40 bugs vs. tanks! - giving up on extremely tough mantis variant boss

Dear Readers,

Now for CO-OP mission 1-5, involving the praying mantis this time!

Lieutenant Kremmel said this practice mission was interrupted by a praying mantis and told us to fight it anyway as this mission.

We didn't change from the speedy chassis and got decimated within ten seconds! Then we changed to the chassis with the highest defence and got destroyed within slightly longer than 10 seconds. We made several attempts but to no avail. This one may very well be impossible without other players.

If I could beat this mantis I'd be able to identify it as a new bug since it's a different colour. It's extremely aggressive.

It's tiresome to load the mission again after a game over because of all the menus you have to go through. Fortunately, there's another mission unlocked after this so I'll leave this one for now.

Also I had a look at the paints and they're cool! Do they have any function? If so I'd take every little help possible in my situation.

39 bugs vs. tanks! - chased by grey ant and queens!

Dear Readers,

Now for the 4th CO-OP mission, 1-4. This time there was an abandoned tank to find as well.

Lieutenant Kremmel was now scoring us on how many flag combos we could get by passing it to other tanks without getting hit. Again, can't really do that when playing solo.

When the mission started we were immediately pummelled with ant attacks! There were other queens around too! We got many very quick failures, which made jumping back into the level kind of cumbersome with all the menus you have to go through. We switched the chassis to the Cromwell just to get some speed going. It didn't work before but this time it did! We had to change our strategy to being chased all over the arena by the grey ant and all the queens. We continued to fail but it was just a matter of practice and outrunning the creatures with the turret pointed backwards. We finally did it with a cheer! We earned 369 points and a C rank. We obtained the abandoned tank on completion! Turns out we didn't have to scout for it!

New tank:

British Churchill A22 - Lots of armour on this tank, the most I've seen so far on the British ones, giving it a decent amount of defence.

38 bugs vs. tanks! - flag holding challenge

Dear Readers,

Now to move on to CO-OP mission 1-3 to see how far I can get on my own.

Lieutenant Kremmel said he was judging our performance based on how long we held onto a flag, no problem there since it's solo, and how much damage we do to the target. Plenty of insults from him as well.

This was more or less the same as the second mission so we carried out the same strategy by circling around the cigarette and turning the turret whenever the grey ant got near. Took out the minion ants as well. We earned 378 points and a C rank.

37 bugs vs. tanks! - the terrible grey ant of the co-op missions

Dear Readers,

I'll try and go as far as I can with the CO-OP missions solo. Now for mission 1-2, CO-OP Practice 2.

Lieutenant Kremmel said the bug was even stronger this time and it was all about passing flags like a hot potato to survive.

Content-wise, it was the same as the last mission, but there were minion ants as well as the boss ant. There was also a countdown timer. I was trying to suss whether it was better to just survive the 10 minutes or to defeat everything.

I picked off the minion ants and wrestled with the boss ant by going in circles around the giant cigarette and shooting at it any chance I could. I defeated it on my second attempt, earning 418 points and a B rank.

New bug:

Grey Ant - This was the extremely difficult boss ant from these two CO-OP missions so far. It's faster, more aggressive, takes longer to defeat and it's got gross wings as well. The thing is, you don't think it's that bad at first because you've fought so many other ones in the main missions that are so much bigger but aren't as strong as this. Hellish creature.

36 bugs vs. tanks! - trying out the co-op mode solo and it's extremely difficult!

Dear Readers,

Now to try out the co-op missions, now that I had finished all the main ones. The first one was 1-1, CO-OP Practice 1.

Lieutenant Kremmel was giving the orders once more. It felt like starting the game over again with him there being his bossy jerk self. He gave a tutorial on how flag passing works and how the bearer of the flag was the leader.

Wow okay... this mode was definitely meant for more than one person to play. The ant looks like many others in the game but is extremely strong and can defeat you in no time at all. It has a life bar you have to whittle down if you want to defeat it and it takes a while, like it's some kind of boss. The level itself is a circular arena shape in the woods biome. The passing of the flag only works if you have other players to pass the flag onto and the ant focuses on the one with the flag. On top of that, no SOS attack!

I tried it with max defence and max speed but still failed. I tried a few more times and tried other tactics like using rocks for cover. Still failed. We then tried using the cigarette for cover and fared much better, though it was still really hard. We actually beat the thing! Woo! We earned 428 points and a B rank.

Another CO-OP mission was unlocked but I don't know how much farther I can get with this huge difficulty by playing solo...

35 bugs vs. tanks! - the last main mission

Dear Readers,

Next up was the last main mission, 7-9, not titled with an "Operation", instead being titled "The Grand Bug Alliance".

Colonel Diekmann got reports from a surviving unit that was defeated in the sand region that several huge bugs were there. He didn't say what was there, but I could see that there was a spider and a queen hornet at least. Queen ant too, possibly more than one kind.

When we got there, Ernst observed more than one spider as well! Yikes! Joachim said there were seven targets in total. We had to find the abandoned tank as well.

Wow this one was close. There was just one spider boss here after all but it was the poisonous one and it was relentless in attacking us. We had to use the SOS attack on it which defeated it. Apart from that it was just the queen versions of the other bugs, the ants and bee not so bad, the hornet taking a bit of time alright though. When we defeated all the bugs we had just had a tiny sliver of health remaining. Whew! We got 377 points and a B rank.

The tank we used had a lot of trouble getting out of the antlion traps. Thankfully there weren't any antlions. It took a while to manoeuvre out of them.

New Tank:

French FT-17 - a really old and small tank that was said to be the ancestor of many tanks.

New Medal:

Bug Exterminator - for clearing all the missions!

The strange thing is, there was no ending after this or credit roll, just Ernst saying this last mission was worth telling others about.

So, what to do now? Well there are the CO-OP missions, which can be played alone. There are still tanks to collect, a few more bug species to identify and other medals to earn. The medal awards have stated goals like defeating so many bugs and bug bosses, StreetPass stuff which probably won't happen, achieving A and S ranks in missions, whatever flag combos are... so it sounds like achievement stuff and 100% kinda stuff.

Might as well try out the CO-OP missions and see what they're like at least.

34 bugs vs. tanks! - two spider bosses at once

Dear Readers,

Mission 7-8 was Operation: Spider Bros.

Colonel Diekmann lost contact with the Allies and the search party that went out to find them. He was now sending us to the spider web without any knowledge as to what was lurking there. He told us to prepare for the worst.

Two spider bosses at once were waiting for us when we got there. Ernst expressed his horror and Joachim advised me to fight them one at a time.

I thought this was going to be absolutely brutal, but it wasn't too bad! The spiders even seemed to stall now and again. We took advantage and fired on them as much as we could. It was both kinds of spiders that we came across in the game. We didn't move around all that much and kept an eye on the way the dots moved on the radar. We let out two big cheers after defeating each one! We got 410 points and an A rank.