- You absolutely want as many people as possible for this game. After each race, the people you've StreetPassed will make you a new booster that you'll use for the next race, and having more people working on it means it'll have higher stats. Make use of the Plaza Update 5.0's new "Send to Line" feature if you're at a convention or in Japan or something to make sure you've got ten, and if you just can't get to ten, top off with Play Coins.
- The stats of the boosters you get are dependent, somehow, on the properties of the Miis that make it. All I've been able to notice so far is that short Miis affect its Speed stat, which is arguably the most important stat later on in the game.
- Speaking of later on in the game, as you progress, you'll notice that some of the objectives that you need to complete are "Finish in X seconds.". These times get a lot more challenging to beat towards the end of the game, and it can be very frustrating to keep getting boosters that raise your Control or Performance when all you want is Speed.
- Getting Excellents on all the corners is your number one priority. It's key to getting fast laps and fast completion times. It should make sense, too, if you're not cornering as well as you could be, you're not going to be going very fast. It should go without saying that crashing is to be avoided at all costs, though some corners are notoriously difficult to avoid crashing on, and the camera can exacerbate this, regardless of which setting you use.
- Make heavy use of the ability to practice a track before actually racing your rivals. This will help you get the timing down on those speed boosts and corners. If you're having trouble beating a time objective, do Ghost Races, otherwise, just turn laps on the track to learn it.
- Don't worry about the point requirements for each license level, there are far more points available. You can always replay any track, any time you want, and get more points. This effectively makes there be infinite points. Once you beat the game, the post-game enables extra numbered license ranks for you to obtain, all the way up to S 99, as well as a "Random Track" selection that gives an experience bonus.
- There's honestly not much else I can say. It's all in how well you've learned each track. Since the actual vehicle you're using doesn't matter at all, I can't suggest anything track-specific. The game suggests specific booster stats for specific tracks, but you have no control over what you're going to get, so I just ignore it and race whichever track I want.
Sunday, January 22, 2017
Sliding through Slot Car Rivals
Slot Car Rivals is definitely the most skill-based game of the third bundle, and that's saying something since all you do is hold a button and occasionally release and re-press it. Manipulation potential is fairly low, so here come the gameplay tips.
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Monopolizing Market Crashers
Market Crashers is easily the shortest of the third bundle of games, and both the concept and gameplay are simple enough to reduce the amount of manipulation to basically nonexistent levels. So instead, here's some gameplay tips.
- You absolutely want as many people as you can get for this game. Having more analysts available will give you more accurate information about what each stock is going to do, both before trading and while trading. Make use of the Plaza Update 5.0's new "Send to Line" feature if you're at a convention or in Japan or something to make sure you've got ten, and if you just can't get to ten, top off with Play Coins.
- The mantra to remember while trading is indeed "buy low, sell high". It's the only way to actually make money.
- While you can do longer-term investments in this game, I don't recommend it. Keep your portfolio empty between sessions and just do Day Trading. The stocks fluctuate way too much for long-term investments to be worth anything at all.
- The ability to buy outside of Day Trading can still be useful though. If your analysts say a stock's value is going to rise, you can get a bit of extra cash by having shares of multiple stocks purchased while you actively trade one company. You can also buy some shares of the company you intend to trade during Day Trading, so that you have something to sell on that first peak.
- Buy the new products as they come out, but make sure to leave yourself enough money to continue trading stocks when doing so.
- Never ever sell the products. Just keep them. They still count towards your total assets, but they represent assets you can never lose, except voluntarily if you're absolutely strapped for cash and have no other choice.
- While the ultimate goal of this game is to become as rich as the guy they tell you about in the beginning, you get the second hat much, much earlier than that point. If you don't really find this game to be fun, then keep in mind that it doesn't take very long to get the hat.
- Ace Trader can be difficult to obtain for a given company, as it doesn't seem to be dependent on a specific threshold that I've been able to notice. All I can say is that if you do the "buy low, sell high" thing very aggressively, you stand a really good chance of getting Ace Trader.
- The more you trade a specific company's stock, the more of it you'll be able to buy or sell in one press of a button. This amount is entirely company-specific, so if you neglect one, you'll be buying a smaller number of shares of it the next time you trade it. This can actually be useful if you run low on money, since that smaller number of shares will cost you less.
- Don't ask me about the weird graph with the boxes and lines, I don't understand it either. Just use the simpler one, it hasn't failed me yet.
Friday, January 20, 2017
Marauding in Mii Trek
The exploration game of the third bundle, Mii Trek has plenty of secrets to uncover. For instance, you don't actually need to explore everywhere or leave no stone unturned in order to complete the game.
The first thing you'll probably notice is that you can accomplish precisely nothing in this game by touching the touchscreen. I don't know why this design choice was made, but we've all got to live with it.
The distance you get to cover is determined by the step counts of the Miis you StreetPass, however, there's a minimum of 500 steps. Special Miis will give you a hefty 30000 steps to work with. You absolutely want as many people as possible, to maximize the amount you'll be able to get done. Make use of the Plaza Update 5.0's new "Send to Line" feature if you're at a convention or in Japan or something to make sure you've got ten, and if you just can't get to ten, top off with Play Coins.
Due to having a limited distance that you can possibly cover in each play session, that changes wildly between play sessions, this game can take a while. It's a toss-up between this and Feed Mii as to which is actually longer.
Whenever going into a new area, your first priority is finding the Ancient Compass. This will give you an arrow that always points at the red X that marks the location of the chest containing the artifact you're looking for. The Ancient Compass can be found in one of the backpacks in the area, so go to them before anything else. If you end up at a chest, just choose to not open it. The game's nice like that.
Next priority is getting all of the backpacks. Among other things, backpacks can contain Tranquilizer Darts, which are necessary to pacify various wild beasts you'll come across. If you're out of them, a couple of the Miis in your party will get scared off and you won't be able to explore as far in this session. Since most of the animal locations are marked on the map, just try your best to avoid them in order to conserve darts.
Another item you can get from the backpacks is a vial of water. It can either be stagnant water, which makes your steps count down faster, or water from the fountain of youth, which makes your steps count down slower. It's a 50/50 shot, and I always take it. There's always more StreetPasses and Play Coins to be had, so why not?
Next priority is the camera icons. At these locations, a shadow will pass by. Press A when it's in the middle of the screen to take a picture. Hopefully, if you're lucky, you'll get a picture you haven't already gotten before. I tried to go for completionism here, but I ended up giving up in favor of just getting through the game. The RNG on the pictures is almost as frustratingly bad as Ultimate Angler's RNG.
Occasionally you'll encounter an obstacle that requires a specific input to pass. Some of these are labelled on the map, others aren't. Pay attention to the top screen, as it tells you what to press. Doing it right means you lose no steps or explorers in the process. Get it wrong and you get penalized.
Once you've gotten all the backpacks and pictures, head to the red X that the Ancient Compass is pointing to and get your artifact. Congratulations, the rest of the steps you had for that session are effectively wasted. But next time, you get to explore an entirely new area!
I hope this post helps all you intrepid explorers out there have fulfilling expeditions!
The first thing you'll probably notice is that you can accomplish precisely nothing in this game by touching the touchscreen. I don't know why this design choice was made, but we've all got to live with it.
The distance you get to cover is determined by the step counts of the Miis you StreetPass, however, there's a minimum of 500 steps. Special Miis will give you a hefty 30000 steps to work with. You absolutely want as many people as possible, to maximize the amount you'll be able to get done. Make use of the Plaza Update 5.0's new "Send to Line" feature if you're at a convention or in Japan or something to make sure you've got ten, and if you just can't get to ten, top off with Play Coins.
Due to having a limited distance that you can possibly cover in each play session, that changes wildly between play sessions, this game can take a while. It's a toss-up between this and Feed Mii as to which is actually longer.
Whenever going into a new area, your first priority is finding the Ancient Compass. This will give you an arrow that always points at the red X that marks the location of the chest containing the artifact you're looking for. The Ancient Compass can be found in one of the backpacks in the area, so go to them before anything else. If you end up at a chest, just choose to not open it. The game's nice like that.
Next priority is getting all of the backpacks. Among other things, backpacks can contain Tranquilizer Darts, which are necessary to pacify various wild beasts you'll come across. If you're out of them, a couple of the Miis in your party will get scared off and you won't be able to explore as far in this session. Since most of the animal locations are marked on the map, just try your best to avoid them in order to conserve darts.
Another item you can get from the backpacks is a vial of water. It can either be stagnant water, which makes your steps count down faster, or water from the fountain of youth, which makes your steps count down slower. It's a 50/50 shot, and I always take it. There's always more StreetPasses and Play Coins to be had, so why not?
Next priority is the camera icons. At these locations, a shadow will pass by. Press A when it's in the middle of the screen to take a picture. Hopefully, if you're lucky, you'll get a picture you haven't already gotten before. I tried to go for completionism here, but I ended up giving up in favor of just getting through the game. The RNG on the pictures is almost as frustratingly bad as Ultimate Angler's RNG.
Occasionally you'll encounter an obstacle that requires a specific input to pass. Some of these are labelled on the map, others aren't. Pay attention to the top screen, as it tells you what to press. Doing it right means you lose no steps or explorers in the process. Get it wrong and you get penalized.
Once you've gotten all the backpacks and pictures, head to the red X that the Ancient Compass is pointing to and get your artifact. Congratulations, the rest of the steps you had for that session are effectively wasted. But next time, you get to explore an entirely new area!
I hope this post helps all you intrepid explorers out there have fulfilling expeditions!
Thursday, January 19, 2017
NOPE-ing out of Ninja Launcher
Ninja Launcher is definitely the turd of the bunch in the third bundle of StreetPass Plaza games, and while manipulation potential is as low as the game's average session length, there are some gameplay tips to be had.
I'll keep this quick, you know, like a ninja:
I'll keep this quick, you know, like a ninja:
- You absolutely want as many people as possible. The number of people you have is directly related to your result attack power, as well as the amount of time you have to set up your powerups. Make use of the Plaza Update 5.0's new "Send to Line" feature if you're at a convention or in Japan or something to make sure you've got ten, and if you just can't get to ten, top off with Play Coins.
- Do a test shot immediately. Sometimes one or two of the Miis will start out very close to the correct position, or even already in the correct position. This will label them so you know where you need to turn your attention to first.
- Don't do test shots too often. The clock still ticks down during the test shot.
- Get everything to silver stars before concentrating on gold stars. This will keep your scroll combo up and ensure you get the critical strike at the end, which doubles your attack power.
- You only have to clear Novice difficulty once. You get the Fox Hat at that point. If you dislike the game as much as I dislike the game, you're done with it at this point and you never have to touch it again.
- You can move a bunch of Miis at the same time, as the one you're currently moving will push any others it comes into contact with. This comes in handy if all of their items are around the same altitude.
- If you can momentarily divert your attention to the lower screen, you can switch to a Mii that's several Miis away much faster than by pressing or repeatedly. Since you have so little time to work with, you need all the speed you can get.
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
Finagling Feed Mii
My second favorite of the third bundle of StreetPass Plaza games, Feed Mii has some possible manipulation and useful things you can do to make the game easier.
You want as many Miis as possible for this game. Make use of the Plaza Update 5.0's new "Send to Line" feature if you're at a convention or in Japan or something to make sure you've got ten, and if you just can't get to ten, top off with Play Coins.
Also, a word to the wise: If you've hacked your StreetPass Mii to make it a Special Mii, you'll need to switch it to another Mii that isn't a Special Mii before starting this game. It will crash if your StreetPass Mii is a Special Mii.
This game is probably the longest of the bunch. Either it or Mii Trek. Here, the heroes will go through both Find Mii 1 and Find Mii 2 before you get your hat, and while Find Mii 1 is relatively short, Find Mii 2 is much longer.
The ingredients you get are dependent on the shirt colors of the Miis you receive. It is entirely possible for the Miis you receive to request a dish for which you don't have all the ingredients. Because of this, if you have the recipe, you should always check it before you start cooking, to make sure you've got everything. When this happens, you want to change the recipe. This will lower the quality of the dish to three stars, but you will be guaranteed to have the ingredients for the new recipe. Also, the review in the Legendary Herald will say "Why'd they change my order?" when you change the recipe. If you have all the ingredients, there's absolutely no reason to change the recipe.
If the Miis request something you don't have the recipe for, search for the name of the dish on Google. Not even joking here. All of the dishes in this game are real dishes, just with the recipes simplified. Looking it up should give you a good idea of what to select. Also, if it seems like it would make sense, add Onion. Onion is in a lot of the recipes in this game. In fact, there's only one recipe in the game that will fail if you include it, and that's Flan.
If you have multiple systems and a lot of patience, you can make Miis with all the various shirt colors and StreetPass them all over one by one to have full control of the ingredients you receive, but this is incredibly tedious and takes a very long time. It's generally a lot faster to just throw Play Coins at the game, or find a nice comfortable place to sit at a convention that's near a high-traffic area and cook for the other attendees as the StreetPasses roll in.
When exiting the game, or before dumping your next load of Play Coins into it, go into the Fridge (press on the main menu) and make sure your fridge contains five unique ingredients. This will give you the best possible chance of having an ingredient that the Miis don't give you.
Next up, and possibly the best thing you can do for yourself, is to use this Google spreadsheet and a ton of play coins (I hope you've got homebrew... The Nintendo 3DS Sound entrypoint, called soundhax, is free and easy to set up; then after dropping the homebrew starter kit on your SD card, just grab and use MrCheeze's play coin setter! Alternatively, if you have JKSM, you can select Extras from the main menu to get Play Coins) to completely fill out your recipe book using the Culinary Research mode. Doing this will mean you'll always have the complete recipe available to check when playing the game, which is incredibly useful since the ingredients for things aren't always obvious. Going completionist and getting everything Jumbo is completely optional, but if you do it, you can toggle the picture of any given complete dish back and forth between the Artisan and Jumbo versions when looking at it in the Recipe Book. Every recipe that gives four stars or more can be made Jumbo, which happens to be the vast majority of them, so you have a fair amount of work ahead of you should you be a completionist like me.
There is one issue you'll encounter in filling out your recipe book, namely, some of the recipes require the exact same set of ingredients. When you encounter this, inspect the two recipes in the spreadsheet carefully. In the case of Flan and Egg Tarts, there is an additional ingredient that will work with one recipe but cause the other to fail. Well, in Culinary Research mode, you can't fail, so adding that extra ingredient will force the game to cough up the recipe you're going for. This luxury isn't available with Onion Rings and Onion Bread, though, so it's just a crapshoot as to which one it'll give you. All I can say is to keep trying until it gives in. You don't have to worry about this when cooking a request, as the game will always give you the requested dish if you combine the correct ingredients.
Last but not least, to make sure you get optimum progress, you'll want to make Jumbo versions of dishes whenever possible. This is very simple to do, just add one extra of any ingredient that's required for the recipe. For instance, let's say the Miis request Chicken Curry, which requires Chicken, Rice, Potato, and Onion, and for simplicity's sake, you've got all the ingredients. Adding all four required ingredients and then one additional Chicken, Rice, Potato, or Onion will make it Jumbo. Jumbo dishes allow the Miis to deal more damage or explore farther, and will decrease the number of meals you'll have to make to get through the game.
I hope this post helps you out. This game is really fun, but I can see the intended method of trial and error getting frustrating quickly, unless you enjoy trial and error in your video games.
You want as many Miis as possible for this game. Make use of the Plaza Update 5.0's new "Send to Line" feature if you're at a convention or in Japan or something to make sure you've got ten, and if you just can't get to ten, top off with Play Coins.
Also, a word to the wise: If you've hacked your StreetPass Mii to make it a Special Mii, you'll need to switch it to another Mii that isn't a Special Mii before starting this game. It will crash if your StreetPass Mii is a Special Mii.
This game is probably the longest of the bunch. Either it or Mii Trek. Here, the heroes will go through both Find Mii 1 and Find Mii 2 before you get your hat, and while Find Mii 1 is relatively short, Find Mii 2 is much longer.
The ingredients you get are dependent on the shirt colors of the Miis you receive. It is entirely possible for the Miis you receive to request a dish for which you don't have all the ingredients. Because of this, if you have the recipe, you should always check it before you start cooking, to make sure you've got everything. When this happens, you want to change the recipe. This will lower the quality of the dish to three stars, but you will be guaranteed to have the ingredients for the new recipe. Also, the review in the Legendary Herald will say "Why'd they change my order?" when you change the recipe. If you have all the ingredients, there's absolutely no reason to change the recipe.
If the Miis request something you don't have the recipe for, search for the name of the dish on Google. Not even joking here. All of the dishes in this game are real dishes, just with the recipes simplified. Looking it up should give you a good idea of what to select. Also, if it seems like it would make sense, add Onion. Onion is in a lot of the recipes in this game. In fact, there's only one recipe in the game that will fail if you include it, and that's Flan.
If you have multiple systems and a lot of patience, you can make Miis with all the various shirt colors and StreetPass them all over one by one to have full control of the ingredients you receive, but this is incredibly tedious and takes a very long time. It's generally a lot faster to just throw Play Coins at the game, or find a nice comfortable place to sit at a convention that's near a high-traffic area and cook for the other attendees as the StreetPasses roll in.
When exiting the game, or before dumping your next load of Play Coins into it, go into the Fridge (press on the main menu) and make sure your fridge contains five unique ingredients. This will give you the best possible chance of having an ingredient that the Miis don't give you.
Next up, and possibly the best thing you can do for yourself, is to use this Google spreadsheet and a ton of play coins (I hope you've got homebrew... The Nintendo 3DS Sound entrypoint, called soundhax, is free and easy to set up; then after dropping the homebrew starter kit on your SD card, just grab and use MrCheeze's play coin setter! Alternatively, if you have JKSM, you can select Extras from the main menu to get Play Coins) to completely fill out your recipe book using the Culinary Research mode. Doing this will mean you'll always have the complete recipe available to check when playing the game, which is incredibly useful since the ingredients for things aren't always obvious. Going completionist and getting everything Jumbo is completely optional, but if you do it, you can toggle the picture of any given complete dish back and forth between the Artisan and Jumbo versions when looking at it in the Recipe Book. Every recipe that gives four stars or more can be made Jumbo, which happens to be the vast majority of them, so you have a fair amount of work ahead of you should you be a completionist like me.
There is one issue you'll encounter in filling out your recipe book, namely, some of the recipes require the exact same set of ingredients. When you encounter this, inspect the two recipes in the spreadsheet carefully. In the case of Flan and Egg Tarts, there is an additional ingredient that will work with one recipe but cause the other to fail. Well, in Culinary Research mode, you can't fail, so adding that extra ingredient will force the game to cough up the recipe you're going for. This luxury isn't available with Onion Rings and Onion Bread, though, so it's just a crapshoot as to which one it'll give you. All I can say is to keep trying until it gives in. You don't have to worry about this when cooking a request, as the game will always give you the requested dish if you combine the correct ingredients.
Last but not least, to make sure you get optimum progress, you'll want to make Jumbo versions of dishes whenever possible. This is very simple to do, just add one extra of any ingredient that's required for the recipe. For instance, let's say the Miis request Chicken Curry, which requires Chicken, Rice, Potato, and Onion, and for simplicity's sake, you've got all the ingredients. Adding all four required ingredients and then one additional Chicken, Rice, Potato, or Onion will make it Jumbo. Jumbo dishes allow the Miis to deal more damage or explore farther, and will decrease the number of meals you'll have to make to get through the game.
I hope this post helps you out. This game is really fun, but I can see the intended method of trial and error getting frustrating quickly, unless you enjoy trial and error in your video games.
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Wii Fit U, eight months in
Fuck yeah, 100 pounds down and at my Scientifically Determined Ideal Weight™, which is 153 pounds. In other words, I'm at my goal weight. Since reaching this weight, which totally happened at MAGFest, I've been content to stay in the ballpark of it. Ideally I'd like that ballpark to be a bit under 100 pounds down, just so I can always truthfully say that I've lost 100 pounds, but if I can be this weight 20-30 years from now, I'll take it.
As always, more after the break.
As always, more after the break.
Thursday, January 12, 2017
MAGFest 15
This MAGFest, like many before it, was preceded by some anxiety on my part. I can't quite explain why it happens. I enjoy MAGFest, but the closer it gets, the less I want to actually go to it. Something about packing up and travelling there just feels wrong, and I can't put my finger on it. In the beginning, this started with the feeling that going to MAGFest was some sort of impulse thing that I did. You know, like that day was just like any other and I decided "you know what? I'm gonna drive 150-200 miles north now!".
The unusual part was that the anxiety was still there after getting to MAGFest. Usually it disappears instantly, but it took a day this time. Not sure why.
Anyway, with that out of the way, the usual daily summary is after the break.
The unusual part was that the anxiety was still there after getting to MAGFest. Usually it disappears instantly, but it took a day this time. Not sure why.
Anyway, with that out of the way, the usual daily summary is after the break.
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
StreetPass Mii Plaza: Bundle 3
I'm late to this, because reasons. Not going to go into them, they're mostly irrelevant anyway. Let's get going, shall we?
Along with StreetPass Mii Plaza Version 5.0 is a third bundle of five games, this time with a unique opportunity: two of them are part of a special deal where you can pick one of them to get for free! The remaining four games are $3, with a special bundle price of $9. No discount for owning either of the other two bundles, sadly.
Each game has two hats and a speech bubble, but the Plaza update adds no other outfits or speech bubbles, which is actually kind of nice since it eliminates Plaza Tickets and a lot of mostly pointless busywork entirely. The hats and speech bubble are given out in a consistent manner with the rest of the paid Plaza games: speech bubble and one hat for buying the game, and the second hat upon beating the game.
The titles this time are Slot Car Rivals, Market Crashers, Feed Mii, Ninja Launcher, and Mii Trek. Rather than reviewing them in order, I'm going to tier them and review them that way. The two you get to choose between for your free game are Slot Car Rivals and Market Crashers.
Good Tier
Slot Car Rivals
This is a racing game, but made incredibly simple so anyone can play it. You can make any type of car you want, at any time, at no in-game cost, and customize its look to suit your tastes, again for no in-game cost. The type of vehicle you're driving has no bearing on its performance, so go nuts. The people you StreetPass are your competitors. To race, your slot car needs a "booster", and you get a fairly basic one to start out. However, each booster is only good for one race. After each race, the people you StreetPass all get together and make a new booster for you. Special Miis make the resulting booster's stats higher.
During each race, there are features on the course to pay attention to, perhaps most notably red corners. You'll have to release the accelerator during these to avoid crashing, but if you press it again at the right time, you get a boost out of the corner. There are also green charge areas followed by a rainbow area that let you boost over a jump if you keep the accelerator down in the green area and release it in the rainbow area, and blue boost areas that rocket you forwards ridiculously quickly.
You can also practice on any course you've raced on before, which is simultaneously nice and a small bit annoying. The annoying bit is that you have to race on a course without ever having seen it before, thus using your booster, before you're able to practice that course. It's not a hamstring on the game at all, just a minor complaint.
There are plenty of courses to unlock and choose from, with conditions to be met in order to progress through the game. It all seems to be fair and genuine challenge. Also, you'll unlock various special cars as you progress, these have all sorts of designs ranging from serious to silly. Again, your choice of car does not matter at all, so go right ahead and make the most ridiculous thing you can think of.
This is my personal recommendation for your choice of free game. It's fun and it actually makes me want to dump tons of play coins into continuing to play it. If you end up getting Market Crashers as your free game instead, this one is definitely worth the purchase.
Feed Mii
Remember Find Mii, where the people you StreetPass are heroes, rescuing their king (your Mii) from monsters? Well, heroes gotta eat, and in this game, you're the chef at the restaurant where they eat before they go fight. How well they do depends on your cooking, so cook up a good mess of food!
Basically, everyone gives you an ingredient, and the game suggests a recipe. Combine things together that you think would go in that recipe (or cheat and look it up on Google) and cook it up. You'll get a rating depending on how good your result was, and then you'll get news on the heroes' progress.
However, you're not done there. Your restaurant's fridge has limited space, you see. It can only store five ingredients, and you're likely to have more than five. After cooking for the heroes, you can now do culinary research. This lets you refine recipes you've discovered, make them better, or come up with new recipes. You can even use play coins to buy more ingredients.
This one is pretty fun, and I could spend a lot of time and play coins in the culinary research portion just cooking random things and unlocking all the recipes. Worth the purchase? Absolutely.
Surprisingly-better-than-I-thought-it-would-be Tier
Market Crashers
"A stock trading game? Oooookaaaaaay..." was my exact thought going into this one. I thought for sure that it'd be the shoe-in for the "Dud of this Bundle" award. However, I was wrong.
In Market Crashers, you are indeed trading stocks. The people you StreetPass are your analysts, and having more of them means you get more accurate information about what the stock's price is about to do. The only thing you ever need to worry about is "buy low, sell high". That's it. It's that simple.
As you make money, you can buy products from the companies whose stocks you're trading. Doing this has two benefits: One, the cost of the item is still counted towards your total assets (and thus your game progress), but can never be lost without you selling the item. Two, it makes that company more likely to have good news during trading, which makes their stock do better, and if you play your cards right, you can make a ton of money.
The goal is just that: make a ton of money. The game actually has a semi-decent glossary of terms in it, and it tries its hardest to explain one of the graphs it uses, but I'm still lost when I look at it.
I would still recommend picking Slot Car Rivals over this as your free game. However, don't overlook this one, it's surprisingly good, and definitely worth purchasing.
Okay Tier
Mii Trek
Explore a jungle, find artifacts, take wildlife pictures. The people you StreetPass are your explorers, and their combined step counts decide how far you get to travel. Luckily, there seems to be a minimum number of steps that a Mii will give you, so you'll always have at least 500 steps from anyone you get.
There are some things you'll need to be aware of, though. Sometimes you'll come across a rock or a thicket that will need to be dealt with. You deal with this by mashing A within a short time frame. If you're not ready for this, you won't be able to do it in time and will lose out on progress.
Also, when you find wildlife to take pictures of, the game is kind of vague on how it works. It just says "Press A!" and expects you to know what to do. Basically, you have to wait for a shadow to fly across the screen, and press A while it's on screen. Then you get your picture. Too early or too late, and you fail.
Along your journey, you'll occasionally encounter wildlife that needs to be dealt with using tranquilizer darts. This isn't too difficult, just move the crosshair over the wildlife in question until you've got it positioned over the red dot, and press A to fire. It doesn't move, so as long as you position your shot correctly, everything works as intended.
Lastly, and this is a big negative for a game about exploring: Once you find the main artifact that you're looking for in an area, that's it, you're done. All the rest of the steps you'd gotten are wasted. You don't get to go to any of the photo-op areas or any of the places where you can recover items from packs you find on the ground. You don't get to use the rest of the steps in the next location. It's kind of a letdown for a game that's about exploration. Why cut off my exploration before I've fully explored the area? Why can't I go back to an area and explore it further to get things I missed?
Once you've exhausted your steps, your Mii sets up camp and you get a summary of what you found, including a second chance to check out any artifacts you found or pictures you took.
It's a neat game, but if you're not just buying all of them, you may wish to divert your funds towards one of the titles higher up on this list before buying this one.
Shit Tier
Ninja Launcher
The premise of this one is hilarious, which is unfortunate given that the actual game falls flat on its ass. Your Mii is a ninja, who needs to defeat a monster on the other side of the screen. To get to it, you're shooting your Mii out of a cannon. During your Mii's flight, you can grab powerups to your weapon, helm, or armor to let you do things better. The people you StreetPass will fly kites with these powerups attached, and before firing the cannon, you have to position them along the path your Mii will travel. If it's done right, you get an awesome cutscene of your Mii powering up and then taking down the foe.
See those words? "If it's done right"? Yeah. Let me talk about that, because there's the aforementioned critical problem that makes this game fall flat on its ass.
You don't get enough time to position the powerups. Even though you get extra time for each Mii you StreetPassed, it's still not enough. For the first two stages, you get a flight path guide that's immensely helpful, but then it goes away and the nightmare begins. Good luck getting more than about five powerups on each cannon shot after that. To make things worse, some locations are windy and will take valuable time making sure you can't position anyone just so they can have gusts of wind. It's super annoying, and doesn't add to the gameplay one bit.
You know what else? Once you fire your shot and get whatever result you get, that's it. It's over. The three games at the top of this list have some sort of extra content you can access and extend the gameplay beyond the "let's do things with the Miis you StreetPassed!" portion of the game, but the two down at this end of the list just end and that's it. Mii Trek "just ending" when you run out of steps is reasonable, because you make camp at that point, which is completely plausible for an explorer to do. But this one? Let me buy longer cannon fuses, allow me to use play coins to get the shot path guide past the FIRST TWO STAGES OF THE GAME, maybe also an upgrade to make the Miis start out closer to having their kites in the shot's path? I dunno. It needs something to extend the gameplay, or just to make it better.
If you're buying the games from this bundle one by one, you may wish to give this one a miss. It's definitely the turd of the bunch, which I guess makes sense given the tier name.
Overall
Three (or four) out of five ain't bad, right? Plus, you can get one of those three (or four) for free. Also, the Plaza 5.0 update has other features I haven't covered that are definitely worth updating for, so, there's that.
Along with StreetPass Mii Plaza Version 5.0 is a third bundle of five games, this time with a unique opportunity: two of them are part of a special deal where you can pick one of them to get for free! The remaining four games are $3, with a special bundle price of $9. No discount for owning either of the other two bundles, sadly.
Each game has two hats and a speech bubble, but the Plaza update adds no other outfits or speech bubbles, which is actually kind of nice since it eliminates Plaza Tickets and a lot of mostly pointless busywork entirely. The hats and speech bubble are given out in a consistent manner with the rest of the paid Plaza games: speech bubble and one hat for buying the game, and the second hat upon beating the game.
The titles this time are Slot Car Rivals, Market Crashers, Feed Mii, Ninja Launcher, and Mii Trek. Rather than reviewing them in order, I'm going to tier them and review them that way. The two you get to choose between for your free game are Slot Car Rivals and Market Crashers.
Good Tier
Slot Car Rivals
This is a racing game, but made incredibly simple so anyone can play it. You can make any type of car you want, at any time, at no in-game cost, and customize its look to suit your tastes, again for no in-game cost. The type of vehicle you're driving has no bearing on its performance, so go nuts. The people you StreetPass are your competitors. To race, your slot car needs a "booster", and you get a fairly basic one to start out. However, each booster is only good for one race. After each race, the people you StreetPass all get together and make a new booster for you. Special Miis make the resulting booster's stats higher.
During each race, there are features on the course to pay attention to, perhaps most notably red corners. You'll have to release the accelerator during these to avoid crashing, but if you press it again at the right time, you get a boost out of the corner. There are also green charge areas followed by a rainbow area that let you boost over a jump if you keep the accelerator down in the green area and release it in the rainbow area, and blue boost areas that rocket you forwards ridiculously quickly.
You can also practice on any course you've raced on before, which is simultaneously nice and a small bit annoying. The annoying bit is that you have to race on a course without ever having seen it before, thus using your booster, before you're able to practice that course. It's not a hamstring on the game at all, just a minor complaint.
There are plenty of courses to unlock and choose from, with conditions to be met in order to progress through the game. It all seems to be fair and genuine challenge. Also, you'll unlock various special cars as you progress, these have all sorts of designs ranging from serious to silly. Again, your choice of car does not matter at all, so go right ahead and make the most ridiculous thing you can think of.
This is my personal recommendation for your choice of free game. It's fun and it actually makes me want to dump tons of play coins into continuing to play it. If you end up getting Market Crashers as your free game instead, this one is definitely worth the purchase.
Feed Mii
Remember Find Mii, where the people you StreetPass are heroes, rescuing their king (your Mii) from monsters? Well, heroes gotta eat, and in this game, you're the chef at the restaurant where they eat before they go fight. How well they do depends on your cooking, so cook up a good mess of food!
Basically, everyone gives you an ingredient, and the game suggests a recipe. Combine things together that you think would go in that recipe (or cheat and look it up on Google) and cook it up. You'll get a rating depending on how good your result was, and then you'll get news on the heroes' progress.
However, you're not done there. Your restaurant's fridge has limited space, you see. It can only store five ingredients, and you're likely to have more than five. After cooking for the heroes, you can now do culinary research. This lets you refine recipes you've discovered, make them better, or come up with new recipes. You can even use play coins to buy more ingredients.
This one is pretty fun, and I could spend a lot of time and play coins in the culinary research portion just cooking random things and unlocking all the recipes. Worth the purchase? Absolutely.
Surprisingly-better-than-I-thought-it-would-be Tier
Market Crashers
"A stock trading game? Oooookaaaaaay..." was my exact thought going into this one. I thought for sure that it'd be the shoe-in for the "Dud of this Bundle" award. However, I was wrong.
In Market Crashers, you are indeed trading stocks. The people you StreetPass are your analysts, and having more of them means you get more accurate information about what the stock's price is about to do. The only thing you ever need to worry about is "buy low, sell high". That's it. It's that simple.
As you make money, you can buy products from the companies whose stocks you're trading. Doing this has two benefits: One, the cost of the item is still counted towards your total assets (and thus your game progress), but can never be lost without you selling the item. Two, it makes that company more likely to have good news during trading, which makes their stock do better, and if you play your cards right, you can make a ton of money.
The goal is just that: make a ton of money. The game actually has a semi-decent glossary of terms in it, and it tries its hardest to explain one of the graphs it uses, but I'm still lost when I look at it.
I would still recommend picking Slot Car Rivals over this as your free game. However, don't overlook this one, it's surprisingly good, and definitely worth purchasing.
Okay Tier
Mii Trek
Explore a jungle, find artifacts, take wildlife pictures. The people you StreetPass are your explorers, and their combined step counts decide how far you get to travel. Luckily, there seems to be a minimum number of steps that a Mii will give you, so you'll always have at least 500 steps from anyone you get.
There are some things you'll need to be aware of, though. Sometimes you'll come across a rock or a thicket that will need to be dealt with. You deal with this by mashing A within a short time frame. If you're not ready for this, you won't be able to do it in time and will lose out on progress.
Also, when you find wildlife to take pictures of, the game is kind of vague on how it works. It just says "Press A!" and expects you to know what to do. Basically, you have to wait for a shadow to fly across the screen, and press A while it's on screen. Then you get your picture. Too early or too late, and you fail.
Along your journey, you'll occasionally encounter wildlife that needs to be dealt with using tranquilizer darts. This isn't too difficult, just move the crosshair over the wildlife in question until you've got it positioned over the red dot, and press A to fire. It doesn't move, so as long as you position your shot correctly, everything works as intended.
Lastly, and this is a big negative for a game about exploring: Once you find the main artifact that you're looking for in an area, that's it, you're done. All the rest of the steps you'd gotten are wasted. You don't get to go to any of the photo-op areas or any of the places where you can recover items from packs you find on the ground. You don't get to use the rest of the steps in the next location. It's kind of a letdown for a game that's about exploration. Why cut off my exploration before I've fully explored the area? Why can't I go back to an area and explore it further to get things I missed?
Once you've exhausted your steps, your Mii sets up camp and you get a summary of what you found, including a second chance to check out any artifacts you found or pictures you took.
It's a neat game, but if you're not just buying all of them, you may wish to divert your funds towards one of the titles higher up on this list before buying this one.
Shit Tier
Ninja Launcher
The premise of this one is hilarious, which is unfortunate given that the actual game falls flat on its ass. Your Mii is a ninja, who needs to defeat a monster on the other side of the screen. To get to it, you're shooting your Mii out of a cannon. During your Mii's flight, you can grab powerups to your weapon, helm, or armor to let you do things better. The people you StreetPass will fly kites with these powerups attached, and before firing the cannon, you have to position them along the path your Mii will travel. If it's done right, you get an awesome cutscene of your Mii powering up and then taking down the foe.
See those words? "If it's done right"? Yeah. Let me talk about that, because there's the aforementioned critical problem that makes this game fall flat on its ass.
You don't get enough time to position the powerups. Even though you get extra time for each Mii you StreetPassed, it's still not enough. For the first two stages, you get a flight path guide that's immensely helpful, but then it goes away and the nightmare begins. Good luck getting more than about five powerups on each cannon shot after that. To make things worse, some locations are windy and will take valuable time making sure you can't position anyone just so they can have gusts of wind. It's super annoying, and doesn't add to the gameplay one bit.
You know what else? Once you fire your shot and get whatever result you get, that's it. It's over. The three games at the top of this list have some sort of extra content you can access and extend the gameplay beyond the "let's do things with the Miis you StreetPassed!" portion of the game, but the two down at this end of the list just end and that's it. Mii Trek "just ending" when you run out of steps is reasonable, because you make camp at that point, which is completely plausible for an explorer to do. But this one? Let me buy longer cannon fuses, allow me to use play coins to get the shot path guide past the FIRST TWO STAGES OF THE GAME, maybe also an upgrade to make the Miis start out closer to having their kites in the shot's path? I dunno. It needs something to extend the gameplay, or just to make it better.
If you're buying the games from this bundle one by one, you may wish to give this one a miss. It's definitely the turd of the bunch, which I guess makes sense given the tier name.
Overall
Three (or four) out of five ain't bad, right? Plus, you can get one of those three (or four) for free. Also, the Plaza 5.0 update has other features I haven't covered that are definitely worth updating for, so, there's that.
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