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So, The Nightfall Incident begins with one of the few bits, if not the ONLY bit, of product placement. This choice lets you play as one of four actual Lego things, apparently. It makes exactly no difference at all which one you pick though.

Also I always read the first one as "Gilgamesh," despite the lack of an "l."



...So, there's technically cutscenes. These consist entirely of one person with a dumb name talking at you for a few brief moments, while you "select" what you say.

This choice also makes exactly no difference at all; the response you get is almost always going to be identical, but for one or two words. Things progress the same way no matter what etc. etc.

But that's not really fair to hold against this, since that's basically every game ever made.

Great. I hope you're a fast learner, cause I have more important thigns to do than hold your hand all day. As a S.M.A.R.T Agent, you're here to fix problems and battle infocrime. You can find more at the S.M.A.R.T. HQ node.



You can click on a node to have your spybot set up a link to that computer. Once you're inside, you'll need to databattle with that node's defensive programs. By the way, right now your security level is one, so you can only access level one nodes. Time to get down to action! I'm going to walk you through your first databattle, and give you some tips. Ready to get the party started?




She tries to give us a tutorial on "how to fight things" now, but we'll skip it because it's very basic. Pick where to place a unit, pick what unit to place, start when all slots are filled, take turns moving, hit dudes as you can, winner is whoever has any dudes left.



So, right now we have 4 options to pick from. The S.M.A.R.T. HQ is the dark blue one and gives us nothing exciting, so we'll skip it.



To the north, we can find the level 1 store. It's the only one of the 3 wireframe ones that we don't get a fight from, so let's give it a looksee.



We only got the best in wares, but for an up-and-comer like yourself, maybe an ex-Agent like me can give you a break. You want to do some business?



So, each store sells their own unique things. They usually get progressively better, of course, but the first store's pretty useful in its own right. We'll be looking at each of these in detail later, so there's no need to waste any of our starter cash on it just yet.



The satellite dish icon to the far, far left is the easiest actual mission, though it's not wholly tutorial-y. You could lose this one, probably, though if you did I'd have to recommend you never play any video games ever again.



Whenever you start a level, this animation plays in the bottom left corner making it hard to spot. It also plays every. Single. Time. This adds up really, really quickly. Not very interesting!



Similarly, we also get a little screen like this while waiting for the fight to load.

...Yes, that means there is a hidden loading screen to a regular loading screen.



So, the fight itself is quite simple. The AI has 2 units, we can only field 2 units and we just so happen to start with 2.

Hack's a basic melee unit; can move 3 tiles and deals 2 damage per hit. Slingshot's the ranged attacker; can only move 2 and only deals 1.



With our current units, we can't just rush upwards otherwise we'll take a casualty too. We don't really want that, so we'll send both units to the left. After 2 turns, we're close enough to take the Sentinel on the left out.



There's no particularly fancy attack animations, when either side does anything sadly. I guess that's to its benefit, though.



A couple turns later, and the other Sentinel's done without even getting a hit in never mind taking out anything.



For beating a mission, we usually get a middling amount of Credits. It goes up over time, of course, but the bulk of our cash'll come from Extra Credits. We can never get any from this level, though, so there's no need to other with it ever again.



...We also usually get talked at whenever we beat a level for the first time.

I'm a fellow S.M.A.R.T. Agent on patrol. I was just executing some elite hacks in security level two. You'll definitely want to grab some better programs. Have you checked out the level one Warez node? I'll show you where it is. Later.



For beating the easiest level, we unlock a new one. Sadly, we can't do it yet because we don't have level 2 clearance. We won't get that until we beat a fair few more level 1 stuff.



It's the only other level we can do so far, so let's take a look at what this pharmacy's database has guarding it. That "C 3" in the corner tells us that there's 3 sets of Extra Credits to pick up.



Quite literally, at that. Extra Credits are just lying around on the map, and you need to move over 'em to pick them up.

I grabbed a Bug between the two levels, since this enables us to grab all 3 without losing any units of our own. We wouldn't be able to get the one in the top left corner otherwise.



The one by the Watchman is a bit of a problem too; it's basically our Slingshot but better, since it can deal 2 damage. It can only move tile, though, and enemy units always move their maximum so long as they can. Knowing that, can place our Bug so that next turn it'll be able to grab the cash AND take out the Watchman in a single move.



They also move towards whichever unit is closest to them. Even if they can't reach it. That Watchdog in the top corner is basically stuck because it can't move down which it was trying to.



Because we picked up some Credits with the Hack, it automatically attacks the Sentinel right next to it. This only happened because we moved the maximum number of tiles in the process, though.



From here, we've pretty much won though that third Credit is going to be pretty trick to get.



Or, rather, it should have been. The Watchdog, however, is much more interested in the Hack it can never reach. It will move 3 tiles back and forth to try and get to it. Just to be safe, we can also sit the Bug just outside of its movement range.



After that, we've got it in the bag. The Bug's 5 tile movement range makes it remarkably useful for stuff like this.



And with that, we gained more than double the regular Credits just from picking up the Extras.



A little side business in data policing. It turns out Pharmhaus was testing some new security and it went haywire. They can't even access their own network. Turns out, Pharmhaus is offering a nice shiny piece of software for someone to quietly access their node and disable the security system. What do you think? I'm putting the node up on your netmap.



Now with this, we've can go to 3 new areas instead of the two we expected. All 3 are in level 1, so we can do any of 'em we want to.

Next time: how can I say "no" to free things?