Congratulations Magnet Magnate!

You own a multinational corporation. Woop de shit! Who the fuck doesn’t?

What makes you so special is that your multinational corporation specializes in the creation, transport, storage and distribution of magnets. Fridge magnets, industrial magnets, magnets that go to high school science classes, even electromagnets made out of nails and wire fall under your purview. And you know your business well.

Which is why, today, you’re going to become a super-villain named Magnet Magnate. It’ll come to you after you read this story and realize that, hey, your first name is already Nate so why the fuck not just go with it?

Your first action will be to cut off the supply of magnets to the United States military until they conform to your demands (about five hundred percent of the normal price for magnets they want). They’ll capitulate almost immediately, since this is how military contracts usually work, and you’ll put the money into creating an army of robot soldiers armed with magnetic pulse weapons (something you developed decades ago but kept entirely to yourself so you could do just this at your convenience). Then you’ll get those robot soldiers to place EMPs near the data storage facilities of every major financial organization in the world (which you’ll have located through your conventional magnet business) and threaten to erase those records if major super heroes don’t come out to try and stop you.

This will lead to a brief, unsatisfying fight with Aquaman, which will in turn become a much more satisfying fight with Spiderman. And then rest? Well, that’ll be comic book history.

Congratulations Magnet Magnate!

Congratulations Masturbation Advocate!

Masturbation needs a white knight, and today you’re it.

Today you’re going to go on the senate floor and, along with Louis C.K. and the guys who run Redtube, make the case that there is no pursuit more American than masturbation, no goal more noble or noteworthy. We’d reprint the speech here, but we’re pretty sure that would actually get us thrown in jail, not only because of the obscenity used there in (beautiful obscenity, granted) but also because that might somehow constitute re-producing records of a closed session of the senate in which many senators will provide detailed information about their own masturbatory habits. Some, such as Al Franken’s, will be unsurprising, but others will be alarming (we’re not sure how Mitch McConnell gets anything done at all).

But here’s the thing: they’ll all come away from your speech knowing that masturbation is normal, healthy, fun and, above all else, doesn’t deserve the stigma that it currently possesses in our society. So we’re going to have you to thank for national masturbation day, which will fall on July sixth this year. In the future it’ll be the first Friday following the Fourth of July, so that enterprising masturbators can call in sick to work and theoretically spending the entire weekend patriotically jacking off with the full support of our nation’s highest legislative body.

Congratulations Masturbation Advocate!

Congratulations on Making a Living Kool-Aid Man!

You’re a mad scientist. But there’s no business in warfare anymore, we’ve gotten most of the crazy fucking science there done already. No, what we’re interested in having amoral, brilliant quacks work on now is advertising!

You specifically deal in making living, breathing corporate mascots. It keeps costs down and allows for children to literally play with a creature who, despite the perpetual agony of their existence and the hellish torture that each second of life represents for them, will smile and reinforce brand synergy without ever asking for a day off.

Also, it’s kind of amusing.

Today you’re going to reach the pinnacle of your career: you’re going to make a living, breathing Kool-Aid Man. He’ll awake in a start, gasping for air. He’ll looking around the room in a panic with eyes welded to the side of the his head for several minutes before opening his mouth, coughing several times and summoning the power of speech to say:

“Kill… Me…”

You won’t. Instead you’ll pour morphine into the top of his head, enough to knock him out, and check your agenda to see the next interesting project on your list. Nothing will really strike you as challenging after this, though, which will really bum you out.

Congratulations on Making a Living Kool-Aid Man!

Congratulations Piano Rain Man!

The U.S. isn’t winning the War on Terror. Now, some people say that’s because it’s basically a war on an idea rather than an actual war. Other, smarter people explain that it’s really more of a war on a small interconnected group of non-state entities that are difficult to dismantle or destroy using conventional methods of warfare and counterintelligence, which is why it’s so slow going.

But today you’re going to make a big dent.

Due to a rare birth defect that has manifested itself recently in your life, pianos constantly tumble from the sky, falling everywhere but on top of your head wherever you are. That means that even if you’re just standing around or riding the subway you’re still super dangerous to be around.

You figured this out last month, after your wife and two beautiful daughters were killed by errant pianos tumbling from the sky and within a week you’d moved to the central South Dakota, where you lived in isolation from everyone else. The landscape around you became a ruined mess of pianos and the corpses of animals unfortunate enough to get in your way. Today, all of that is going to change.

This morning you’ll be woken up by something small and hard falling gently on your face. It will be, oddly enough, an i-Phone. And the moment you take it in your hand it’ll start ringing.

You’ll answer it reflexively, without thinking. I mean, you’re so incredibly lonely, who could blame you?

“Your country needs you, son,” the voice on the other end will say.

“Whatever,” you’ll respond, upset at America for not preventing your birth defect somehow.

“Don’t be that way. We’re working on a cure,” the voice will explain.

And just like that, without any sort of detailed explanation of specifics regarding said cure you’ll be given directions on how to drive to an isolated stretch of Washington coast, board a personal submersible and pilot said submersible to a larger submarine which will carry you across the ocean to India, where you’ll then be transported via train to Pakistan.

Pianos will chase you the whole way, causing some pretty seriously havoc on the road and almost sinking the sub a few times, but eventually you’ll reach your destination and begin your mission: walking around areas where suspected terrorists live and killing everyone there, civilians included, with the random falling pianos that constantly hound you. That way their deaths can’t technically be attributed to the United States and we keep killing bad guys, or at least the people who called us bad guys one time, which makes them, in turn, bad guys to us.

Keep praying for that cure, hero.

Congratulations Piano Rain Man!

Congratulations Grossly Inappropriate Jar Salesman!

Ever walk into a lady’s house and see jars all full up with all sorts o’ stuff? Like pebbles, or pasta, or potpourri? Sure you have, you big kidder you. You know about all kinds of jars. After all, you sell them to people for a living.

But you don’t sell none of that sissy stuff. No, no, no. You sell things that people really need. Fetuses, monkey heads, severed body parts, human excrement. Really, anything a reasonable person might need but might also be ashamed of to order in a catalog that “keeps records” and “documents your credit card statement” which is where you come in: as a door to door salesman you neither keep records nor do you accept currency other than cash.

Most of your business comes from wealthy CEOs who want to furnish their living spaces with horrifying accoutrements. You generally make maybe four or five big sales a year and then the rest of the time you’re just spinning your wheels, looking to get some jars out there so that you can make a little saving money.

Today you’re going to uncover a whole new market when you walk up to one of them houses what with the wrong letters on the front what sits near college campuses. You’ll tug your fedora for good luck, ring the bell and smile when an attractive young woman answers the door.

“Yah?” she’ll say through a mouthful of chewing gum.

“May I interest you in some jars filled with revolting shit?” you’ll tell her, opening your overcoat to expose a panoply of jars filled with disparate materials, ranging from…well, we already gave you an idea. She’ll frown at most of the more trophy-like jar fillings, but when her eyes settle on your jars of vomit and human feces she’ll smile.

“Ohmigod! We’ve got a collection of that!” she’ll say, clapping then holding her hands in front of her mouth to conceal her worn teeth as she grins uncontrollably.

“Oh?” you’ll tell her. “Well, why make your own when you can purchase designer human secretion for an incredibly reasonable price?!”

Fifteen minutes later you’ll have a list of sorority houses in the greater San Diego area and two fewer boxes of horrifying jars in the trunk of your hatch back. You’ll also have about six hundred dollars and a whole new customer base to ply your trade with.

Congratulations Grossly Inappropriate Jar Salesman!

Congratulations Terrible Super Hero!

When you were growing up you wanted to be a hero more than anything else in the world. More than the head of an oil conglomerate, even, which is what your so-called father wanted you to be. But you couldn’t really do anything about it thanks to your controlling “dad” and his “constant pressure to achieve your full potential and push the industry towards alternative energy sources.”

Well, jokes on your dad because two days ago he died under mysterious circumstances and, following a massive funeral service today, you’re about to inherit his wealth and none of his values. Your first order of business will be constructing an elaborate armored costume which can fit your tremendously obese frame. Your second order of business will be hiring a private military that can actually get things done for you since, even without your armor on, it’s really hard for you to move around and fight guys and stuff. Your third order of business will be flying to Pakistan and starting a private war against…you’re not entirely sure who, but they’re gonna deserve it damnit!

Within fourteen days the media organizations you inherited from your dad will be making you front page news, with stories like “crazed egoist kills hundreds of civilians and handful of Taliban loyalists in daring midnight suburban raids.” Within a month your nom de guerre, “The Inheritor,” will be on the lips of eighty percent of Americans. And within two months you’ll be in front of the Hague where your tremendous inheritance will be put to use clearing you and a handful of your most loyal lieutenants from totally justified allegations of war crimes.

Another day in the life of a hero!

Congratulations Terrible Super Hero!

Super Nerd Sunday Presents: Reflections on The Missing Link!

What if you made an expansion that was essentially what your game should’ve been in the first place?

This is the question answered by Deus Ex: Human Revolution: The Missing Link which is, on the one hand, a travesty of colons and dashes thrown together in the cruelest imaginable fashion in order to create a title and, on the other hand, a fucking incredible piece of gamesmanship. I picked up a copy of DEHRTML, as I’ve affectionately nicknamed it, during a Steam sale a while back for about five bucks along with some other mission packs that were pretty interesting at the time. Even though I breezed through it at the highest difficulty level, I can see myself being really, really happy with The Missing Link, even if I’d bought it for the full fifteen bucks. Why, you ask, rhetorically generated reader figure? Because this is a snapshot of the game that Human Revolution should’ve been through and through.

The Missing Link is pure Deus Ex energy. It’s fun, it’s well crafted and moves fast, rapidly plopping you you into a bunch of corridor fights and stealth puzzles you have to work your way out of. All in all, it’s more of what made Human Revolution great, refined and repackaged efficiently. But what really sets it aside is the manner in which it addresses the single most unfortunate aspect of Human Revolution’s design: the boss fights.

To those unfamiliar with Deus Ex: Human Revolution, here’s a quick summary. It was a great game that reappropriated the spirit of the first Deus Ex by giving players almost complete freedom in terms of how they chose to traverse the world around them and solve the problems presented to them. Players could stealth, think, converse, fight or hack their way around obstacles as they desired. There was a lot to do and see, and multiple approaches to nearly every objective, and whatever you wanted to do would probably fit into the game world somehow. That is, up until the boss fights, when all options were stripped away and players were forced into a fast paced, close quarters fight with a tough as nails enemy who could take multiple rockets to the face without issue. It was essentially a great game that occasionally broke itself, removing all the elements that actually made it great in favor of forcing players through a middling cover shooter against a terribly balanced opponents that substituted well crafted AI with mounds of hitpoints and damage that were shunted unapologetically into the player’s face. What I’m trying to say is that it was a remarkable, fantastic game, except for the times that it morphed into a frustrating mess, basically during boss fights that felt jammed into a structure that didn’t want or need them.

The original Deus Ex never actually presented players with any unavoidable fights. In fact, players could actually go through the entire game without killing a single enemy, if they chose. Human Revolution spiced that up for the modern audience, and did a pretty good job of it at that, except for the inclusion of a series of totally shoehorned boss fights that almost destroyed the good will that the game itself built. Human Revolution also had some problems with its ending, but that’s a whole other story, one that isn’t really related to The Missing Link at all. Because here’s the thing: The Missing Link gets rid of boss fights. Kind of.

In their place there are escalating challenges, essentially arena challenges, which put the player into an environment where all the skills they’ve been cultivating are necessary to survive. Rather than being asked to battle one mammoth opponent you’ll be placed in a security system ridden silo chamber filled with guards who are all on the alert, searching for you with rifles, automatic weapons and plenty of rage. It’s Deus Ex par-excellence, the essence of what makes the game fun, escalated and, in one case, timed, with a delightful digital red clock ticking steadily down while a villain taunts you. And there’s something incredible about stalking your way through a room full of heavily armed and armored goons without firing a single shot, taking them down one by one and then slipping into an isolated and locked down command post to finish off their leader.

It’s a boss fight which essentially recognizes what makes Deus Ex great, and invites that into this new setting of escalated stakes and challenge. It’s what the boss fights in the standard Human Revolution game should’ve and, looking at Missing Link, could’ve been.

Let’s be fair: I’m being kind of catty here, and it’s entirely because The Missing Link successfully overcame my single greatest qualm with Human Revolution with so little apparent effort that I find myself reflecting on Human Revolution and wondering what the game could’ve been if this mentality had guided its overall design. It makes me wonder if a patch is in the works somewhere to remake the boss fights in Deus Ex: Human Revolution into the sort of delightful action puzzles that make up the rest of the game. The Missing Link is a return to form, and its brevity is really the only thing I found disappointing. Thanks to The Missing Link, I think I’m going to play Human Revolution again, maybe even from the beginning. Which is fucking bullshit, because I wanted to do a bunch of other shit with my summer, but it’s going to be fantastic bullshit when I get around to it.

But, praise aside, The Missing Link does have some nitpickable aspects. While the story is fantastically indecipherable DE conspiracy theory schlock through and through, exactly what you’d expect from the series and perfectly suited to the tone of play. But the Easter Eggs in Missing Link, that is to say normally inconsequential extras that intrepid players can seek out for fun and profit, actually tie into the story in a way that feels…cheap. There’s even an Easter Egg that removes a difficult and crucial choice at the heart of Missing Link’s climax, a choice that was far more interesting to me than the one I was asked to make at the end of Human Revolution. It’s a bit of a puzzling choice, but I suppose this sort of thing occupied the original Deus Ex as well, spawning scenarios like the “no kill playthrough” which required occasionally bending the rules of the game. There are also woefully few reasons to select many of the upgrades available during The Missing Link. If you choose to blow two of your very limited Praxis points on the Social Enhancement perk, you’ll find that there aren’t a lot of occasions for you to use it. Armed guards make poor conversationalists, apparently. The developers seemed to know this, though, and even put in a brief, winking moment at the conclusion of the expansion to drive the uselessness of this upgrade home.

I guess what I’m struggling to get out is that Deus Ex: Human Revolution: The Missing Link: Travesty of Colons was fantastic. It was a brief, well crafted snippet of a game that perfectly embodied the best elements of the venerated franchise it sought to resurrect and showed some canny design that, while seriously good, didn’t take itself too seriously. The only criticisms I can genuinely muster aren’t really about the game itself but nitpicky moments within it that seemed slightly off. Well, that and that the expansion was so solid that it made me look at Human Revolution with a renewed measure of disdain. Just when I thought I was over how Human Revolution done me wrong, The Missing Link does me so good I can’t help but remember the old times and the heartbreak. Damn you for making me love again, Missing Link.