Part 7: MISSION 6: Fuck It, Kill Everything

If nothing else, I need to keep pace so Paingod doesn't kill me in my sleep and take over this LP. I view playing this game TWICE as both a cry for help and a mark of serious brain damage.

MISSION 6: Fuck It, Kill Everything

I...had such high hopes for this mission.



See, this sounds pretty rad. The Big Attack! Occupied science city! Clipboard-based email! Ethnic cleansing! We're even getting some high-tech gear to splatter Martians with. How could this NOT be awesome?

...Because this is Stalin vs. Martians.



Their Photoshop guy was probably the busiest person in the office. I assume the system designer and 3D modeler were just doing bong rips out of a converted Amiga case and trying to light their farts on fire.



I could not give less of a fuck about this objective because NEW TANKS!!



Behold the T-35! I'll let the military-literate folks in the audience (Stalin bless you) get into the nitty-gritty of this thing. For my part, I'll point out that it is pretty damn expensive (worth two of my current favorite, the zippy T-70), and looks totally metal.

Feel free to direct your eyes down to Stalin's Falcons, as well. No spoilers, but that's probably going to be the highlight of the update.



As usual, the first pocket of resistance I run into is a gaggle of sprinkles. I'm not going to judge the T-35 on this encounter since any tank vs. sprinkle is about as fair a fight as fatty vs. actual sprinkle. These tanks are not very fast, though...probably equal to our original tanks.



Here's where these things shine. I haven't been real clear on how much damage things do because it tends to be internally inconsistent (more on this later), but these things can take out a tricloptic durfuck with two shots. In other words, this pair of tanks kills one with each volley. In other other words, I beat this encounter without taking any damage. I think I'm in love.



Where the fuck were you guys? Why did it take less force to rescue you than you already had? You're the reason our great Republic is being overrun with sugar midgets and stolen IPs.

We get two more T-35s, four of those useless, slow-ass artillery pieces, two infantry clumps, and orders to cross another goddamned bridge. To recap, yay, boo, yawn, fuck.



For reference, my tanks are more than twice as fast as these lumps of shit. And recall that these are the SLOWEST tanks I've used thus far (tied with the first tanks).



...What.



Well, I give them credit for including something that I cannot immediately identify as someone else's creation. If anyone else wants to shed some light on where Hypnotoad's retarded kin here came from, go right ahead.



It took me a moment to figure out how these things attack. Turns out they have EXACTLY the same attack as the three-socketed shitsuckers. Invisible projectiles and massive splash damage included. HOORAY NEW ENEMY



And then this happens. See if you can follow this logic: Order tanks to opposite side of bridge -> Plunge off of cliff to right of bridge into river. Okay, lemme pull the dumb bastards back.



THIS IS NOT HELPING



At least one of our tanks is listening, and succeeds in crossing the bridge. If this ends up being the hardest part of this mission, I'm going to kill myself via alcohol poisoning.

Speaking of objectives, we now have the big one for the mission: Kill everything. Seriously, that's it. I have a sneaking suspicion this is going to be a repeat of mission 2, with endless creeping around the map and losing units. That's about the only variety this game can wring out aside from summoning giant cro-magnons to pummel a massive caterpillar to death.



After some more furtive clicking, the unit pathing decides to function. Bong rips and flaming farts at work.



I start pressing towards the first "source of slime" I guess, agitating a hive of sprinkles and little green men.



Some bounding shrooms decide to join the party. With all these irritating enemies in one place, this seems like a good time to see just what Stalin's Falcons do. Clicking it changes the cursor to a crosshair like with Anthrax. And clicking at target...



...Does nothing? God dammit, it's Rage all over again!

 I actually found out what Rage does in the last mission. It buffs your infantry in some way. I couldn't tell what the difference was, but they got a blue glow over them. Mildly less disappointing than doing nothing. 



Fine, whatever, I'll clear these fuckers out myself. It's just... Hey, what's that?



Airplanes? I guess our Falcons have arrived! Now, what exactly do they...



...Uh oh.











Holy Jesus, are you guys okay? Stalin's Falcons marks a point on the map, and then saturation bombs the FUCK out of it. Seriously, they hit this spot like ten times. Sadly, most of the enemies I targeted were dead by the time the Falcons arrived, but it lasted so long that I was able to lure more into the murder zone. If this was a real RTS, this would be broken as fuck.



With the path to the "source of the slime" a.k.a. That Fucking Tree having been bombed clean, I roll my tanks up and splinter the think. Purple poop for everyone!



Real mature, guys.



I head up into the corner of the map and murder about a billion sprinkles. As you can see, these things are stuffed full of money. Not sure I would trust my cash with saccharine spastics.



Flamerphants and dickeye greenguys guard this tree. The oooOOOooohs are taking a toll on my forces...I already lost one tank to them.



My tanks shot at this thing for more than a minute. Their targeting must have wigged out, so I order them to move and fire again. One volley later...



SPLORT



Time to take on this cluster of objectives. It doesn't take a master strategist to figure out that most of the aliens will be here. Not that I'm not a master strategist, of course. They don't just hand out Orthodox Shaman Commander titles to anyone.



I begin engaging green pewpew men. Now, I have to apologize, because the game stopped taking screenshots for a minute here, and ate all my images of my tanks getting wasted by a mess of eyeballed trifucktas and Hopkin Not-Green Frogs. Worse, I tried to drop another Stalin's Falcons on these shitfuckers, but it bugged out, ate my 200 LeniNotes, and did dick all. So...um...here, have a video of what I wished had happened: Click for tank.



Right, anyway, it started saving screens again after I bought some piddly reinforcements with my remaining RepubliCoins. I went with four T-70s, because I remember them being very fast and performing well. Since we're here, we might as well take out that tree hiding off to the side of the map.



Perfect...this one is guarded by a mess of fuckeye freaks, both green and red.



I love the T-70, but sturdy it ain't. I flank left up the hill, get all up in the alien grill pieces, and blast them the hell off.



This makes it easier to push up the middle, but I still lose a tank to undodgeable green bullshit blasts.



They get another before I can clear out all resistance. I mentioned before that the damage I did was inconsistent, right? Well, what I mean there is that sometimes your shots do no damage. Seriously. I have no idea what causes it, if it's a bug, or what, but sometimes you will hit a monster with a tank shell to the face and it will explode and you will feel all good and manly...and their health will not move.

It seems to happen more with cheaper tanks, so maybe it's some kind of accuracy or armor modeling? Whereas T-35s can kill oooOOOooohs in two shells, the T-70s take anywhere from five to FIFTEEN.



Anyway, SPLORT



I also take a joyride down to the end of this area, because I absolutely expect these shitheel developers to hide an alien in the middle of nowhere in their "kill everything" mission. To my surprise, they didn't.



I buy up some more tanks, and decide to see if I can get any use whatsoever out of those stupid artillery pieces. As you can see here, they're only really good for causing traffic jams.



My plan is to station the artillery on the road (which is on a hill, if you can't tell from the shitty rendering) while I roll my tanks down to engage the hordes. With any luck, the tanks can spot for the artillery, which will help make up for the T-70's relative lack of damage. That's a good plan, right?



Well, it would be if the artillery could SHOOT FARTHER THAN THE FUCKING TANKS. Do you see that explosion in the middle? Do you see the artillery just down and right from it? That is how close things have to be for the artillery to hit them. Let me reiterate: ARTILLERY CANNOT FIRE FURTHER THAN TANKS IN THIS GAME





All that's left to do is send them to their doom. I cannot tell these units to fuck themselves hard enough.



They do manage to take a tree with them. Whatever, I was going to kill it with tanks anyway.



I'm out of KremlinKash, and down to four tanks. If ever there was a time to believe in the power of the proletariat, it is now.



And Stalin answers my prayers! My two earlier assaults wiped out the vast majority of the enemy forces! Only a few errant Blowbos remain! The system works!



BOOM! Suck on our nationalist pride, tree! The sundry slime sources suffered serious setbacks. Now, time to hunt down the last cowardly...



Oh.



BLACK SCREEN OF VICTORY

This mission didn't end up being nearly as hard or bad as I feared...but what a letdown. Scroll back up to the briefing, and take note of all the things that were mentioned and never even hinted at in the mission. I know I should expect it by now, but Christ, there is LESS than no cohesion between text and gameplay. They even fucked up what little text there is in this abomination of a game.

Well, at least it's not that hard to get through, right?



NEXT TIME ON STALIN VS MARTIANS: