User:WENth100/sandbox

Gatling Gears  is a top-down 3D Action Game developed by Vanguard Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts. It features the player in a steam punk world known as Mistbound operating a Mini-Mecha and focuses on upgrading its weapons and armor and destroying large variety of mooks, ranging from the basic infantry to tanks and other walkers.

Tropes used in Gatling Gears
 * Action Bomb: the kamikaze drones and explosive-loaded mine carts.
 * Action Girl: Zoe is able to handle a walker and kick ass with it just like her uncle.
 * Advancing Boss of Doom: Happens several times in the final chapter where giant tanks start pursuing you and unloading tons of shells and bullets at you. At this point, the best option for you is to simply run away, especially in the second-to-last level where TWO giant tanks appear simultaneously.
 * Airborne Mook: You will encounter quite a variety go them throughout the campaign.
 * The most common variant and the first you'll encounter is a physics defying basic hang glider, which seems to have infinite momentum despite having to carry the pilot as well as a large bomb. When not flying in formation, the gliders will follow you around the battlefield and drop their payload once's you're close enough. The bombs always drop in the direction the glider's travelling. A well placed cannon shot is enough to bring it down, but the bomb will drop nonetheless. The Freeman variant carries a simple high-explosive while the Imperial variant carries a custard bomb.
 * Then there's the light transport plane which flies across the screen dropping three shotgun wielding paratroopers, or should I say balloon-troopers cause these soldiers use three large balloons instead of a parachute. These small aircrafts can absorb a surprisingly high amount of punishment. However, they are only seen commonly in the earlier stages. The Freemen utilize what is akin to a gyrocopter while the Empire employ a small, single engined propeller plane.
 * The large, bulky, and rather peculiar looking Imperial helicopter gunship can be considered as a mini-boss. It's first seen in the opening cutscene carrying Max and Julius into the Imperial base. One look at it and you'll know despite its ridiculous design, it's a tough nut to crack. Bristling with heavy machine guns, it also comes loaded with rockets and homing missiles which it will mercilessly spam at you. One is though enough to handle, but in Chapter 4 two of them started showing up at the same time. Thankfully you can shoot its rockets down.
 * Those smoke belching armored airships that you frequently see flying overhead are not tough until Chapter 5 or in the second survival stage. It has dual cannon turrets mounted on port and starboard and missile launcher turrets on the bow and stern. Interestingly, every time an airship appears, it always positions itself over a ravine which it will conveniently fall into after its destruction.
 * Finally there are the drones, the first variant simply homes towards the player's walker and explode upon contact while the second constantly emits high voltage electricity.
 * Artificial Stupidity: Some gliders flying in formations are scripted to drop their payload prematurely, far away in front of where your walker is positioned. They're actually trying to Lead the Target and hope that you would walk straight into their bombs' blast radius, but they still do this even when the player is standing still.
 * Some enemy infantries will not start to attack you until they march slowly towards their designated positions, while some others (like the rocket troopers that spawns in the first stage of The Butler's fight) will not start firing until you get close to them.
 * Attack Its Weak Point: this is how you deal with most of the bosses.
 * Badass Grandpa: protagonist Max Brawley.
 * Battle in the Rain: pretty much the theme of Chapter 3, thanks to the weather controlling devices set up by the Empire.
 * Big Bad: Julius Steelwell, who managed to climb to the top of the Imperial hierarchy while Max resides peacefully in Elysium Fields.
 * Bottomless Magazines: your Gatling gun, never overheats, never runs out of ammo.
 * Your cannon can carry six shells at a time while you grenade launcher can carry three, but both recharge their ammo overtime. Picking up a weapon booster will give unlimited ammo for the respective weapon as well as drastically increasing its area of effect and damage.
 * Boss in Mook Clothing: Those giant tanks, resembling A1E1 Independences buffed up to ridiculous proportions, they have insane amounts of health and are armed with a cannon that fires spread shots in an alarmingly high rate, a machine gun and two short-range Gatling guns. They're usually seen in the end of a stage serving as a mini-boss. But in Chapter 5 they started to show up in doves.
 * Boss-Only Level: all six of the bosses are fought in separate stages of their own.
 * Bullet Hell: the first instance the player encounters this is in the third part of the first boss: The Vanguard.
 * Bullfight Boss: In the second stage of its fight, the Gardener will stop using its ranged weapons and simply hurls itself at you, all the while shrieking and slamming its fists into the ground like an angry gorilla. This section of the fight is arguably easier as the Gardener is not very agile and takes forever to turn and face the player, although one has to watch out for mine carts rolling down the tracks. On its third stage, the Gardener losses its long reaching arms but starts charging more ferociously than ever, and the mine carts are now manned with gatling gunners.
 * The third phase of Shockstorm is similar to that the Gardener's. Except that Shockstorm has gone haywire and is constantly emitting electricity. Also, one of the three lightning harvesters that surrounds the boss arena may also emit electricity.
 * The drilling vehicles encountered in Chapter 2 serves as a mook variant of this. You can take advantage of them by letting them plow into other mooks.
 * Carry a Big Stick: the claw walkers in Chapter 1 are in charge of loading trees onto trains, so when you show up, what do they do? Bash you with the trees they're carrying!
 * The Gardener is capable of uprooting pine trees and throwing them at you during its first stage, although the pine trees are dwarfed by the Humongous Mecha.
 * Character Customization: By completing levels you gain EXP, with EXP you can unlock various customization options such as paint jobs, special effects and pets for your walker.
 * Color Coded For Your Connivance: The projectiles fired by player 1 will always be orange while those fired by player 2 are blue.
 * Cool Train: the trains in this game does bear a resemblance to the Razor Trains in Half-Life 2.
 * The 5th boss, The Bouncer, is essentially a metal fortress on rails, brimming with lethal weapons such as cannons, rocket launchers, lightning guns and high pressure water cannons to slow you down so it can shoot you easier.
 * Co-Op Multiplayer: Player 1 controls Max while player 2 controls Julius in the Prologue and Zoe in the remaining chapters.
 * Cores-and-Turrets Boss: The Vanguard, which is literally a defensive line, and the Bouncer, which is a fusion of a train and a fortress.
 * Cosmetically Different Sides: the Freemen units, despite having different models, behave very similarly to Imperial units encountered later on.
 * Crosshair Aware: They usually indicate that something nasty is going to land there. Avoid standing in these once they stop spinning and their edges become solid.
 * In the Prologue, however, red flares were used instead of crosshairs.
 * Deadly Dodging: When confronting Drillers, you can use this tactic, causing them to charge into and destroy other enemies.
 * Defector From Decadence: Max Brawley was originally part of The Empire. When he was ordered to destroy a village full of innocent Freemen, he felt that this was too much and deserted them.
 * Depth Perplexion: It appears that all hitboxes exist in a single plane, therefore you can fire you machine gun from a cliff and hit a structure far below!
 * Because of this, projectiles also seem to "pass though" houses and terrain and such.
 * Destructible Projectiles: Played straight for guided missiles and high-speed rockets fired by soldiers, helicopters, submarines and the occasional bosses. Subverted for the slower flying bazooka rockets.
 * Any projectile can be neutralized with a spark bomb or a posted grenade.
 * Difficulty Spike: For new players, The Vanguard has a unprecedented difficulty level, as it's the first time the player will experience true Bullet Hell.
 * Dishing Out Dirt: Some clawed walkers dig up rocks from the ground and flung them at you. And the Chapter 2 boss, The Excavator, rains rocks down at you during its second stage, it will also attempt to crush you with a particularly large boulder. One of the attacks of The Butler also involves launching rocks.
 * Doomed Hometown: In Chapter 1, the Empire attacks Max's hometown and starts uprooting trees everywhere they go.
 * The Dragon/The Brute: General Brutus, you even get an achievement named "Second-in-Command" for beating him.
 * EMP: One of the tank variants fires a beam of electricity at you. It doesn't hurt but will disable all of your weapons and has a lasting effect.
 * The Empire: It's even called that by name.
 * Evil Counterpart: The Butler is essentially a 10-story tall walker with tons of extra firepower, ranging from guided missiles to flaming logs. Thank goodness it can't nuke you with area grenades. Fittingly enough, it's manned by no other than Julius Steelwell.
 * Evil Knockoff: the Imperial walkers, though this is somewhat arguable as they're already employed by the army by the time you're introduced to your prototype walker. They are extremely durable, and pack some serious firepower, but they're more sluggish than the player's walker and can only equip one type of weapon per walker. Besides the utility oriented claw walker, there's also a variant armed with twin machine guns and another armed with rapid firing cannons. Concept arts for a grenade launcher walker and a lightning walker also exist, but they never made it into the game.
 * Foreshadowing: See all those soldiers, aircraft, bizarre looking tanks, even larger tanks, helicopter gunships and airships in the prologue?
 * You get a glimpse of the Excavator in level 3 of Chapter 2. Two of them also appear on Chapter 2's loading screen.
 * There's also the Empire's prototype power stations, which they have managed to install all over the area by the time you return in Chapter 3. You'll have to blow them up in order to progress in certain levels.
 * The loading screen of Chapter 5 and the various billboards seen in the Imperial Capital pretty much tells you who will you face off at the end of the journey.
 * Flunky Boss: Almost all of the bosses can spawn smaller Mooks to attack you: The Vanguard deploys pyro troopers, The Gardener calls for mine carts with Gatling guns, The Excavator sends bomb drones, Shockstorm unleashes electric drones, and the Butler summons soldiers and tanks.
 * Gatling Good: Your primary attack. It ain't called  Gatling   Gears  for nothing!
 * After unlocking and equipping the mega walker customization, you now sport TWO gatling cannons.
 * The third stage of The Vanguard has a giant gatling cannon as it's main weapon.
 * Giant Foot of Stomping: The first phase of "The Butler" has the Humongous Mecha trying to stomp you with its feet, all the while launching missiles at you.
 * Giant Mook: giant tanks, helicopter gunships, giant IFVs, armored airships etc.
 * Good Freemen, Evil Empire: Genre Savvy players will know that something's not quite right when you start out working for The Empire to attack the Freemen.
 * Green Aesop: Over the course of the game, you see the various atrocities committed to the natural environment of Mistbound - uprooting trees, stripping the mountains, draining the sea, creating thunderstorms that blots out the sunshine over an entire valley, etc.
 * Ground Pound/Shockwave Stomp: Used by the tree-wielding clawed walkers, as well as The Butler's giant feet of stomping.
 * Guest Star Party Member: The helicopter gunship that escorts you in the prologue level "Air Support". You witness its destructive rocket-spamming might against the Freemen cannon turrets.
 * Heel–Face Turn: Max.
 * Herd-Hitting Attack: The grenade does this. When fully upgraded, it hits a very large area and inflicts immense damage.
 * Hold the Line: Many instances where you have to hold off a large horde of mooks approaching from multiple directions. Played straight with the three Survival levels, not only do you have to keep yourself in one piece, but also you need to protect secondary objects like trees and water pumps.
 * Homing Projectile: Many enemies such as certain infantries, helicopter gunships and airships shoot these at you. Thankfully, you can shoot them down.
 * Humongous Mecha: The second boss "The Gardener", the fourth boss "Shockstorm", and the Final Boss "The Butler".
 * Improbable Weapon User: the clawed walkers in Chapter 1 that uses trees as a giant stick, The Gardener also lobs pine trees at you during its first stage, The Butler spews rocks and flaming logs at you.
 * Invincibility Power-Up: The shield power-up will block all physical damage for a short period of time. It can't, however, block EMP and speed-reducing energy beams.
 * Invisible Monsters: The snipers, which will, fire one shot, cloak themselves and reappear when they're repositioned, make a bright flash and whistle, then fire again.
 * Karma Houdini: Even though you foiled his schemes to loot all of Mistbound's natural resources and shut down his army for good, Julius still gets to run away in one piece.
 * Last Ditch Move: the machine gun walkers will fire three sets bullets towards the player upon destruction.
 * Some of the Imperial cannon turrets does that as well, they will send shells flying at all directions when destroyed.
 * Land Mine Goes Wheeeeee: Obviously visible land mines that flashes red appear in many areas, either pre-placed or dropped by bombers. Touching or damaging them will cause them to burn and generate an irritating whine, then they blow up.
 * Sea Mine: The dried up harbour is full of them in Part 2 of Chapter 4, they function just like landmines except they do not produce that annoying whine. There's an achievement you can earn by completing the level without getting damaged by them (you can still earn it if you're damaged by landmines though).
 * Macross Missile Massacre: the worst offender is no doubt the helicopter gunship, they can be tricky to take down with cannons because the shells can be easily intercepted with their rockets.
 * The Bouncer does this in its second stage, but its rockets can only be fired at a fixed angle, so as long as the player stays in the middle or on the very edge of the screen the rockets can't hit them. The Bouncer will find ways to force you into the rockets' line of fire with artillery strikes, though.
 * You also get the ability to do this after you pick up a cannon booster.
 * Meaningful Name: All the bosses have one:
 * The Vanguard is the Freemen village's last line of defence.
 * The Gardener is a mech designed to uproot trees and load them onto trains faster.
 * The Excavator is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
 * Shockstorm is a mobile weather controlling device that summons lightning storms to attack you.
 * The Bouncer is a fortress on rails that guards the entrance to Katharsis, just like how a bouncer guards a club's entrance.
 * The Butler is Julius Steelwell's personal mech which guards his estate.
 * Mini-Mecha: the player characters drive these, the Empire also has a division of these.
 * Mook Maker: Barracks, factories, helicopters and cargo planes.
 * Mooks: Of all shapes and sizes.
 * Mutually Exclusive Powerups: You can only have one powerup (Gatling Booster, Cannon Booster, Grenade Booster or Invincibility) at a time.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: General Brutus.
 * No Damage Run: In order to obtain the "Can't Touch This" achievement, you have to clear an area in Chapter 5 without getting hit once.
 * Nuke'Em: The Grenade Booster turns all your grenades into mini-nukes that are a One-Hit Kill on anything that isn't a boss.
 * Numerical Hard: In Easy mode, enemies have half the health and inflict half as much damage, and you start out with one extra life, but you gain less score. In Hard mode, however, enemies have twice the amount health, do twice the damage, and you start out with one less life, but you rack up LOADS of points.
 * Obviously Evil: The Empire. Although you work with them in the prologue of the campaign, their name pretty much gives it away.
 * Odd Name Out: Shockstorm is the only boss who's name doesn't start with a "The".
 * One-Man Army: Over the course of the game, you decimate dozens after dozens of enemy machinery and soldiers.
 * One-Hit Kill: The Spark Bomb clears an entire screen of mooks and projectiles. The boosted grenades serve as a mini-version of the Spark Bomb. The drill enemies will also do this, but only to other enemies, not the player.
 * One-Hit Polykill: The Cannon Booster allows your cannon to pierce through multiple enemies with a Spread Shot of three high-powered shells.
 * Painfully-Slow Projectile: The bazooka rockets fired by infantries fly exceptionally slowly. The few enemies that attack with Gatling guns subvert this, however.
 * Remixed Level: The setting of Chapter 3 is the same as the prologue chapter, only more dilapidated and bleak.
 * Rule of Three: There're three gold bars to discover in each regular level, and each boss have three phases to fight.
 * Saharan Shipwreck: Expect to see a lot of them in Chapter 4, justified as the area was once an ocean until the Empire drained it.
 * Sequential Boss: All boss fights are split into three distinct stages, which progress as you deplete their health bars.
 * Scenery Porn: Chapter 1: Elysium fields, with its trees, dandelions, and waterfalls.
 * Scenery Gorn: Chapter 4: The Drylands, which used to be a sea named Ravimaris until the Empire drained it dry into a barren wasteland littered with abandoned boats. There's also Chapter 5: Karthasis, a suffocating industrialized city built on black rock with pollution issues so severe that the Empire have to import trees from Elysium Fields to serve as oxygen generators.
 * Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: In Chapter 2 and 4, you fight drilling machines that attack by ramming you like a fighting bull. You can take advantage of this by making them crash into other enemy units, destroying them. At one point, you have to face off against two of these drillers, and you can beat them easily by making them charge into each other.
 * Shared Universe: The game, along with Greed Corp, are both set in the world named Mistbound.
 * In Chapter 2, level 2, an Imperial harvester from Greed Corp can be found as an Easter Egg. However, it won't stay forever as the miller the harvester is resting on will eventually collapse, sending the harvester tumbling into the ravines.
 * Shock and Awe: The fourth boss, Shockstorm. The third level in Chapter 3 preceding it is also named this.
 * Sorting Algorithm of Threatening Geography: Played straight: the Prologue chapter and the first chapter both take place in a Green Hill Zone. Chapter 2 takes place in Death Mountain. Chapter 3 takes place at the exact location as Prologue, only a dark, stormy Remixed Bleak version of it. Chapter 4 is set in a desert (that was once an ocean). The fifth and final chapter is a city with an Eternal Engine/Mordor esq. setting.
 * Smart Bomb: The Spark Bomb, which destroys all enemy units and projectiles on the screen and heavily damages bosses. However, you only get one per level, and clearing a level without using it gives you extra points.
 * The Grenade Booster power-up allows you to fire these.
 * Spell My Name with a "The": All the bosses, save for Shockstorm.
 * Spread Shot: Many advanced cannon enemies (like the cannon walker or the giant tank) fires a 3-way spread. Your Gatling gun becomes a Spray burst once you obtain a Gatling Booster, and you cannon fires piercing 3-way spreads when you get a Cannon Booster.
 * Steampunk: With some elements of Dieselpunk.
 * Suspicious Videogame Generosity: Every time you see a mook drop a power up, you can bet that there's going to be a tough opponent or a massive fight coming up.
 * Taking You With Me: The gilders, even if you shoot them down, they'll still drop their bombs, which inflicts heavy AoE damage. The trick here is that they  always  drop their bomb in the direction they are facing.
 * Tank Goodness: There're quite a few variants of tanks in the game, there's the regular tank that looks like a Renault FT from WWI, a larger one that looks like a bunker on tracks, a huge variant that spams shells and bullets, a variant that fires EMP, a variant that generates an energy shield, and a variant that fires an energy beam which slows down your walker.
 * Time Skip: Between the prologue and chapter 1. Max Brawley has retired from the empire and is living a peaceful life in Elysium Fields.
 * Video Game Settings:
 * Prologue: Remilitarized Zone/Green Hill Zone
 * Elysium Fields: Arcadia/Green Hill Zone
 * Frostbite Pass: Slippy-Slidey Ice World/Death Mountain
 * Thunder Valley: Bleak Level
 * The Drylands: Shifting Sand Land/Underground Level
 * Katharsis: Eternal Engine/Mordor
 * Wake Up Call Boss: The Vanguard, which is the game's first boss, you know that it's one when you face three sections of heavy defence structures that spams attacks like there's no tomorrow (which is the case for the Freemen should their village fall into Imperial hands).
 * Weak Turret Gun: Averted. Turrets are quite durable and use very dangerous attacks, especially the Imperial cannon turret which fires spread shots and some come with a Last Ditch Move trick.
 * We Cannot Go on Without You: Both players in a two-player game. If any of them loses all lives, it's Game Over no matter how many lives the other has.
 * Weather Control Machine: The Empire built several of them in the area of Chapter 3, in order to generate lightning storms which is harvested by special machinery as electricity.
 * Where It All Began: Chapter 3 takes place in the exact area as the Prologue. Except that the base is ruined by age and constant thunderstorms, and the scars of war were never cleaned away.