Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising
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| Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising | |
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| Developer(s) | Intelligent Systems |
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
| Release date(s) |  June 23, 2003 October 3, 2003 |
| Genre(s) | Turn-based game |
| Mode(s) | Single player, multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Everyone (E) PEGI: 7+ |
| Platform(s) | Game Boy Advance |
| Media | 64-megabit cartridge |
Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising is a turn-based strategy video game developed for the Game Boy Advance by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo in 2003.
Black Hole Rising is the second game in the Advance Wars series of video games, preceded by Advance Wars and followed by Advance Wars: Dual Strike. This trio of games is a sub-series of the Nintendo Wars set of games.
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[edit] New Features
Black Hole Rising is nearly identical to the previous game in terms of core gameplay. Therefore, please refer here for information about the battle system, terrain, units, game modes, and COs and their powers. The new features as they pertain to this game are covered below.
[edit] Campaign Mode
Black Hole Rising does not feature a field training mode like the original, instead integrating briefer tutorial elements into the first several missions in the new campaign.
The campaign is much more nonlinear in mission selection. The campaign is divided into five parts, each focusing on one of the game’s five fictional countries: Orange Star, Blue Moon, Green Earth, Yellow Comet, and Black Hole.
In each part, when a mission is completed, often two or more missions open up on that continent, and the player can decide to play one over the other or complete both for full credit. Depending on how a player completes missions in a part, the final mission of a continent can be opened up even when several other missions available beforehand still have not been completed. The player can opt to bypass “leftover” missions and complete the “final” mission for a continent to finish that continent and move onto the next part/continent of the campaign, therefore progressing faster, but a player can also take his or her time to complete all available missions and earn more G for use in Battle Maps.
Throughout the campaign mode there are four “secret missions”, unlocked by capturing a specific property in a mission earlier on. Each secret mission involves capturing an enemy lab, which functions as an enemy headquarters, and once a secret mission is completed, for the rest of the missions on that continent the player can construct the game’s new unit, the Neotank. Earning the ability to construct Neotanks for each of the game’s four continents helps make the final missions on the Black Hole continent easier for the player.
Once the campaign mode is finished by the player, a Hard Campaign is unlocked just as in the previous Advance Wars. However, here the Hard Campaign is different in that some of the missions, including all of the missions on the first continent as well as the final missions at Black Hole, are completely new. As the difficulty is increased, the player earns twice as much G compared to the normal campaign. Once the Hard Campaign is completed, the player can unlock Hachi for use in non-Campaign modes.
[edit] Story
While the other armies were still recovering from the war in Cosmo Land, the Black Hole Army has already recovered and is launching a new attack on Macro Land. Since its defeat in Cosmo Land, the Black Hole Army has learned from its mistakes. It has built large factories to fund and amass a large force for an invasion. Lash has also invented several new war weapons that are put to liberal use in this invasion.
The Black Hole Army has also recruited four new Commanding Officers (COs). Sturm, with an ominous new look, commands each Black Hole CO to invade and capture each of the four countries owned by the four other armies from the original game: Flak is assigned to take Orange Star, Lash for Blue Moon, Adder for Yellow Comet, and Hawke for Green Earth. The four armies must now work together to drive Black Hole out of their world once and for all.
Near the end of the campaign, when the Black Hole COs have been driven from the nations of Wars World, the COs meet up in Black Hole's base of operations, where they fight Sturm one last time. The final battle takes place in front of the Death Ray, a powerful new weapon guarding the entrance to a missile, which, in 30 days, will destroy half of Wars World in a single blow!
When the Death Ray is destroyed, the COs disarm the missile and corner Sturm, who attempts to blow up the base and kill everyone by self destructing. Andy steps forward to stop Sturm. Just as it looks like Andy will be killed, Hawke, second only to Sturm himself, betrays his leader by killing him with his Black Storm CO Superpower. Afterwards, Hawke takes over as leader of Black Hole, and with Flak, Lash, and Adder, leaves Macro Land with the few troops he has left. However, little do the now celebrating countries know that this would not be the last invasion Black Hole attempts...
[edit] Gameplay
Several new concepts and mechanics are featured in Black Hole Rising and are heavily integrated into the campaign mode as well as the multiplayer mode. These have the effect of helping lend the campaign mode a far wider variety of mission objectives.
[edit] Commanding Officers (COs)
Eight new Commanding Officers (COs) join new versions of the previous game’s eleven existing COs for a total of ninteen, and nearly all of them are featured heavily in the campaign. (See the main article on List of Advance Wars COs for full information on each CO). Of these, in the campaign mode, each continent features several missions where the player can choose between three COs native to that continent (and also missions where the player is forced to use certain COs for certain missions).
- For Orange Star, missions feature Andy, Max, and Sami, and in multiplayer one can also play as Nell and Hachi.
- For missions on Blue Moon, the COs Olaf, Grit, and Colin are often available simultaneously.
- Likewise, missions in Yellow Comet feature Kanbei, Sonja, and Sensei.
- Missions in Green Earth feature Eagle, Drake, and Jess.
- Every mission in the campaign pits these COs against one of the five COs of the Black Hole Army: Flak, Lash, Adder, Hawke, and Sturm.
Most of the new COs, as well as most of the previously existing ones, are unavailable for use initially and must be unlocked by buying them in the Battle Maps mode after completing the various continents of the campaign modes, among other conditions.
A major new feature regarding COs are the new Super CO powers. Every CO now has two powers, one stronger than the other, but the stronger one takes more time and energy from the CO meter. For example, while Olaf retains his initial power to cause snowfall that hinders enemy movement while supporting his own, his Super CO power has the additional effect of doing 2 HP of damage to all enemy units on the map. However, it costs twice as many stars (a new measure of a CO’s energy for using a CO power) to use as his normal CO power, and if he has the energy for the Super CO power he is also able to use the normal CO power twice in a row. It is up to the player to decide which approach to using CO powers works best for the situation.
[edit] Units and terrain features
One of the most advertised features of Black Hole Rising is the all-new Neotank unit, a direct-combat unit that is more expensive to produce than a Medium Tank but is more powerful, has higher defense, more fuel, and can move farther than a Medium Tank. While the Neotank is initially available for use outside Campaign mode, in the Campaign mode it must be unlocked for each army to use by finding and completing secret missions.
The terrain of Black Hole Rising, aside from a slight visual alteration, remain the same. There are two new terrain features available. The first is Missile Silo, neutral properties consisting of one missile on a launchpad ready to be launched. When an Infantry or Mech unit of a player goes onto a silo, that player can launch that missile anywhere on the map. When selecting the Launch command, a 3 – by – 3 diamond-shape (13-cell) cursor will appear, and when selecting a spot on the map with that cursor, all units within the cursor’s range, friend or foe, will take 3 HP of damage. Units cannot be destroyed by a missile launch, but missiles can weaken large amounts of enemies and therefore make them easier to destroy with the player’s own units, making control of silos potentially vital for strategy.
The other new terrain feature is the Pipeline, along with the Pipe Seams, which essentially act as walls on a battlefield. Pipelines are often arranged to enclose key areas of a map to intensify the nature of a conflict, but they can also come with seams in their structure that can be destroyed by repeated fire from any unit, and once destroyed, flat land (equivalent to Plains) appears in the seam’s place and can allow units to pass through the Pipeline’s barrier. Many maps in the Campaign mode, along with the new Versus Mode maps, have Pipelines integrated into their map layout.
Lastly, appearing only in the campaign mode are geographical features that specifically affect the gameplay of campaign missions, often becoming the focus of these missions. These include giant cannons (Black Cannons) that automatically fire upon any non-Black Hole unit in their firing range at the start of each turn; giant factories that can freely produce Black Hole units and are always the focus of the final missions for each continent; an explosive volcano in one campaign map that drops damaging debris onto the field in a set pattern; and in the final mission, a giant Deathray that fires every seven days damaging everything within its path. It is destroyed to end the campaign.
[edit] Multiplayer & Other Features
Much like in the original Advance Wars, completion of a mission yields a rank for that mission and currency rewards corresponding to the quality of the rank, and that currency can be redeemed at Battle Maps. However, the currency is no longer measured in Advance Wars Coins, but rather in Points. When a mission is completed, the Power, Speed, and Technique ratings of the player for that mission are scored between 0 and 100, and they are added up to the total score for that mission (and doubled, if the mission was an Advance Campaign mission). This in turn is added to the total G amassed by the player as his “money”. Ideally, a player can earn up to 300 (or 600) G per mission and use them to buy new maps (which often cost 500 G).
As a whole, the array of maps for use in the Versus Mode and War Room are slightly expanded versions of the collection of 114 maps in Advance Wars. There are 22 new maps, 10 of which are in the War Room (which add up to 30 maps when taken together with the 20 existing War Room maps from the previous game). All of the new maps must be bought in the Battle Maps mode (while all of the existing maps are unlocked from the start) and often feature Silos and Pipelines.
The Battle Maps mode is unchanged in function and purpose. The points earned in Campaign and War Room are redeemed here for maps and COs to be used in Versus Mode. Other things that can be bought, however, include new color palettes to change the appearance of each CO, a Sound Room, and an Image Gallery.
[edit] External links
- Official website
- Official Nintendo website
- Official Intelligent Systems website
- Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising at MobyGames
