screen while others don't even flinch when you've busted down the door and emptied a sawed-off shotgun into their buddies on either side.  These are minor gripes though, and added up are only a wrinkle in an otherwise compelling and addictive experience.

Finally, we get to the game's presentation, which in my opinion is the best thing about it.  The music is astounding, and probably the best soundtrack in any game this generation.  It fits the tone of the story, action, and visuals perfectly.  Also, unlike most games set in the 80s, which play on nostalgia with their soundtracks, the music in Hotline Miami manages to fit the setting of the game while feeling incredibly modern and relevant at the same time.  The visuals are another high point.  There's a subtle way that entire levels seem to tilt as you move across them, and the colors are over-saturated, bright, flickering neon things that really enhance the dreamlike narrative. It would've been nice to see more enemy designs, but that's really the only bad thing I can say about a game that otherwise looks and sounds amazing.

So, with all that said, I can recommend Hotline Miami almost without hesitation. I say almost because there might be some people for whom the difficulty level, especially on the boss fights, might be too much of a barrier.  Also, the game is really very short (I managed to finish it in about 3 hours), which might make the $10 price point sting a little.  Unlockable masks, secrets, and going for high scores might add some replay, but without an online leaderboard to compete against I'm not sure how much the average player might get out of that.  If you are at all interested, go ahead and buy it now on for the going rate.  I think it's worth it, and this game is neck and neck with FTL for my game of the year, as well as being one of my favorite games released this generation.