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| Mini-review: Advance Wars 2. Entertaining sequel, or clever Axis propaganda? by FABIO 07/03/2003, 3:18am PDT | ||||
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| I'm going to assume everyone's played the first Advance Wars. If that's not the case, and you own a GBA, just fucking buy this game. Trust me. I'll just list the differences from the first one then.
More CO's- Each country now has a new CO and Black Hole has five. I was worried that a lot of the CO's would just turn out to be rehashes of the first game's. This was partially due to the enemy Black Hole CO's looking like simple Bizarro world clones of existing CO's. Turns out that the CO's all have an interesting variety of powers. They are also a lot more balanced than the original: no one is as flat out broken as Max and Grit were (both of whom have been toned down), also none are as useless as some of the original ones (Sami has been beefed up, and Olaf is actually good now). Some cool examples are one CO who deploys units at 20% less cost, but they're 20% less powerful (he's the anti-Kanbei), a paratrooper who gives you a free infantry or mech unit in every city you own, and another that adds terrain bonuses to her attack as well as defense, which really forces you to watch where you move. CO powers work differently- Each CO now has 2 powers, a regular and a super. The regular can be used when his power meter is partially full (the minimum amounts varies for each CO), and the super can only be used when it's completely full. The super is obviously more powerful than the normal one. This leads to more variety in choices for each CO. New unit- Only one new unit, the neotank (octupus thingies). Basically it's a stronger and more mobile medium tank. It's approximately 35% stronger than a medium tank and also costs about 35% more. It has +1 movement over the medium tank, twice the fuel, and one more max ammo. A lot of people say they're too powerful and ruin the game since it become just who can get more neotanks. I don't quite think this is the case, but they ARE powerful and I cant quite see why you would ever get a medium tank instead unless you simply couldnt afford it. But one balancing factor is they pretty much get fucked up by a bomber or rocket attack in the same way that any ground unit does, and at 22,000 points each (equal to a bomber in cost), that's a LOT of points to lose to a single attack. New buildings- Some maps have missile silos scattered throughout them. As soon as an infantry unit reaches one, you can launch the missile to anyplace on the map. Any units caught within the area blast are reduced by 3 points. Each silo is a one-shot deal. Sort of an interesting new feature but nothing huge. In campaign mode the enemy gets several new buildings. Small and giant static cannons have a large cone of fire and do 3 and 5 damage (respectively) but cannot rotate, making the player manuever around them. Another laser static defense building fires a beam with unlimited range in a straight line up, down, left, and right, damaging every unit caught in it's path. These static defenses add some cool new strategies to campaign missions, and vary it up so the computer has a different way of giving it a fighting chance other than just simply starting out with more shit than you every time. Better AI- In the original, you could easily befuddle the computer once you realized that it would ALWAYS attack an APC over any other unit. This is no longer the case. The computer now seems to do exactly what I DON'T want it to do and punishes you for making stupid mistakes and leaving yourself open. The problem of the AI wasting money on building more transports than it will ever need is now (mostly) alleviated, making this the FIRST turn based strategy game to do so (I'm looking at YOU, MOO3)! More fun campaign- You get to play as every country in the campaign now instead of just Orange Star, defending each nation as they're simultaneously invaded by Black Hole. At least now the backstory behind each mission is much better than the original's silly premise of every country in the world attacking you just to "test you". You get to pick which mission you play on an overhead map ala the original command and conquer. You progress by beating back the invasions of each country and reclaiming their land until you launch an attack on Black Hole's home territory. There is a secret objective in one of the missions for each country where you can recover a map that shows the location of an enemy research lab. Successfully capture their lab and that country will have neotanks added to their list of unit purchase choices. There are now a much greater variety of mission objectives other than "capture the HQ or destroy all enemy units". Some will have you accomplish a task in a certain number of days, or destroy certain static defenses across the map (the original had a couple of these, but they're a lot more prominant in the sequel). The campaign mission design is what has me questioning whether or not some WWII Japanese holdouts were on the design team trying to leak in Axis propaganda. In the campaign, you play the "good" guys. One of the nations, Yellow Comet, is obviously modelled after Imperial Japan. Since this is the case, they cleverly assign all the "GO GO HITLER/TOJO!" levels to the other nations. Case in point: on one level your "evil" enemy has a wall of giant cannon forts and brags that you'll never get past them. The mission then has you sneak through the woods (they hide units in fog of war) until you emerge behind the cannons and capture the vunerable HQ, forcing the enemy to surrender. Seems the nips still have a soft spot for their German allies. Even more blatant is one level where you lead a surprise raid to destroy a group of moored battleships. Does that one even need any explanation? To further disguise their intent, they replace the cutesy "war is fun! no death or destruction!" tone of the original with frequent reminders from the characters that war is bad and hurts people. They even throw in the Jap RPG favorite of a character having his home town burned down (GET OVER IT HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI! YOU DONT SEE DRESDEN STILL BITCHING!). The "good" guys acknowledge that war is hell and should be used as a last resort, but they have been forced into this war by their agressor enemy and now must PROCEDE TO BOMB DEFENSELESS DOCKED BATTLESHIPS JESUS CHRIST DID YOU THINK NO ONE WOULD CATCH THAT YOU DID KNOW THIS GAME WAS BEING PORTED TO THE STATES DIDNT YOU. Final Verdict- Better than the original with a greater variety of CO's, powers, and missions. The only real gripe is the dissapointing number of new war room and vs. maps you get. The original game had an EXTREME shortage of quality multiplayer maps. A lot of the maps in the sequel are just old maps ported over from the original. Buy it. Now. If you haven't played the original Advance Wars, I strongly advise you to pick this one up instead of the original unless you can't afford the $10 price difference. If you play the sequel you will be unable to go back and have fun with the original do to the sequel just being flat out more fun. Even though the game sports cartoony graphics and extremely mild violence, it is not a game for children. Your child will be exposed to secret propaganda and will grow up to be a Manchurian Candidatesque sleeper agent for when Japan inevitably attacks us AGAIN so we might as well premptively BOMB THEIR DEFENSELESS BATTLESHIPS before they attack us first. |
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Mini-review: Advance Wars 2. Entertaining sequel, or clever Axis propaganda? by 07/03/2003, 3:18am PDT  How is this "mini"? You should add images and go for "full". NT by 07/03/2003, 7:23pm PDT All it really needs is a picture showing that Sami now has tits NT by 07/03/2003, 10:26pm PDT and Sonja too NT by 07/03/2003, 10:27pm PDT i guess if anyone wants to go ahead and edit it by 07/05/2003, 2:38am PDT update re: CO balance by 07/10/2003, 1:36am PDT |
