Zoids Dash

[Shenny]

Love it.

I have no idea what sort of story is involved, but the main character (no clue what his name is) uses a blue bracelet he finds to go organoid and fuse inside Liger Zero, enabling him to control his chibi eyeballed Zoid. His bespectacled friend, Tell, gives you missions where you have to get through a Molga and Zabat ridden level and reach a Zoid at the end that you have to defeat in order to continue. The first one is easy, a Redler. But all the rest have taken me more than one try to complete. Every third mission will give you a new Zoid to fuse with after beating it. I got Red Horn and Salamander. Obviously, Iron Kong and Genosaurer will soon follow.

After each mission, you get experience points. How they relate to the Zoids you use is beyond me, they still have the same HP. You also get new armaments to slap on your Zoids. You can have up to four, which are assigned to the A, B, X, and Y buttons when carrying out a mission. Armaments aren't restricted to guns, claws and teeth can be switched around with other things also. During a mission, you can switch between eyeballed Zoids as well. The graphics are very well done. The Saga series would be so much nicer if the Zoids did more than just do impressions of statues. -_-

Just two things I'm wondering: can you switch between Zoids during a mission by means other than touching the screen? Also, now that I've gotten Salamander, Tell isn't giving me anymore missions. What do I do next? Also, how do I fly?

[KAndrw]

The touchscreen is the only way to switch zoids, so you have to turn the map off whenever you want to switch. You've probably also discovered that selecting the zoid that you're already driving explodes it!

You fly by double tapping up (not the jump key).

I'm stuck at the mission where you have to kill the heavily armed molga and his army of respawning blue molgas. It's infuriating!

[Shenny]

There aren't any buttons that make you fly? How incredibly lame. And no, I haven't tried tapping the Zoid I'm already controlling, but thanks for telling me that.

[KAndrw]

The game is an interface nightmare!

The zoids turn and jump poorly (for a platform game), and there seems to be such a ridiculous advantage to loading up on ranged weapons and just holding all four face buttons down that I can't see why anybody would use melee weapons. Boss battles tend to come down to sitting somewhere with the boss just offscreen and relying on weapon auto-aim to hit him, jumping the occasional bullet that comes your way.

It's not a bad game, but it's really hard to get past the idea that Dash is just a crappy port of Andy's games. And that's a pretty weird situation!

[Shenny]

arowse said:

I can't see why anybody would use melee weapons.

...Cause they're powerful?

[KAndrw]

Oh, are they?

I guess I stopped using the melee attacks early on, when the ranged attacks are generally able to take out most enemies. They just seemed so much better - you can fire all four at once!

Have you fought the Molga boss? Any tips?

[Shenny]

The SLC is the strongest melee weapon I've encountered. You also at one point get the Genosaurer's claws which have a better range.

Yes, just keep pressing right so you don't fall into that dumb pit and randomly press attack buttons.

I forget what part I'm at, but I haven't gotten the Genosaurer yet. It gets annoying having to fight the same-Zoid-only-more-powerful-than-before instead of new ones. I think once I come across Genosaurer and Seismosaurus I'll have seen them all.