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