Metal Max Returns (Part 8)

     Getting closer to the end I think, making good progress.

     Last off, I had discovered a burnt out building after putting out a very large forest fire.  It was near the beginning town so after a quick resupply I made my way in.  As usual, I found myself getting attacked like every 10 seconds once inside, and to make it worse, it was all low-level enemies.  I hate when I feel I have to constantly stop in RPGs to do the equivalent of swatting at gnats.  It just takes you out of it.

     The building wasn't very big, did have some cool tank weapons to sell off, and and I was also able to find another lens, this time a "camera lens".  This makes 2 that I have, and I'm still hoping that I did not miss another, I'm pretty curious what the scientist guy north of Canabelle will make with them.  There was also another "boss guy", who looked a lot like one of the Banana Splits..

     His name was "Salmonella HQ", not leader or anything like that, but this guy was the actual headquarters itself, or so he claimed.  He was pretty easy, as I'm finding almost anything is when dealing with them from inside the tanks.  This makes only 2 main bosses left.

     I left and went back to town.  I had discovered that the cave that used to hold the Salmonella Gang was now transformed into a trader camp, and was able to get all my tanks the best engine, allowing the max armor for each.  That helped a lot.  I got my shit together and made my way to Hell's Gate.

Hell's Gate

     I sort of expected things to get crazy difficult once I passed through the fence, but it just didn't really happen.  The main resistance was in opening the gate, and being attacked by robot police. Even they weren't that tough.  Once through, it was mostly desert, with a building in the middle, and a cave to the northwest.  I figured I'd deal with the cave first, assuming the middle building would basically be the end game.

     It turns out that the cave actually was not as insignificant as I thought.  I wasn't being attacked by random enemies any more, it was all dogs with rocket launchers that were static NPCs.  They were all triggered.  Deeper into the cave I had to set out on foot, and that's where I found the "main" bad guy, "Bad Valdez", surrounded by wolves, and on a throne.  He was assuming that I was the Red Wolf guy who was the previous owner of the red tank that I now had.  I insisted that I wasn't him, but he just wasn't having it, and then uh, you know, he sent one of his butler wolves to bring some lady out?

Here she is, sir!

     She came out and laughed at the guy and then I had to fight him.  I figured I'd be facing a quick death here.  My guys were sort of injured, and I just wasn't expecting to find this guy.  I was starting to think that this was the end of the game, or at least the "final boss".

     In any case, the fight went on for a bit, and he did not do nearly as much damage as I thought he'd do.  In fact, the guitar guy Rodriguez was way more powerful.  I was able to beat him after awhile with no casualties on my side at all, and I was pretty surprised.  Afterwards I got to see a short scripted sequence that I won't go into here for spoilers sake, and ended up back outside.

See that flying boxing glove? That's my soldiers attack..

     I went back to a town and resupplied, etc.  At this point the only "bounty boss" I have left to fight is Rodriguez, the guitar guy.  I also have to see what the deal is with the building north of Hell's Gate, but I have to figure that I'm pretty close to wrapping this up...

HuckleCat

Metal Max Returns (Part 7)

     I still haven't finished it, but I did get further.  Once again, I had to take an extended break to be Dad.  That's pretty much how it's going to be for me every other week.

     Anyway...

     Where was I?  Oh yeah, Eden.  A town south of Sol over some mountains that's made up of railroad cars and abandoned track.  Really not much to see here, just resupply, etc.  I thought there would be more to it, but no.  (It reminded me of a Nomad Camp from the game Wasteland.  In fact, a lot of this game has elements that remind me of Wasteland.)

     To the south was another tunnel in which I found some more useful stuff (I think) and also this guy:

     Once again, in tanks against an armored foe + piercing shells = easy win.  No much of a problem.  The whole tunnel system was sort of easy and linear, and opened up on the other side to a large radio tower on a small island.

     The radio tower was kind of cool.  It seemed like a diversion away from the endless enemy encounters, featuring things like a robot that offered for you to play some sort of game to win a prize, jukeboxes that you could use to change the music, and one floor of  the tower had a series of automated wax celebrity exhibits.  Yes, seriously.

A famous gymnast..

Also -

Michael Jackson, with Romeo and Juliet in the background.

     To get to the top floor I had to figure out some sort of puzzle that involved pushing a lady in front of a wax Dracula, and rescuing a wax Marilyn Monroe for some guy who was squatting in a back room.  C'mon dude, she's wax.

     On the top floor were several elderly people that had walled themselves off from the world and asked simple things concerning life outside the tower.  I also managed to get access to a large laser system that I'm guessing is launched from a satellite.  It was added to my PDA computer-thing, I have no idea how to use it, every time I try it tells me I can't use it wherever I am.  Still sounds cool though.

     I went back to the desert area, hoping to find more of the slow walker turtle guys, and discovered a building to the east walled off in trees, forcing me to enter on foot.  It was like an abandoned factory with several conveyor belts, one of which dropped me several floors down through a chute.  (The game seems to have no falling damage.)  At the bottom, I got attacked by this guy:

     I'm guessing that I was supposed to find this guy earlier on, as I rocked his ass.  Two of my guys were equipped with Bazookas, and the soldier girl was equipped with some ridiculous pair of rocket-propelled boxing gloves.  He was done in a few rounds.  I explored my way back out, found a few more cool things, and went back to the tanks.

     Completely forgetting that I now had the code to open Hell's Gate, I hit up Canabelle next, the town surrounded by water, and bothered all the townsfolk hoping to get a better picture of the buildings to the north.  Someone did tell me that there was another tank up there somewhere, but the real talk of the town was that some kid named Henry sure did like to set fires.  Also, some other kid sure liked to beat him up.  Whatever, dude.  I wanted that tank.

     The buildings to the north were a pain in the ass.  (Or rather, one was.  There are 2 buildings, one of which was walled off.)  I was getting attacked like every 10 seconds and it just became super tedious, I found myself running from more than half the shit due to not wanting to be bothered.  I was able to find sleeping zombie soldiers, and some cool new armor, some kind of tomato gun for the tanks, and, oh yeah, another tank.  It took awhile to find it, and since I had to find it on foot, I had to juggle tanks to be able to get them all back to town.  (I have a tank in tow at all times.  See, the tanks have a computer system that you can turn on to have them assist when unmanned.  In this case I have a backup tank with an "ambush" system activated, and it helps in combat.  It's also helpful for carrying heavy tank equipment that you find.)

The white tank is the new one

      There was an exit just past where I found the new tank that led to the second building.  Inside was a robot, and a scientist guy that offered to make me some kind of weapon if I brought him some lenses.  I hope I did not pass any, I did find one, but that was a while back..  Shit.

     Meanwhile, back in Canabelle, all hell was breaking loose.  Several people were standing about, looking to the east.  While I was away, the forest was set on fire.  The pyro kid Henry claimed it wasn't him, but the bully kid wasn't having it, vowing to beat him up.  I went to investigate, and sure enough...

     I was able to put the fire out by using something called a "hydro pot".  Some sort of device that shoots into the air and makes it rain.  Removing the forest here made a clear path to the beginning city, and also uncovered another warehouse.

     And that's where I took a break.  I sure hope I'm reaching the end soon.  The stats for my character seem to indicate that I only have 3 more "boss guys" to kill.  I know one of them is that guy with the guitar.  We'll see.

HuckleCat

Metal Max Returns (Part 6)

     After taking a long break, longer than I hoped, I finally got back to this.  Last off I had killed the leader of a gang of 50's greasers only to find out that he was actually not the leader.  Instead of making a beeline for the guy I pretty much used the time to just explore the game more, and to grind up and improve my tanks.

     North of Sol I found a hidden trader camp which had some good tank parts, and south of Sol I found a subway ruin which also yielded some better parts.  Going back towards the west, the map was divided by a large canyon which stretched south, making a narrow path.  Each time the path branched out, it led to another town.  A branch off to the east leading to a town made of trains called Eden, and following it to the west led to the hideout of "Gomez" who was the main boss of the greaser gang.  I passed it and headed north and found another town, Santa Poco, which was good stuff for the tanks.

Sol

     Evidently, if you leave your tanks unattended for too long, they get debris on them in the form of either lead mushrooms, or the worlds heaviest bird shit.  This extra weight on the tanks will decrease the amount of armor you can have, as well as on-board tools.  Santa Poco has the only tank washing center in the whole game, so it helped out a lot.  I found myself sort of curious as to why they only included one wash station what with it being kind of important, but oh well.

     The biggest help though, came north of Santa Poco, in the desert.  As with all areas in the game, you deal with random enemies, and it was here that I started to run into these large turtle-like guys with huge cannons.  They were not that hard to beat, and each one gave up just over 15,000 experience points and just over 10,000 gold.  It also helped that they traveled in groups.  I'm not sure if this was a glitch in the game from the start, or something that was accidentally changed during it's translation, but I took full advantage of it.  It wasn't long that I was able to deck out my tanks with the best shit I could find, and went to go deal with Gomez.

     The greaser base was already attacked when I got there.  There were dead bodies all about, and some guy going on about the "Lone Wolf" beating them all up.  The Lone Wolf was the guy from the beginning who helped me beat the first boss, (the dog with the rocket launcher), and got me my first tank.  He was here, in one of the buildings, dealing with Gomez himself.  I thought at first that he'd probably kill him, give me condescending advice, and then leave.  Instead I was greeted by sort of a cutscene with Red Wolf and Gomez talking it out.  Gomez had coaxed Red Wolf out of his big red tank by producing some lady that must have been part of Red Wolfs past. I found myself bored with the games attempt to all-of-the-sudden give me some background on Red Wolf.  I just did not care.  It turned out to be a trick, with the woman being nobody, and Gomez attacking Red Wolf from his tank.  Red Wolf sure is dumb, and was killed pretty quickly.  I wasn't expecting that.  I sort of figured on having to fight Red Wolf myself in some sort of escalating endgame.

     In any case, I then confronted Gomez, and beat him pretty quickly.  You have to fight him in his tank, and then again on foot, from your tanks.  I could tell it was a good idea to level up before this fight, as he did do some crazy damage, but at this point it just wasn't a problem. Afterwards, Red Wolf give you his tank with his last dying breath.  Bitchin!

     I towed the new tank back to Santa Poco and transferred stuff about, and now I had 3 kickass tanks to continue exploring with.

     North of Santa Poco was a large fence with robot policemen called "Hell's Gate".  I needed a combination of some sort to get past this.  To the west of that was another town, "Hell's Gate West".  To t he far south, down the west side, I found a town that was surrounded by water called "Canabelle", it had some pretty good stuff, and another fenced off area north of that.

     The desert area held more bad guys.  While looking for more of those turtles with deep pockets, I came across the ghost of the infamous German general Rommel..

     And also this guy, hanging out in a small building area called "run-down oasis"

     Rommel's Ghost was pretty easy.  As I previously discovered, when fighting armored bosses from the tank, always start off barraging them with piercing shells.  After 2 rounds I was able to completely pacify Rommel, and was able to just blast him till he died.  With Rodriguez I was not so lucky.  First off, I had to fight him on foot, and second, only one of your guys can fight him.  He did insane damage and killed my best fighter in 2 rounds.  I'll have to find better gear and deal with him later.

     When I was done exploring, I went back to Sol hoping to further along any kind of story that I had been neglecting.   In town you actually find another vehicle, an APC, but to get it you have to kill some monster that the townsfolk are all going on about in the sewers.  I dealt with that pretty quickly.  The sewers were not that big, and the giant crocodile that I had to fight was taken out in a few rounds due to being a bit overpowered for this area.  The APC was sort of useless considering the tanks that I had at my disposal, but I still added it to my collection.

My collection so far

     Also in town, just to the north, was a large building that I could not access, at least not from outside.  I had to enter it by going south of town to the ruined subway and gain access through there.  The building was a horrible maze of ladders and elevators.  Tons of them.  This took me way way too long.  The building had like 80 floors, and to make things worse, the floors split into two towers halfway up.  I did fight some other boss "Zeppelin" on the way, but with the tanks he was very easy.  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, you can only use the tanks for like the first 15 levels of the building.
     Once you get to the top, you're rewarded with a combination to open the fence at "Hell's Gate".   That's good, I guess.

     I made my way to the train town Eden afterwards.  It has a tunnel to the south of it, and I'm pretty sure I have to deal with something in that area before I head to Hell's Gate.  I'll get to that later...

HuckleCat