Megaman X2 Hardtype Preview #2 - Wheel Gator
68One last preview video here showing off the one maverick stage released thus far (as of v0.1.6), Wheel Gator.
First thing's first...unlike my X1 hardtype videos, I'm not worrying about doing everything perfectly with no deaths. It does let me show off the fact that there's multiple checkpoints in a level as evidenced from my first and second deaths.
Stage design wise, it's very similar in style to a few Mega Man Zero stages, namely spikes being a very prevalent element throughout the stage. Hit them and you take 16 damage which, considering I have no health upgrades, means death if I ram into them.
One other big change...upgrades are no longer in the general area they were from the original. For the Heart Tank, you'll need to take the mecha on a trip to the left after going outside and landing on a bed of spikes. The arm upgrade is located shortly after needing to sacrifice the mecha for a jump, but requires Wire Sponge's weapon, the Strike Chain, to access.
With that all said (and my really dumb third death I had by the 2nd checkpoint), let's talk about the boss himself, Wheel Gator.
Back in X1's hardtype, the only boss to have an attack that was more than being sped up or anything is Armored Armadillo's counter blast attack, firing out shots in a fan based pattern instead of vanilla's eight way pattern. Wheel Gator took some lessons from said boss and decided to modify the majority of his attacks in this style.
Take his opener for instance. He dives into the oil...fuel...whatever the hell it is and eventually fires a wheel that travels on the ground towards whatever direction X is in. It can go up the walls too. Seems easy to dodge, right?
Well, Wheel Gator changes this attack up by firing a second wheel that goes straight up based on X's position. What this means is that you have to do some fancy jumping to evade both it and the first wheel that'll no doubt be falling from the ceiling.
If that wasn't enough? Wheel Gator will jump out of the liquid and, if he manages to grab X with his teeth, will likely tear off between 6 to 8 health depending on how fast you can mash to get out of it.
While above the liquid, Wheel Gator can spit out a bunch of shots, similar in style to the Ray Splasher from X3. If he's on one edge of the arena and X is on the other, this attack will most likely pass over X's head, allowing for some easy chances to fire shots into the boss.
That opposite sides of the arena advantage also helps when Wheel Gator's shoulders glow and he fires out wheels in pairs of two which bounce in one direction before going up the wall. If he's in the middle though when this goes off, it gets very dicey, requiring some good jumps to dodge all of them.
The last attack involves the boss jumping up and spinning on over to where X is. Don't think you can jump up the wall to dodge this because the move now arcs upward and he'll likely nail you if you do so. Once he rams into a wall, the impact point gets damaged, meaning you'll take damage if you jump into it. For this attack, it's best to jump when Wheel Gator does, misdirecting the attack higher up. You don't necessarily have to do this, but the impact point that's damaged can be in a really annoying spot for wall jumping up if he hits the lowest point.
Overall, I killed the boss quicker than I was expecting. The first two attempts did not go the best, but the third one went about as well as I could hope (well, besides the boss actually being too far away when it began tossing wheels over).
I'd say X2 hardtype promises to deliver an even more engaging and challenging experience compared to X1 hardtype. Here's hoping the later stages are just as fun as this one!
Other Videos By LunaticScreamer
Other Statistics
Mega Man X2 Statistics For LunaticScreamer
LunaticScreamer presently has 12,523 views for Mega Man X2 across 2 videos, and less than an hour worth of Mega Man X2 videos were uploaded to his channel. This is less than 0.02% of the total video content that LunaticScreamer has uploaded to YouTube.