Status Chovus Oct 30, 2022
Beat the standard version, which was incredibly difficult. Apparently there was a later greatest hits version that fixed much of the absurd difficulty. The gameplay and menus were exactly the same as Nuclear Strike, and I changed my loadout to be double missiles without any rockets. I did the first level with standard loadout because my missile changes did not …
Beat the standard version, which was incredibly difficult. Apparently there was a later greatest hits version that fixed much of the absurd difficulty. The gameplay and menus were exactly the same as Nuclear Strike, and I changed my loadout to be double missiles without any rockets. I did the first level with standard loadout because my missile changes did not save; I must have pressed the wrong button. I noticed 2 big differences from Nuclear Strike, one bad and one good. The mission structure was more like the SNES games, where all goals were visible and could be completed in nearly any order. This enhanced the strategy and made the levels less linear. The bad thing was the lack of minimap, which made me feel blind. I was constantly pressing start to open the map to adjust my heading. It was especially bad when enemies were nearby and I accidentally went a little off course to get shot by them from my flank. This game desperately needed a mini map, or at least zoom out enough to see enemies long before they were in range. I did turn the music volume down and discovered I could hear engine noise from nearby enemies, and even use that to triangulate their direction. It also kinda helped warn me that an enemy vehicle was hidden inside something. The high difficulty forced me to take it slow and careful, making sure I spotted enemies at max range so I could circle around to attack from behind. Or try to snipe so as not to aggro more enemies. Cycling through the enemies on the map to know what exactly was there was important. I got good at killing each enemy efficiently, even firing short gun bursts before backing out of range or taking cover behind buildings and terrain. There was more than enough supplies as long as I regularly destroyed buildings to look for loot, though for the later levels I felt it was necessary to do trial runs to find out where most stuff was. It annoyed me that armor repairs did not show on the map for most levels, so I took photos of their positions (and special ammo). The first level was the best, as usual for this series. There were no out of the blue loss conditions, rushing, or otherwise obnoxious difficulty. I did like the scripted events. Another game feature that soon became apparent was the alarmingly fast rate of fuel consumption.
Level 2 was similar but more difficult as I got killed taking on the destroyer while using the inferior local weapons. It was a novel concept for some ammo pickups to be worse, and the naval units here were much better than in Nuclear Strike, including multiple parts to destroy. It said the ships were fleeing, but nothing other than the subs appeared to be moving so I am not sure about time limits. The level seemed to have a few bugs. I was getting messages about home base being destroyed but when I looked it was fine. Maybe it meant landing zones. Then at the end I wasted my missiles trying to kill a landing boat, then most of the tanks got away while I went to get ammo. I got mission failure, but then all 3 landing boats were easily killed with a single missile each, and I beat the mission.
Level 3 was an almost tower defense style battle that took many attempts to beat. I think the first time I attacked the nearest enemies and broke off to deploy the allies when prompted. I figured the anti tank infantry should take out the light tanks, light tanks take APCs, and heavies against heavies. I was not expecting the enemy groups to move so quickly and simultaneously, so it was a hectic mad dash to try to fight them and resupply. Letting the supply caches be destroyed certainly did not help. What did help was the enemies sometimes glitching out and the entire column getting stuck. The biggest challenge was staying alive and having enough ammo. I tried different strategies each time until I finally made it to the end, but had only gun and low armor for the boss. Next time I had full armor, 8 sidewinders and 10 out of 16 missiles and still failed to kill the boss. What the hell? A heavy tank only takes 1 sidewinder or 2 missiles. How the hell is a car tougher than that? It should only take 1 missile or a couple seconds of gunfire to take out a car, no matter how much armor it has. Then I did a couple cheat attempts with infinite ammo, fuel and lives to rush past the beginning and experiment on that boss. I killed him in seconds both times by spamming both sidewinders and missiles, so maybe I just missed too much on the legit playthrough. Whatever, I count that as winning; the boss was poorly designed. The challenge of this level should have been the army, not its leader. I did a couple more legit runs to nail down the optimal strategy but failed to reach the boss.
The optimal strategy was to start by attacking the light tanks 1 missile each while spamming the gun. Gun the fuel truck and kill 16 tanks nearby, then go after the advance tanks to kill with gun with no regard to taking hits. Grab the armor and ammo further along their path. Next hit the APCs, 1 missile each. That is 16 APCs killed plus more with gun so it should be easy to wipe out this entire unit. Restock ammo and armor from the cache they would destrot then rush for the supplies ahead of the heavy tanks. Use 3 sidewinders to take out the lead group, then 2 missiles, then gun to kill as many as armor allows before taking the armor and ammo they would destroy. Then distribute the allies, though I find they are not very effective. Pick up Delilah and drop her at the light tank post, then shoot the rocks to kill some tanks and delay them. Then pick up Bessus and also send him against the light tanks. Nimrod goes against the heavy tanks, and destroy the building at the north of his base to reveal armor. Knock the rocks down on the heavies then circle around to the rear to start wiping them out. They are easy to kill using only the gun by attacking from the rear and diagonally strafing away to dodge shots. Wait for the turret to reset to forward facing, then repeat. The best way would be to missile groups and gun down lone ones. Next kill the scouts as you go east to help kill the light tanks. The allies may very well wipe them out. You can also destroy the 2 bridges to delay them even more. These tanks can be killed with only gun in the same way as the heavies, just that their turrets can turn a bit faster and shots do less damage. I usually found 1 infantry from the APCs stood around doing nothing. Leave him alive to keep the artillery from advancing and kill off anything else. Next attack the rocket artillery from behind. The most efficient way would be a sidewinder for 1 of a pair then a missile and gun barrage for the second. They can also be killed like the tanks but retreat distance is limited at the edge of the map and their rockets are homing so damage is unavoidable. It does not matter if they move out or stay there; they will be more spread out while moving but it will take longer and you may have to deal with gaskins. Next put the gaskins on map so you can circle around, then put the zeus up so you can sneak south through the gap in their positions. Wait for the elite units to move out, then gun the radar and kill the SAMs nearby, best 1 missile each. Then kill the leading force from the rear, followed by the second force once they clear the zeus. Their missiles are homing so have to be very careful when killing them with only gun, but they are easier than the rocket artillery. The last thing to do is kill the boss by spamming sidewinders, missiles and gun; the special ammo near the center east is saved for this. Outside the 3 armors that were used, there are 5 more: 1 near the start surrounded by infantry, 3 hidden in buildings along the same latitude roughly 2/3 north from the south, 1 at the enemy hq, and that 1 at nimrod. Fuel is also hidden around in buildings and storage tanks, and there is more than enough. There is more than enough ammo too and it should not be necessary to use the crappy local weapons. There are also 2 boxes of crappy missiles (might be area effect) at the more central hidden armor, and on top of a mountain in the far west. The challenge of this level inspired me to master it, though the boss was the worst part of the game. I am dubious about rocket artillery being so effective against helicopters, and I know those SAMs should not be able to defeat ground forces.
Level 4 was brutally difficult due to the amount of tough enemies and alert zones. The immediate enemy attack on home base was a dirty cheap shot that just encouraged restarting. It took a couple tries or so to map out the supplies, and I failed when newly spawned enemies killed the scientists as I was dropping them off, and when the enemy tanks destroyed both landing zones; the kind of cheap difficulty that was extremely unlikely to be countered without knowing beforehand what will happen. I used the walkthrough to make sure I did not fail again, but was unable to find the super cannon. I didn't need it though. I did not like the "boss" because it made zero sense for there to exist a tank that was nearly immune to weapon damage. I did like the set piece of goading the 2 enemies to fight each other, but railroading it with unrealistic stats was dumb. It would have been enough to be low on supplies and armor after all the grueling battles to be encouraged to let enemies die by other means. But the option to risk taking a few hits to drop a few missiles should always exist.
The last level was a huge pain in the ass that took many tries to beat. Many enemies felt far too tough, especially the pick ups. I had to kill them with 1 missile to avoid taking significant damage. They should have been near instantly shredded by gunfire. I do wonder if there was a secret alert zone in the south east, where most of those trucks were. No notifications came up but there was some audio about a radar tower. The first mission was confusing as I somehow missed the notification of where she was. Instead I went around blowing stuff up thinking there was no time limit. Failed again by letting the VIPs get killed, and again taking too long to kill the enemies attacking the Kremlin. Fucking time limits. Bad enough I had fuel counting down. From this point on I used a walkthrough. I made it through the escort first try, though I had to leave for ammo twice. That car must have insane armor to the point where it was likely unnecessary to kill most of the enemies. The entire concept of the president going on a meandering escape via car made absolutely zero sense when I could have easily taken him in the chopper. At least the other games justified escorts by having more people than could fit on the chopper, and no time for multiple trips. I failed at the end because I blew all my missiles on the boss plane and thus could not kill the ICBMs in time. Again it was absurd for a small plane to be able to survive more than 1 missile. I would have won had I not made that mistake, and at this point I wished I had save states. So I cheated again to get to the end and still had to start over multiple times; the car glitched and would not move, the game froze, I forgot to drop people off to make room for the mob boss, and maybe some other failure. This time I did not pick up Nick, which meant the plane could be leisurely killed and there were only half as many ICBMs.
Despite having the same great core gameplay as the rest of the Strike series, this game seemed a little unpolished and excessively difficult. A website I found about the greatest hits edition mentioned the improvements, which fixed many of the issues I had with the game, including: removing enemy homing missiles (which might be too easy but I hated how every single rocket other than those from BMPs was homing), lower fuel consumption, less health for bosses, longer time limits for some things like those ICBMs, less attack power for the most dangerous enemies (like the rocket artillery), more supplies, that fake failure in level 2, etc. Unfortunately this was the only rom available. Maybe I can find the newer version or Saturn version to play in the future. I watched a youtube video of level 3 greatest hits version and the difference was staggering: way more resources, fuel was barely needed, much longer delay between units attacking, not taking unavoidable damage from every rocket, and the boss died in 3 sidewinders. I hope that was easy mode because otherwise the game might be a bit too easy for me.
7.3/10, though the greatest hits may be up to 9