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Friday 16 June, 2006
I really like this game.
I've just encountered a new type of enemy, which appears to be a variation on the old tripods (quadrupeds, actually). These ones are much nastier - in addition to having many of the same attacks as the old ones, only souped up, their legs are flexible and made up of a chain of segments. (Very cool idea, and impressive for a budget game.) On occasion one of the bastiches raises his leg up, and then it's time to duck and cover lest you get impaled on the nasty spike on the bottom of his foot. Oh, and they can take a lot more punishment too - although I found that the standard homing missile launcher, when spammed, will take them down without TOO much trouble. ("Mr. Itano says hello, punk.")
So I unlocked a more advanced weapon today, the Goliath R rapid-fire rocket launcher, and immediately decided to try it out on one of the earlier levels on Hard difficulty. (Which is pretty hard in general.)
In this level you have to take out these two giant UFOs which keep spawning more giant ants and spiders into the city. The spiders are pretty lethal on Hard mode, because the webs they shoot are tough to avoid, and on Hard they shoot more of them at a go, so the damage can really rack up.
Transcript follows.
- Mission start. Decided to go for the UFOs first.
- Tested the new launcher on the UFOs. It takes 3 salvos (each salvo lasting about 4 seconds, with a 1.5 second reload time between salvos) to kill one UFO, and the range is ridiculously long. Knocked both UFOs out before even making contact with the enemy.
- Made contact with the enemy. Proceeded to get on hoverbike and run like a scared little girl. (Apologies to any scared little girls reading this.)
- Noticed that the game puts you on the roof of the hoverbike when you get out of it, for a very good reason. If you're travelling slowly enough, you can surf on the hoverbike while it coasts to a stop, launch a salvo of rockets (or hand weapon of your choice) at your pursuers, jump in again and take off, and repeat ad nauseum.
- Noticed that colliding with things in the hoverbike can damage it seriously. Note to self: be a safe driver.
- Proceeded to spam rockets into the chasing spiders/ants, run, repeat. Noticed that the blast radius of the new launcher is pretty weak - not that good for crowd control.
- When bored, proceeded to spam rockets into the surrounding buildings for grins. Said procedure also took out a few spiders.
- Noticed an oil tank farm on the edge of the city. Hatched a Plan.
- Whittled the enemies down to one last remaining spider.
- Accidentally crashed the hoverbike into a tank, totalling it.
- Proceeded to drive the tank around the city, picking up all the powerups dropped by the enemy, with the spider in chase. Blew up a few (more) buildings for grins. (Note: EDF2 kind of sucks in one regard: the powerups - which often contain unlockables - MUST be collected before you clear a mission; there's no "auto-collection" function.) There are a LOT of buildings in that city.
- Planned to lure the spider into the oil tank farm and blow it up.
- Drove the tank over some debris and accidentally flipped it upside down. So much for Plan A. Hatched Plan B.
- Got out of tank and lured spider to stand next to tank. (This was a bit tricky, because the spiders actually jump around most of the time rather than walking/crawling.)
- Jumped into the (inverted) tank and fired the main gun straight into the ground at point-blank range, blowing both tank and spider to smithereens. (Note: When a vehicle blows up, the occupant emerges unharmed.) Mission accomplished.
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