Indestruct 2 Tank
IndestructoTank 2, to some the name might evoke feelings of dew eyed anticipation, the return of the indestructo-king. This is, in a manner similar to Pillage the Village, a refurbishment of an early Flash classic, back when Newgrounds was the only portal. You have at your disposal a nice smorgasbord of modes — three — for free, which is a way better deal than in Vegas.
The first mode is a graphical re-skin of the original, which is worth repeating here. You pilot an indestructible tank, which you might have guessed, and can control it simply by moving left and right. Instead of trying to avoid bombs and other projectiles, you want to run into them, because their explosions propel you into the air where you're able to hit helicopters and planes. Each enemy you hit bounces you further, so its possible to bounce in succession many times over, racking up higher and higher combos. This was the kind of clever inversion of tradition that you'd see in the early days of Flash become stuff like Line Rider or Dolphin Olympics. You lose when you run out of fuel, which is always draining but slowed when you kill, and your fuel is refilled when you accumulate enough experience to level-up, which allows you to spend points increasing the frequency of different types of enemies. This puts you on a feedback loop of more points and bigger combos.
The enhanced version has incorporated player feedback to come up with a new feature, the boom meter, which fills up as you destroy enemies and allows you a jump. This is a really useful addition that lets you continue a combo in a pinch, making it a key resource to save for that break when there's nothing on screen.
The story mode is an attempt to take the game beyond the open-ended Valhalla of the high-score board and strap some meaning and level design onto the experience. And when I say "meaning" I mean it, I think, at least there's a sense that they're trying. The writing is hackneyed with the protagonist, Dirk Danger, voice acted by a guy giving a bad David Hayter impression. The story is both vague and explicitly stereotypical — a sample line "wait Whiz Kid, are you a Hacker?" — and accompanies a set of level designs that can only really play with adding gaps to the ground, since the game design isn't really oriented towards varied questing and whatnot.
The adventure offers some risque innuendo; a former lover you kill by jumping on her machine five or six times; a boss who is also your father, and then the ending, hah, I was speechless. The whole story up until the end is completely facile, one-dimensional, stereotypical, and at the end you start to seriously wonder if they were being ironic or not. When he starts talking about combos, you might experience the feeling of eating an ice cream cone made of cognitive dissonance.
But hey, its IndestructoTank... 2!
Title is messed up?
The game is a sequel to Indestructo Tank, so they've done a play on words, Indestruc to Tank becomes Indestruc 2 Tank. Get it?
It's a bit odd.
But technically, it's Indestructo Tank 2.
The story is truly painful, but the gameplay is still quite good.
"Indestruct 2 Tank"? Sort of reminiscent of "2 Fast 2 Furious".
Couldn't bother myself to play the story mode. Anyone want to tell me the ending?
I loved the first version of this game, and I love this one too. very fun
Maybe if I win all the medals, I'll unlock invincibility! Oh wait...
Still a bit annoyed about the delay in updating your exp. bar when you land. Almost cost me the game a couple of times.
At the end of the story
it turns out the bad guy is your dad (perhaps) and he escapes (it appears).
Wow, this is perhaps the most critical review on JIG. Not necessarily undeserving because if this story mode was serious, it would be truly...something. I was definitely laughing at the incredible campiness. I pray this was intentional.
The game is a lot of fun, though. Like, a whole lot of fun. Seriously addictive. The bosses were entertaining (but very frustrating).
Overall a great sequel!
Overall, this was really awesome. The story is so tongue-in-cheek that it breaks your brain and then re-fixes it.
I had a couple of problems with actual gameplay, including gaps between waves of enemies that weren't there in the first game, and the fact that, while the planes don't drop bombs until you pass under them, they weren't dropping bombs until I was behind them. I don't know if this is a lag issue, but it was still a downer that made getting combos frustrating. My maximum combo in this game was 60-something (after buying almost everything, and on EASY mode), but I remember getting combos of a couple hundred in the first version well before buying everything.
My major gripe is that these "features" mean that hard difficulty on classic mode is near impossible. I'm not saying this out of sheer frustration, I have a mathematical basis to back me up.
And it's behind the spoiler tags so you don't HAVE to read it :P
In order to beat the game, you have to either complete level 12 on a high combo or complete level 13. This is just the way the points work out.
Let's assume you attempt to beat level 13. You need 2,329 points to do so, which is only feasible if you make the level one long combo. Assuming you couldn't have finished after level 12 (which is a reasonable assumption - why would you not want to go into infinite fuel mode?), you start level 13 with fewer than 613 points, since this how much more you need to buy everything. That leaves 1,717 points left, which requires a 38 combo. While this is certainly possible, it's literally a level-long combo, and the huge gaps between waves of enemies make it luck-based enough to be a buzzkill.
As for the other case, which is that you finish after level 12, you need to beat the level with an excess of 613 points, regardless of what you've bought. This is at least a 21 combo, assuming you're 1 point under the quota when you start the combo. In general, if you want to finish after level 12, let "n" be the number of points you need to just finish level 12. Your minimum combo will be sqrt(n + 638) - 5, rounded up. A combo of 21 is rather easy, especially once you have almost everything bought. But consider this: in order to get to the point where a 21 combo will seal the deal, you need to get a 31 combo from the start of the level, and that's assuming you bought everything you could before the level started (again, a reasonable assumption - I'd like to believe that the other gamers here who have even gotten to level 12 are intelligent enough to buy everything they can). This means getting a 31 combo, then a 21 combo, all before your fuel runs out. Considering that on the hard difficulty, it's only possible to squeeze in a 40-something combo before fuel runs out, the latter case is clearly impossible.
Therefore, the only possible way to beat hard difficulty is to actually play through and beat level 13, which, as noted earlier, is dependent on the gaps between waves of enemies.
I consider myself rather skilled at this game. I'll even fly over enemies to get them to drop their bombs, then swerve back and hit the bombs, all for a few extra seconds of hangtime. And I still notice gaps in the enemies that no amount of finagling with bombs will patch. These gaps are the combo killers that make high combos near impossible.
I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one who noticed the odd gaps between the waves. It is a bit frustrating to lose a combo because there is literally nothing on the screen.
I'm going to pitch my tent in camp
IRONY!!! OMG IRONY HAHAHAA!!
because there's just no way any of that was serious. And as a goof on plot-driven action games it's great. I loved the timeline of the indestructo-tank universe also.
Only thing I thought was lacking was gameplay. Especially on mission 3 of story mode... when most of the level consists of pits those unexpected gaps in the waves of enemies can be lethal for no reason at all. The randomness of the whole thing just kills the replay value since you know your high score is just based on how many enemies show up to party, and that's in no way based on your skill.
I don't know what you guys are talking about. I've spent years just chasing after bigger and bigger combos. Dirk's line about doing it "for the combos" really struck a chord with me. Poor Chief. ;_;
The game seemed a little too easy to me. I'd never played the original, and my first time playing the Enhanced version (which was on medium difficulty) I maxed out all the upgrades and got an 87-hit combo.
Upgrading the bouncers and miners seemed to provide enough bouncification to get me through to each level-up point; since the bouncers' bombs bounce, each one provides two opportunities for a boost. The seekers I left alone until late in the game.
The medals are cute - it's worth playing long enough to unlock the third and fourth tank skins. Has anyone seen the "secret message" you get with 18 medals?
I have 17 medals and I am just missing one courtesy medal which is the one that says play more games. Does any one know how to get that because I have played several other games including the first indestructotank and I still haven't got it.
Anonymous: Click on the link that takes you to their homepage.
Well, at least I got a medal for finishing story mode. Thanks (cough,cough) for the purple heard (gasp!).
Ok, I liked the original Indestructotank enough to label it as one of the great flash classics and save it to my hard drive. Then, I read that the sequel "enhanced version" and my expectations skyrocketed. But the new one seems rather crappy.
They boast of "better physics", while your little truck goes bouncing up and down on the ground like a madman, something usually seen only in extremely low-end flash games. While running on semi-sloped edges made of crude blocks, your little truck jerks around like someone with a sugar rush. And it's possible to leap off the edge and come back merely because of the glitchy collision detection. While the original certainly didn't have the blowback effect of bombs hitting the ground, its gameplay was extremely smooth.
Better graphics? The airplanes look like they were drawn by a 10-year old. The old, smoothly animated bombs are still there, and they look extremely out of place. Although the new airplane rotors look awesome and the new explosion effects look great, they don't really counterbalance the terrible drawings of the airplanes themselves.
Honestly, if you wanted to play this game, I would recommend the original. It's far more polished than this is.
yay, beat the game :D:D:D the secret message just says:
congratulations, you won, go out and get a hobby and move out of your parents basement :(
good game though, took me almost 2hours to beat :P
If only those idiots, who can build an indestructible tank, would have put some weapons on it... I mean wtf, this is a killer thing! why not let it shoot :P
I have to agree with an above poster on the 3rd mission. I walked away from this after playing around in the freeform modes, and working my way through the story until the innocuous level where, suddenly, my existence depended on a random foe dropping a bomb onto the tiny patch of dirt I occupied. Too early, and I couldn't make the gap, and fell to my doom. Too late, and I fell into the gap, to my doom. It just stinks of bad planning.
there must be something wrong with me - I cannot beat the first level of story. I've bounced on every enemy 3 times now, but I get right to the very end (to the point where I cannot see any more grey bar, and there must be about 3 pixels of bar left) then I run out of fuel. do combos matter? or do the levels depend not on distance but on experience/points? I'm so confused.
what bothers me is this - why does the tank BLOW UP when it has no fuel left in it? sure the engine would just stop. unless some idiot decided it'd be fun to rig the tank with explosives which would be detonated if the fuel ran out.
Reapninja: Combos do matter. You use less fuel, and gain more experience, the more combos you achieve. When your experience bar is full, your level goes up and your fuel is replenished.
The consequences of running out of fuel are explained (more or less) in one of the unlockables.
how do you view the credits?
@jere7my: I know about combos and stuff, but what I'm asking about is to do with the story mode. I can't get past level 1, I just never seem to have enough fuel to do it no matter how many combos I get or how high they are. and I know about running out of fuel, I'm just questioning why the tank explodes after it runs out of fuel instead of just stopping.
nevermind. I JUST managed to do level 1.
urgh... triple post...
final boss is so annoying. his laser keeps forcing me down into the ditch, and his missiles keep launching me up in the air 50 times before I get a hit in. finally got him though.
lol at whizzkid. although, I still don't understand - why did he get all beaten up if he hacked the blimp-thing from his house ?_?
reapaninja wrote, "I know about running out of fuel, I'm just questioning why the tank explodes after it runs out of fuel instead of just stopping."
As I say, the consequences of running out of fuel are explained in one of the unlockables.
Hi, I'm Antony Lavelle, the creator of IndestructoTank and Indestruc2Tank, glad most of you enjoyed the games. Since there seems to be some sort of debate going on over a few things, allow me to clear some things up.
1. The entire game is intended to be taken with a rather large spoonful of sugar - Improved physics engine? Its a 2d bouncy ball style game - how can you imporve those kind of physics?
2. Me and Joel (who helped write and voiced Dirks line among others) are fully aware of the heaps of cheese of the story. If you sniff a hint of Irony in it - you can bet it was intended, theresquite a few subtle in jokes, but for the most part, you're meant to laugh with the story, all the way from changing a quote from Castlevania symphony of the Night to Dirks breaking of the 4th wall in the end scene was all pre planned and scrutinised. It was all designed to poke fun at the epic stories we as gamers have constantly forced down our throats for games that don't even need a narrative in the first place (just like the original itank)
anyway, hope this clarifies some things for you :)
Keep up the good work Jayisgames.
An early Flash classic?
From this March?
Q2 2007 - they were simpler times...
I was just wondering if the parachutists have anything to do with the game....or are they just extra scenery. I was trying to see if letting them actually get to the ground unharmed gets you any points. (They can land safely but have to lose their aircraft high and to the right of the screen) But I don't know if it makes any difference. Or should I be trying to kill as many as possible by bursting their parachutes and watching them splat bloodily??
Okay...so...how, precisely, is Betton beatable? I may just be missing the obvious here. But twice I've tried him and he's hit me with lasers until I'm down to half fuel - then I stand no chance of performing some ridiculous bouncing move and getting in under the volley of bombs to hit the window, at least, not enough times to beat him before I run out of fuel.
Am I just being dumb?
how do you see the credits? I also agree with Juryrugged. the third mission is very hard and i cant seem to beat it.
bwah: nice, really nice descriptions of the tank on a sugar rush. i found that when it did that it was incredibally funny.
plz help!!! ive dun everthin but the credit thing PLZ help! how do i show the credits?!?!?!?!
Hey, I've been playing the game for about 3 hours now. The story is really weird... Also, ducky tank rocks!
Anyway, Jay, I loved your post on Bloons Tower Defence, helped me win!
16 Medals. Left: Hard mode on Classic & Enhanced.
Nice and easy then...
"Okay...so...how, precisely, is Betton beatable?"
how to beat the boss:
it is a lame boss.
that said, you need to hit the window, you can only doo that by bouncing up from the ground after you gain a hight of about 3 hits from rockets
you can even hit him when he uses laser if you are close enough and force yourself further in
be rude, try to do 2 at once. bounce bck after the first hit
good luck!
i beat Betton on the first try, but could NEVER beat him again. After 8 tries even. He simply stopped using bombs. Always laser, except for 1 or 2 volleys of like 50 bombs. Awesome game, but I'm wondering what the final secret is.
"wait, are you a hacker?"
priceless.
The final boss is irritating enough that I'm considering bailing on the game just because of it.
When I do win, it won't be a feeling of "I won!" but "It let me win", which is bad design.
How do you view the credits? I don't understand, please help.
This is definitely a spoof on Metal Gear
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