I really enjoyed my revisit of Desert Strike last year, so on hearing that it actually had a sequel that had more missions and actually let you use different vehicles like a motorcycle, hovercraft, and a frickin stealth bomber with frickin infinite ammo and fuel on its freakin head, I was really pumped to try it. Unfortunately this was one of the biggest letdowns of any sequel I've seen; where did it go wrong? Well...

- The first game in the series actually reminded me somewhat of Resident Evil; a wild parallel to draw, but stay with me here. Rather wisely for a game with clumsy tank controls, it chose not to go for full-on action but instead emphasized the planning and resource management aspect, heavily encouraging you to complete your objectives while engaging as few enemies as possible. This game did the equivalent of taking RE1 Chris Redfield and dropping him in the middle of Ninja Gaiden Sigma. There are too many enemies, they're too well-equipped, and crucially, it's nearly impossible to avoid engaging them in the course of trying to complete your objectives. This results in a game that's completely ill suited to the tools it gives you. On top of this, the controls actually feel worse than in the first game! This is especially evident in how the auto-aim frequently locks onto powerups instead of enemies, sometimes doesn't lock onto targets when it doesn't feel like it, and the feedback is so bad that sometimes you'll hit a blade of grass one pixel to the left of your target and the first indication that you're not doing damage is that you've run yourself out of ammo trying to destroy a little hut.

- The new vehicles? With the exception of the motorcycle, garbage. It's impossible to describe how bad they handle; watching a video wouldn't do it justice. The stealth bomber sequence is the absolute nadir of the game - for some reason the pilot decides to fly really low which means the biggest challenge isn't any enemy but the buildings that you're trying to destroy, as you lose a life by crashing into them. Add to this the fact that you can't slow down, the turning is extremely unresponsive, the lack of auto lock-on means you need to fly straight at a target to hit it, and your default speed is nearly as fast as the rockets you fire, and it's nearly impossible to destroy any of the targets without crashing into them yourself. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just bad at the game, but given that I looked up an online guide and it literally said "Aside from prayer, there seems to be no sure way of doing this", I think it's a problem with the game.

- The missions seem to be specifically curated for maximum frustration. On top of the shitty stealth bomber sequence, there's also a night map with absolutely zero visibility, a map where powerups are only made available at the end (which negates the whole resource-management aspect of the game), and several sub-missions which are essentially collectathons except they don't tell you where any of the targets are. Not fun.

- There are some truly baffling moments where the game does a really poor job of communicating your objectives. One example: you are to destroy a building to retrieve nuclear materials, taking care not to destroy the materials themselves (the game makes sure you know this is important). So I destroyed the building revealing a big crate with the nuclear symbol on it, hovered over the crate, and...couldn't pick it up. I tried everything, until I realized that I was supposed to destroy the crate because the materials I was supposed to lift were inside. That's right: I had to blow up the crate with the radioactive symbol on it in order to continue with the mission. That is hilariously bad conveyance.

I wonder if I'd have been more forgiving of this game if it were a standalone. But as it is, it spoils the formula that the first game got so right... and it doesn't even have an ending where a dog pees on the first lady's leg.