Excellent, engaging game with a truly disappointing ending. I thought maybe it was still in early access? But it's supposedly finished. There is no boss fight. You meet the boss, then...no fight. A cutscene with a deus ex machina where the boss, the big bad who was built up as unstoppable over the course of two games, is defeated instantly and effortlessly with no action from the player.
This also makes the blue army's capture of the Revelation pointless, as it's never used. It disintegrates on the way to the final level. That is awful story telling. It would've been narratively correct to have a boss fight, where you and your blue allies fight to a point of stalemate and seem like you're going to lose, before the Revelation comes to your aid in your darkest hour, delivering the finishing blow.
I'm still upvoting this game because the gameplay itself expands in a satisfying way on the original. It takes the huge open world battles from the latter half of the first game and builds the sequel entirely around them save for a single corridor shooter level, also adding more utility to the ability to exit your tank (hacking vent covers).
Did the dev just get tired? Did resources run out and the game had to be wrapped up in a hurry? There was also that character whose face we saw when she was put into the huge NPC capsule thingie next to Gorgon. Who was that? Was she going to be more central to the story? Why make a unique model and feature her in a cutscene only to never have her appear again?
I did appreciate that the "George" storyline, which seemed hokey in the first game, turns into something actually interesting by the ending of the second game. I expected a twist but not that particular one. I had a lot of fun playing this game, I really did. But there are too many loose ends that never get tied up. Plot points that seem as if they're going somewhere, like the capture of the Revelation and that unique NPC, but then go nowhere. The ending was just a tremendous disappointment given an otherwise truly enjoyable game.
If the dev reads this, it would be a non-trivial job, but the game could be massively improved simply by the addition of a boss fight at the end of the game in which the captured Revelation comes to your aid. You have the assets, if not the animations. You have the level, the set up for a boss fight. It just needs to be actually implemented.
1. Expand the platform you encounter Gorgon on. Make it into a circle or semicircle around Gorgon, and widen so multiple blue tanks can join you and fight comfortably on that area.
2. You arrive and fight Gorgon on your own, He periodically heals himself a little bit by eating NPCs from the capsules. You can shoot the capsules to prevent this but the blue commander admonishes you not to kill the trapped NPCs.
3. When Gorgon's health is reduced to 80%, your allies show up. They tell you that you don't have to fight alone, and assist you in bringing Gorgon's health down to 50%.
4. You receive the nuke from the blue commander and use it. But it doesn't finish Gorgon off, only takes him down to 10%.
5. Gorgon destroys all blue tanks at once. All appears to be lost.
6. Revelation appears overhead and bombards Gorgon, whereupon his frame fails and worm Gorgon emerges
7. Ending proceeds as usual, except that if you destroyed the NPC capsules to make the fight a little easier, the scene of liberating the NPCs is replaced with one mourning their loss
I really wanted such a great game to end on a more satisfying note than it did. I feel as if you have all the pieces needed to create a truly satisfying ending if you want to. It's worth adding this final layer of polish, isn't it? Why bother to do anything if you're not going to do the best you can?
I have seen in the forums that this project was exhausting for you, such that you don't intend for any sequels. Fair enough! But why not polish up what you do have finished, to take it from "great" to "legendary"?
With a proper boss fight, 2 possible endings, and compiling TU 1 and TU 2 into a single huge game, I feel as if it would do very well on consoles. The project of porting it to each platform would be much less time and energy consuming than actually making either game was, while bringing in a new wave of sales with each platform it comes to.
