RigFit™️ 2 For The ✨New✨ Nintendo 23DS lite(i) XL...

... Featuring Dante From The Devil May Cry Series & Knuckles (also playable on 2DS)

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "the second trojan horse?!"

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "oh come on" (after Tucana fetched Trebuchet for additional bad publicity)

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "that was the world's worst Trick Shot" (after having to break Ansel twice and then a freshly-rezzed Trebuchet on the remote)

by Gwen Amer (Reporter, Games with You)

Who would win: a silly little man with his silly little gun or a suite of trebuchets, archers, a guy with some knives and a scorpion? Well, the new game from Harmonbee Industries aims to answer that question. We caught up with the CEO of Harmonbee Industries at the recent games event Worlds 2 to find out what the fuss was about.

G. Amer: "Harmonbee, hello. Congratulations on your new release, it seems to have really got people excited. Can you tell me a little about it?"

Harmonbee: "Of course! So this is our newest concoction, RigFit 2, in which we challenge Runners (the players) to outspeed a rushy Mafia-like conglomerate called The Outfit. This game differs from others you may have seen however, as it is of the rigshooter genre. Rather than focusing on dispatching soldiers to kill the Runner, we infect the Runner's own rig so that the tools they use to get in are rendered worthless."

GA: "As our readers will probably know, this is in fact a sequel to the original RigFit game published a little over a year ago, in which Runners had to again outspeed The Outfit. This is a particularly interesting release because Harmonbee Industries didn't make the original, but somehow acquired the rights from the original publishers, what were they called again?"

HB: "QtM. No idea what it stands for, probably Quote the Megaman or something."

GA: "Anyway, how did you acquire these rights?"

HB: "The rights were obtained legally and without force."

GA: "... right. Anyway, what are the differences between this and its predecessor?"

HB: "Excellent question. We've made a number of improvements over the original to increase its difficulty. Let's quickly go through some marketable bullet points:

• We've included a few additional sentries, since we found that players found those the most difficult to get past.
• We noticed that players were richer in game, so cut most of the Valentão and the single Corporate Troubleshooter. These relied on The Outfit having more money than the player, which was not always the case.
• We added some more ambushes, to disincentivise players from running. We noticed that players were more able to get into servers, which meant they were able to defuse the Corp's plans easily.
• We also noticed that we needed to be able to tax players more, as to make them vulnerable to the key offensive piece in The Outfit's arsenal, Trojan Horse. We therefore added a must-trash piece in the form of Crisium Grid, as well as more Ganked! to make absolutely sure they had to spend even more resources to get through our defenses."

GA: "Intriguing, these all sound like relatively minor changes that don't warrant a full release."

HB: "I assure you, the results speak for themselves. Well okay they can't talk so I will: none of our players beat the game during the Crown of Servers playtest event, including a Lat player. There was one tie against a 419 player, but given enough time The Outfit would have won, given that most of the Runner's rig had already been rendered useless."

GA: "Those results are certainly impressive. Can you talk me through the strategies employed by the game that lead to these results?"

HB: "We, like in previous work, consider three psychographic groups of players: Shaper, Criminal and Anarch. The game employs different strategies for these different groups. Following on from the previous RigFit game, our strategy against Criminal and Anarch rigs usually involves a mass of rigshooting tools which are nigh-impossible to avoid all of. The Shaper groups tend to be better at bringing back tools after they have been trashed, which can cause us problems. We take an approach as popularised by The Last Best Outfit by staying at four bad publicity - bad publicity being a catchup mechanic to make sure that players feel like they aren't going to lose - to make sure our defenses stay taxing."

GA: "And finally, for those savvy gamers trying to beat RigFit 2 - do you have a short, marketable tip to help them win?"

HB: "Just touch agendas."