Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising

The goal of the player in Black Hole Rising, common to all of the Nintendo Wars series, is to defeat all of the enemies, sometimes by completing special objectives. Generally, the player can win by defeating all of the enemy's troops, or by capturing the enemy's headquarters. In certain campaign maps, there are special objectives, such as capturing or destroying certain key buildings, such as a Black Cannon, a new property found in Black Hole Rising. Campaign mode The Campaign mode in Black Hole Rising differs from its predecessor Advance Wars in that the mission selection is non-linear. The campaign takes place over the game's five continents, each focusing on one of the five countries in the game. When the campaign is completed, the player is given an overall rank, rewarding higher ranks with more unlockable content in the in-game shop. Other modes Many of Black Hole Rising's additional modes remains unchanged from its predecessor. In War Room Players are put in maps wherein they must defeat enemies who are usually given an advantage at the start. Versus mode allows the players to use either a pre-existing map or a user-created map and set up a game with customized settings. Versus mode can be used to create games played against the computer AI or other players by using hotseat gameplay. Multiplayer games with more than one game console is possible with Link mode, and requires the use of a Game Boy Advance Game Link Cable. Two new terrain features were introduced: the Missile Silo and the Pipeline (along with its breakable Pipe Seams). Black Hole Rising changed the format of the CO Meter to use small and large stars, although it essentially still functions as a fillable meter. A regular CO Power is still available by filling the small stars, but a more powerful Super CO Power, introduced in Black Hole Rising, can be triggered by filling the large stars as well. Although a Super CO Power is in many cases better than the normal CO Power, the CO Meter is drained differently depending on which power was activated. While Super CO Power will drain the CO Meter completely, the normal CO Power would leave players with some leftover charge on the CO Meter depending on how much existed before the CO Power. This allows for more strategy than Advance Wars since the player must now decide between using weaker abilities more frequently or greater abilities less frequently. ==Plot==

While the Allied Nations were still recovering from the war in Cosmo Land, the Black Hole Army had already recovered and has decided to launch a large-scale invasion on Macro Land. Along with the original Black Hole army's commanding officers (COs), four new COs were recruited, under the command of Sturm: Flak, Black Hole's strongman in charge of invading Orange Star; Lash, a girl genius having invented most of Black Hole's technologies, invading Blue Moon; Adder, a narcissistic commander in charge of invading Yellow Comet; and Hawke, Black Hole's second-in-command and Sturm's most trusted ally. Sturm orders each Black Hole CO to invade and capture each of the four continents controlled by the four other armies from the original game: Orange Star was to be taken by Flak, Blue Moon by Lash, Yellow Comet by Adder, and Green Earth by Hawke. Lash also invented several new war weapons like the Black Cannon and the Mini Cannons that were to be put to use in this invasion. The four allied armies must now work together to drive Black Hole out of their world once and for all. Once the Black Hole troops are driven from the Allied Nations' continents, their COs convene in Black Hole territory, near Black Hole's base of operations. Here they fight Sturm, the mastermind behind the invasion. The final battle takes place in front of the Death Ray, a powerful new weapon guarding the entrance to a missile, which, if not subdued in time, would destroy half of Wars World. The Death Ray is eventually destroyed by the COs of the Allied Nations, who manage to disarm the missile and corner Sturm. In an act of desperation, Sturm attempts to blow up the base and inflict damage on Wars World by self-destructing the missile. Andy attempts to stop Sturm to no avail. However, in a surprising turn of events, Hawke, second in command to Sturm, betrays his leader by killing him with Black Storm before the self-destruct is triggered. Hawke takes over as leader of Black Hole, and along with Flak, Lash, and Adder, leaves Macro Land with the few troops he has left. ==Development==

After the success of Advance Wars, Intelligent Systems, the company that created the original game, began designing a sequel to Advance Wars. It was originally announced in January 2003 under the title Advance Wars 2 to be released in North America in June of that year. Super Mario Club was to conduct testing, and Nintendo would publish the game. As Advance Wars was not released in Japan, Black Hole Rising was also unreleased in Japan, despite the fact the games were developed there. Later, before the launch of Advance Wars: Dual Strike, the games were released in Japan on a single cartridge, Game Boy Wars Advance 1+2 for the Game Boy Advance as well as the GBA game for the Wii U Virtual Console, which contained both of the games. The Japanese release had minor graphical differences, mostly in the portraits of the commanding officers. When screenshots of the game were released in April of that year, it was seen that the original graphic style of Advance Wars would stay unchanged, and one could guess that changes would mostly be cosmetic. When a demo of the game was released at E3, it was clear that the gameplay would stay nearly identical to its predecessor Advance Wars, though new content would be added. IGN journalist Craig Harris commented after E3 2003 that "Black Hole Rising doesn't have an overwhelming sense of newness". ==Reception==

Black Hole Rising received "generally favorable reviews" according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. IGN praised it as "one of the finest games to hit the Game Boy Advance". 1Up.com praised the core gameplay of the series, stating that "The game has changed just enough to please loyal fans, and when you've got a formula that makes for such a compelling gaming experience, why mess with it?" During the AIAS' 7th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, Black Hole Rising was nominated for Handheld Game of the Year. == Notes ==