Game:

Blast Corps (1997)

Duration: 9:05

190 views

2

Some special stages are races, some are about destroying a set group of targets, and some are... slightly different. Salvage Wharf is one of those, although not necessarily THAT different, as it would just so happen. The goal is to inflict a certain amount of financial ruin upon your surroundings... y'know, kinda like anywhere else, but this time the money actually counts!

More specifically, you need to rack up a total demolitions bill of one million dollars... but is that billable by Blast Corps for a job well (over)done or TO them for wreaking all this unnecessary havoc upon places nowhere near the carrier's path...

For that matter, what the heck's IN these industrial shipping crates, huh? All I know is that each stack is worth $40,000 and each lonely container just sitting around by itself... is also worth $40,000, what the heck? Trick is... there are exactly 25 such targets to destroy... and through the power of hindsight observation (i.e. watching the video myself), I have determined that there are in fact 13 of the solo containers and 12 stacked groups.

As it would so happen, there's also a ship docked here, although we wouldn't necessarily have known that it was even a valid target without fully clearing a stage like Carrick Point or the Havoc District and seeing that destruction proven for ourselves. That said, it's not exactly the kind of target that gives off proper notice that it's being destroyed... and even when you're doing it right, it takes quite some time. Besides that, the real bad news is that it's "only" worth $250,000 ...which means we can't exactly use this as a proper substitute for the majority of the other targets.

So, I guess it's good enough that it's something of a red herring... it doesn't even take a flawless cruise around the wharf to take out all the containers with the Ramdozer with time to spare. Not a LOT of time, mind you, but still comfortable enough leeway that you can double back once in awhile.

Anyway, the whole crux of the matter is that, like it or not, the stacks of containers are quite necessary to the scenario, so the key here is always more or less blowing straight through them in a fashion that hits them all in one pass... being at all off this mark will result in a time-consuming backtrack that you can't afford to make too often.

Sadly, the ship will really only let you write off six targets total to still meet your goal, so you can't even just ignore the more annoying clusters... since that being a problem for the Ramdozer is still a problem for the Ballista... just a bit more disjoint in its collisions, with more smoke needing to clear, and with the bike's tendency to buck and totally wreck your intended line of fire with even slight acceleration.

I'm not saying it's not an option worth exploring, mind you... it's just something that requires far more finesse and planning than the alternative when plowing through the whole lot will more than suffice. Maybe knowing what I know now after having taken a census of sorts of the wharf populated by boxes... maybe the true potential of the Ballista could be unlocked, but as it stands, there really wasn't a need.

And that is kinda the trick to these "training" stages... different goals, different means, some more efficient and effective than others, whereas for a certain problem, maybe all you need is a hammer... or a truck with the collective destructive capacity of a hardware store thrown through it.

As for absolute best means, I guess I'll leave that to the time trial aficionados... because surely it's not the sort of thing that'll come up, given our established secondary goals from the very outset... ... ... (...crud.)

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