Twin Eagle II: The Rescue Mission (Arcade)

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Sturmvogel Prime
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Twin Eagle II: The Rescue Mission (Arcade)

Post by Sturmvogel Prime »

More arcade shooting. This time is the turn of Twin Eagle II: The Rescue Mission.

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¿Who said unnecesary demolitions were not fun?

Seta unleashes the helicopter fun once again with this sequel to Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe's Brother, and this time they did it on a bigger scale than the original game.


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*Attack Point plays in the background*

The first thing to do before starting the game is to select the "Mission Diagram" for the stage, kinda like in Thunder Force V, but instead of picking the stage order by yourself, you have to select between three pre-setted routes. Then you'll be allowed to select what bomb type you want. At first you'll only have Type A, but in the next stages you'll unlock a newer one just like the weapon unlocking in Axelay.
TYPE A BOMB - Bomblets: Your AH-64 will drop several bomblets covering the screen with explosions. This one is available at the beginning of the game.
TYPE B BOMB - Flame Burst: Fires a cone-wide burst of large flames. You can select this once after selecting the route for Stage 2
TYPE C BOMB - Explosions: Releases a few explosions. This is more of a defensive move due to its short burn time. This one is unlocked after selecting the mission route for Stage 3.

The game has also an inventory for your helicopter.
RED PARACHUTE (W) - Weapon:
Changes the standar Vulcan for a flamethrowing gun.
BLUE PARACHUTE - Bomb Power Up: Changes the Air-To-Ground rockets for more powerful bombs to cause more damage to the enemy.
BOMB PARACHUTE - Extra Bomb: Adds 1 Bomb to the player's bomb stock.
GOLDEN PARACHUTE - Stock Parts: Collect 10 stock parts to obtain a 1up.

This game is 9 levels long, but they're divided in 3 stages with a route select variety that I've mentioned. The gameplay while it remains as a vertical scrolled helicopter shooter, it was also improved from the first Twin Eagle, since now you have the regular shot for Anti-Air enemies and an Air-to-Ground weapon to destroy ground targets and demolish buildings. To obtain power ups, you have to take down blue, red and yellow trucks with the Air-to-Ground weapon. My only problem with this game is that the Air-to-Ground lacks of a sight like the bomb in Xevious and you have to rely on memorizating the distance of the weapon and hope it hits the target. Another detail is the Air-to-Air weapon has a recoil effect that slowly makes your helicopter move down with constant firing. You'll notice that if you remain static, something that passes unnoticed due to the constant movement that this game requires.

One of the features of this game is the introduction of the "Trickshot", which are basically Mortal Kombat-like moves that unleash an unique attack like Down, Down, Up + Fire Button = Chaff, pressing Anti-Air releases the Napalm. Down, Up and either Fire or Anti-Air = Homing Missile, along with other moves like Right, Right, Left + Any button, and Up to Down Right + Any button. These movements consume the gauge located on the upper part of the screen. When your gauge is red, an item carrying helicopter will appear with a refueling item.



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360° of Nonstop Gunship Action

When you fight the main boss at the end of the third level, the game will replace the traditional vertical movement for a more circular one while your AH-64 aims automatically to the boss.
This is a good use of the premise of an helicopter themed shooter and Seta made a nice job in this detail.



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Justified Destruction: When everything else fails.

The fun part of this game is the whole scenery is destructible, basically everything: Ads, buildings, trees, stationed vehicles, small passing cars, fences, radars and even bridges. One curious detail in Vesper City stage is that you can get a multiplier by making the crab from the seafood restaurant bounce with your Air-to-Ground artillery. This game is basically the pure zen of blowing things up, just put "Black Label" by Lamb of God and you're set for the ultimate helicopter mayhem.



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In other news: Kyle Busch won another NASCAR Xfinity race.
Sparking the eternal debate about having Cup drivers in the lower series.


Everytime you pass a stage you'll have this SBC cutscene as if it was a news report showing where the next stage's gonna take place.



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In the mid 90's there was one rule: It's CG Or Bust!

Seta pulled their best effort on the graphic section 'cos instead of the classical sprites, they followed the CG Render revolution started by games like Raiden II, G-LOC Air Battle and Pulstar, and Twin Eagle II is an accomplishment. While Twin Eagle already used digitized stuff, Twin Eagle II takes that to whole new levels of photorealism with incredibly detailed cityscapes and vehicles. The desert level is perhaps my personal favorite stage as it looks completely realistic for a videogame. One of the wildest effects in the game is when the screen is covered with explosions when a boss is defeated. As for the vehicles utilized in this game, once again this is one of those Military themed games. Unlike the previous game where you used a generic helicopter, this time you and your friend will be taking control of the AH-64 Apache helicopter and our enemies are also helicopters as well, while most of them are also AH-64 influenced designs. There's also Bell copters, Gazelles and Russian Hind-D's and even an original "Siamese Hind-D" as one of the bosses.

The music feels repetitive despite having a good rhythm, for instance in Vesper City stage where the rhythm feels like a 90's Hip-Hop paced, but waaaay repetitive as a few seconds loop and that only makes the whole game boring. The name entry music has a rap-like style and so the boss fights. Like in Thunder Dragon 2 we have voice samples during our destructive ride. "Yeah!", "Alright", "Bingoooo!", "Fire!", "Good job!", "Keep firing, man!", "We're going ballistic" are commonly heard as we destroy things or pick items.


TWIN CURIOSITIES II: THE FUN-FACT MISSION
- SBC stands for "Seta Broadcasting Company", a pun on NBC.
- SBC's buildings are among the destructible things in the Night City level, along with a Seta building.
- The game mispells "Bogey" as "Bogy", and "Neutralized" as "Notralized".
- This was the last entry on the Twin Eagle series.



Twin Eagle II: The Rescue Mission is basically what we can call "Fire Birds: The Game" since we have an intense Apache combat shootout that it only needs to have the movie license to be an official movie tie-in game.
If you don't mind about the repetitive soundtrack, you'll find this game quite addicting due to the total urban destruction mayhem you can cause with a helicopter.
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