Gatling Gears is a top-down
Action Game developed by Vanguard Entertainment and published by
Electronic Arts. It features the player in a
Mini-Mecha and focuses on upgrading weapons and destroying waves of mooks.
Story
After refusing orders and
deserting The Empire army - and leaving behind a career of piloting Gatling Gears, Max Brawley lives a life of leisure and relaxation with his niece Zoe in
Mistbound - a world of natural beauty. Years later, the Empire begins to execute a plan to drain all of the natural resources from Mistbound and destroy anyone that stands in the way their goal. Brawley with his niece Zoe then take it upon themselves to fight the Empire and stop their destruction.
Tropes that apply to Gatling Gears
- Action Bomb: Exploding drones and explosive minecarts.
- Advancing Boss of Doom: Happens about twice in the final level before the final boss, with TWO Katharsis Tanks chasing after you from behind while spamming spreads of damaging rockets. You're supposed to run here as you don't even have any weapon boosters at this point.
- Airborne Mook: Exploding drones, electrical drones, enemy bombers, Dropships, Helicopter gunships, and the hover ships in the final chapter.
- Artificial Stupidity: Some small bombers will drop their bomb prematurely, far away in front of your character. They're actually trying to Lead the Target and hope that you would walk forward into the explosions, but they still do this even when the player stands still.
- Attack Its Weak Point
- Battle in the Rain: Shockstorm. Most of level 3 has it raining thanks to Weather Control Machines that force it to.
- Bottomless Magazines: Your Gatling gun. You have a maximum of six cannon shells that recharge over time, and three grenades that recharge over time. Picking up a booster powerup will give unlimited ammo for the respective weapon as well as making it do crazy amounts of damage.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: The Katharsis Tanks have crazy amounts of health and fire out spread shots of really damaging projectiles.
- Boss-Only Level: All the bosses are fought in separate stages of their own.
- Bullfight Boss:
- The second and third phases of The Gardener, as well as the last phase of Shockstorm.
- The giant driller robots are a Mook version of this, but you can take advantage of them by making them run into other mooks, instantly clearing them.
- Carry a Big Stick: The claw robots in Chapter 2 use a tree as a weapon!
- Cores-and-Turrets Boss: The Vanguard. The second phase of The Bouncer is also like this.
- Cosmetically Different Sides: The Freemen units that you face in the prologue act very similarly to the Empire units later on, to the point of having similar attack patterns.
- Crosshair Aware: This usually means that something nasty is going to land there. Avoid standing in these once they stop spinning.
- Deadly Dodging: You can use this when facing Drilling machines, causing them to charge into and destroy another foe.
- Defector from Decadence: Max Brawley was working in 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: All attacks exist on a single plane, as such you can fire you machine gun from a cliff and hit a mine or enemy far below! Because of this, projectiles also seem to "pass though" houses and terrain and such.
- Destructible Projectiles: Averted for normal rockets, played straight for homing missiles.
- Dishing Out Dirt: Claw robots throw boulders at you, while the third boss "The Excavator" makes it rain down rocks on you.
- Doomed Hometown: In Chapter 1, the Empire attacks Max's hometown and destroys most of it.
- EMP: One of the tank enemies fires this. Not only does it slow you down, but it makes you unable to attack until it wears off.
- Evil Counterpart: The Butler is pretty much a bigger and much meaner Walker with loads more firepower. Thank goodness it can't nuke you with area grenades. Fittingly enough, Julius controls it.
- Evil Knockoff: The enemy walkers.
- Foreshadowing:
- See those commanders, aircraft, large tanks and helicopter gunships in the prologue? You'll be fighting each and every single one of them later.
- There's also the Empire's prototype electrical generators in the prologue, which they have managed to install all over the area in Chapter 3.
- Flunky Boss: Almost all of the bosses can spawn smaller Mooks to attack you.
- Gatling Good: Your primary attack. It ain't called Gatling Gears for nothing.
- Giant Foot of Stomping: The first phase of "The Butler" has the Humongous Mecha try to stomp you with its feet.
- Giant Mook: Larger tanks, submarines, helicopter gunships, even larger Katharsis Tanks, and hoverships.
- 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 Empire's various atrocities to the natural environment of Mistbound- mining the earth, draining the sea, causing thunderstorms, etc.
- Ground Pound: Used by the tree-wielding claw robots, 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 missile-spamming might against the giant enemy turrets. Later on, you will be witnessing the same destructive power against you!
- Herd-Hitting Attack: The Grenade does this. At maximum level, this hits a very large area for huge damage.
- Hold the Line: Many instances where you have to hold off a large amount of enemies coming in from multiple directions.
- Humongous Mecha: The second boss "The Gardener", the fourth boss "Shockstorm", and the Final Boss "The Butler".
- Improbable Weapon User: The claw robots in Elysium are taking away the trees. They use said trees as an attack against you. "The Gardener" also has a move where it throws trees at the player.
- Invincibility Power-Up
- Invisible Monsters: The stealth soldiers, which will disappear from sight until they begin to attack.
- Karma Houdini: Even though you foiled his schemes and shut down his army for good, Julius still gets away alive.
- Land Mine Goes "Click!": Several areas feature obviously visible landmines that flash red. Damaging or touching them sets them off with an irritating whine, then they explode.
- Last Breath Bullet: The enemy walkers (those that shoot rapid small rockets in twos) will fire out three sets towards the player upon death.
- Macross Missile Massacre:
- Technically, a lot of enemies use this due to the fact that almost all enemy projectiles are rockets. The biggest offenders are the Helicopters and Katharsis Tanks.
- You get the ability to do this if you pick up a Cannon booster powerup.
- Meaningful Name: The bosses:
- The Vanguard is the Freemen's last line of defence protecting their village.
- The Gardener is a robot made to uproot trees and transport them onto trains.
- The Excavator is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
- Shockstorm uses lightning attacks and summons a storm.
- The Bouncer is the enemy preventing you from entering Katharsis, similar to how a bouncer prevents people from entering a bar.
- The Butler is Julius's personal mech which you fight in his estate.
- No-Damage Run: Getting the "Can't Touch This" achievement requires you to complete a level in the final chapter without getting hit even once.
- Nuke 'em: The Grenade Booster makes all your grenades into nukes that are a One-Hit Kill on anything that isn't a boss.
- Numerical Hard: In Easy, enemies have half the health, do half as much damage, and you start out with one extra life, but you gain less score. In Hard, enemies have twice the 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 at the start of the game, their name pretty much gives it away.
- Odd Name Out: Shockstorm is the only boss whose name doesn't begin with a "The".
- One-Man Army: Over the course of the game, you decimate a whole load of enemy tanks and mooks.
- One-Hit Kill: The Spark Bomb on normal mooks. 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: Justified, as they're mostly rockets. 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.
- Rule of Three: There are three gold bars in each non-boss level, and each boss has three phases to the fight.
- Sequential Boss: All boss fights are split into three distinct phases, which progress as you deplete their health bars.
- Scenery Gorn: The Drylands in Chapter 4, which used to be a sea until the Empire drained it dry into a barren wasteland. There's also Karthasis, a suffocating, mechanized city built by the Empire.
- Scenery Porn: Elysium fields, with trees, cliffs, and waterfalls everywhere.
- Sea Mine: You face these in one section of Chapter 4, with a twist: The Empire has drained the entire sea, so they're stuck in the ground like landmines. There's also an achievement for not getting damaged by any of these (Land mines are still OK).
- Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: In Chapter 2 and 4, you fight deadly drill bots that charge at you. You can take advantage of this by making them charge into enemy tanks, destroying them. At one point, you have to face off against two of these, and you can beat them easily by making them charge each other.
- Shared Universe: With Greed Corp.
- Shock and Awe: The fourth boss, Shockstorm. One of the levels preceding it is also named this.
- Sorting Algorithm of Threatening Geography: Played straight- The prologue and especially first chapter take place in Green Hill Zone, the second chapter takes place on a Death Mountain, the third chapter in a stormy Remixed Bleak Level of the prologue, the fourth in a barren desert (that was once an ocean), and the last one in Katharsis, a suffocating Eternal Engine Mordor. Interestingly, the final two stages in Katharsis is actually an artificial Green Hill Zone.
- Smart Bomb:
- The Spark Bomb, which fries all enemies on the screen and heavily damages bosses. You only get one per level, though.
- Spread Shot: Most enemies use a initial burst. Your Gatling becomes a Spray burst once you obtain a Gatling Booster, and you cannon becomes a regular variety when you get a Cannon Booster.
- Stealthy Mook: The sniper enemies will camouflage after firing, turning invisible and then reappearing in a different location.
- Suspicious Videogame Generosity: Every time you see a Mook drop a booster or invincibility 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 small bomber planes. Even if you destroy them, they will still drop their bomb, which does heavy area damage. The trick here is that they always drop their bomb in the direction they are facing.
- Tank Goodness: Quite a few kinds. All of them have tons of health. There's the normal variant, a medium variant, a HUGE variant, as well as one that generates Deflector Shields, one that makes you extremely slow, and one that prevents you from attacking by use of an EMP.
- Time Skip: Between the prologue and chapter 1. Max Brawley has retired from the empire and is living a peaceful life in Mistbound.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: The Vanguard, who is the game's first boss. You know it's this when you have to go through three grueling sections that spam attacks like no tomorrow.
- Weak Turret Gun: Averted. Turret enemies have quite a lot of health and use very dangerous attacks.
- 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: You have to destroy them in Chapter 3, because they cause terrible thunderstorms in order to supply power to The Empire.
- Where It All Began: Chapter 3 takes place in the same area as the prologue, except that the army base is ruined with age and filled with thunderstorms.
