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Okay, so the whole "we're sending you some supplies" was more than a slight bust and just a tad disappointing and a tad more trouble than they were worth, considering the final report stated that there was only 10% left... Plus, to add insult to injury, those guys didn't even try to help us...it almost seemed as if they were up to something. Okay, fine, it's way past the point of "almost as if"...they were definitely up to something. Onslaught's writing sure isn't very subtle, even when it was probably trying to be.

But "Reinforcements"! Look, it's right there! Clearly we're finally in for some good news!

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Mission 7: Reinforcements

So where are those reinforcements we were promised by the title of the mission...I definitely didn't need to read the briefing, the name says it all.

What? Levin is the reinforcements?! Oh boy, that can't be good news. At least there's a BKD-G9 ready for use, since we know Levin's a fully-qualified...huh? Not used to the controls? Are you mad? Levin, we just did two other missions which used these this highly-devastating piece of machinery to great effect. Don't insult my driving skills while I took over your body and made you drive it. Don't tell me you're going to pretend it was Roberts driving all that time, particularly since you can apparently do all the driving and shooting by yourself now...

Maybe this mission really WAS supposed to be Mission 5, and it just got all out of order, both on the difficulty curve and on the storyline (such as it is)...but whatever, it's fine. Let's go for a nice drive!

You may notice that you get a frankly obscene amount of ammunition in this particular BKD-G9...that's good, because you need to take it to the end of the stage, and it might not go so well if you had to resort to running over all the enemies between here and there. You actually won't be graded on your remaining health like most missions, it's the vehicle's health we care about...so apparently this means that Levin's health is expendable for a change. That said, you have to break the BKD-G9 to get to him, so maybe not.

This is, in case you didn't notice, a really short mission...so you've got to get your killing on the run. Truth be told, there's actually a problem with that. I've tried getting through this one as fast as possible and without a scratch on your sweet ride, but in my experience that's never been enough...so I actually got a little sneaky and coaxed an extra wave out of several hives to scare up some more score.

What? We're supposed to be in a hurry? Nonsense! If you're like me and you had a hard time getting a good rank on this one, just the briefest (or longest, if you actually prefer) of pauses will more than make up for what time you might lose...because the bulk of your score will indeed come from kills, and there's a fixed ceiling for what you can expect to get as a bonus for time.

I've actually heard tell of some crazy Levins who choose to leave the BKD-G9 behind and hoof it the whole way, because it's even easier to get more kills from hives when your projectile "encouragement" to bring more bugs to the surface doesn't result in the whole thing going to pieces in a scant few bullets. Your time bonus will surely be shot by the end, but even if you only get a couple thousand points in kills while you dawdle, you'll actually come out just as well or better than the would-be bonus. Also, as a nifty side-effect...leaving the vehicle behind guarantees a 100% BKD-G9 strength bonus. My only concern there is how much you will lose by not being able to link more targets together as longer combos...but again, like time, that bonus will have certain diminishing returns in exchange for your trouble.

You may notice here that I actually get a higher "count" of combos than kills...how's that possible? Well, it's kinda tricky and it's not really clear to me where the number comes from...but your combo is not based on kills exactly, but rather the quality and frequency of your hits. Hitting a bug's weak point will give you a big boost to your combo meter. The fact that this often kills the target in short order is somewhat irrelevant to the combo. You can see this more clearly when it comes to bosses, because you're going to rack up combo points quickly even though you're obviously not eliminating the target.

Oh, and always keep in mind that you want B to fire your BKD-G9's weapons...not A...that will initiate the self-destruct, which you can't cancel...and I've definitely done this on the first group of enemies on more than one occasion. That's a good way to zero your vehicle bonus at the end of the mission and sink your time bonus.