In general, video games usually make you feel a certain way. Regardless of whether the feeling is one of excitement, disappointment, joy, or any number of other emotions, you at least come away certain of something. It's a sentiment so consistently reliable for me as a game player and reviewer that Tank Beat is truly sublime in its incredible ability to be so average. The game doesn't do it all or really fall short; it's just right there, firmly lodged in the middle like all those other existent and acceptable things of the world.
It is a truth that permeates all aspects of the game. The graphics certainly function but aren't much to look at; a three-dimensional display of your tank sits up top and a flat, relatively bland radar-styled display takes up space on the bottom.
Basically how it goes is you move your tank around by drawing a path for it to automatically follow on the touch screen. While it's moving you can change that path to a new one or you can hold the L button and tap a point on the screen to fire at it. There really isn't much more than that—your ammunition is essentially unlimited, requiring only slight pauses to "cool down" the gun, and your aim is always exact and precise: wherever you tap is where the bullets go. Enemy tanks command the most rudimentary of artificial intellects and are mostly content with sitting still, waiting for you to fire on them so they can adequately explode with a run-of-the-mill orange burst.
This is how the game exists for its relatively short duration, occasionally offering you quicker, stronger new vessels with better firepower that all serve to do the same job your very first training tank does: kill the enemy with very little resistance. In a sort of behind-the-scenes look at the development process, you will also be charged with a variety of varying tasks like escorting a fragile truck or telling an ally to follow or charge ahead in a presumable effort to diversify the thoroughly middling standard gameplay.
Even the multiplayer mode (locally or through Nintendo Wi-Fi), which is undoubtedly the strongest aspect of the game due to the actual involvement of real players and not inept A.I., is still a relatively plain experience. You control basic tanks on flat terrain, endlessly circling one another until someone slips up enough so that the shots can catch up with someone's damage bar.
There are hints here of greater intentions: an overheating gauge that could have been one indicating limited ammunition on your earliest tanks, functional enough touch controls offering the slightest illusion of massive multi-unit real-time orders, commands, and detailed weapon changes, and a locational hit system signalling forward, rear, and side strikes indicative of more complex area-based damage. But these things remain as they are, somewhat simple suggestions at a game that might have been more than the merely passable fare we have here.
Aside from would-be aspirations, Tank Beat's present and inoffensive traits read like a laundry list. The music isn't half bad, but a lot of it sounds the same, while the character portraits and art aren't garish by any stretch but sort of resemble your standard Saturday morning cartoon. The play environments follow suit, doing their job but remaining ceaselessly bland and flat-palleted. Ultimately even the fun you end up kind of having lingers only for a brief moment, fleetingly enjoyable but unmemorable, and sufficiently, tolerably, ordinarily, routinely average in all respects.
It is a truth that permeates all aspects of the game. The graphics certainly function but aren't much to look at; a three-dimensional display of your tank sits up top and a flat, relatively bland radar-styled display takes up space on the bottom.
Basically how it goes is you move your tank around by drawing a path for it to automatically follow on the touch screen. While it's moving you can change that path to a new one or you can hold the L button and tap a point on the screen to fire at it. There really isn't much more than that—your ammunition is essentially unlimited, requiring only slight pauses to "cool down" the gun, and your aim is always exact and precise: wherever you tap is where the bullets go. Enemy tanks command the most rudimentary of artificial intellects and are mostly content with sitting still, waiting for you to fire on them so they can adequately explode with a run-of-the-mill orange burst.
This is how the game exists for its relatively short duration, occasionally offering you quicker, stronger new vessels with better firepower that all serve to do the same job your very first training tank does: kill the enemy with very little resistance. In a sort of behind-the-scenes look at the development process, you will also be charged with a variety of varying tasks like escorting a fragile truck or telling an ally to follow or charge ahead in a presumable effort to diversify the thoroughly middling standard gameplay.
Even the multiplayer mode (locally or through Nintendo Wi-Fi), which is undoubtedly the strongest aspect of the game due to the actual involvement of real players and not inept A.I., is still a relatively plain experience. You control basic tanks on flat terrain, endlessly circling one another until someone slips up enough so that the shots can catch up with someone's damage bar.
There are hints here of greater intentions: an overheating gauge that could have been one indicating limited ammunition on your earliest tanks, functional enough touch controls offering the slightest illusion of massive multi-unit real-time orders, commands, and detailed weapon changes, and a locational hit system signalling forward, rear, and side strikes indicative of more complex area-based damage. But these things remain as they are, somewhat simple suggestions at a game that might have been more than the merely passable fare we have here.
Aside from would-be aspirations, Tank Beat's present and inoffensive traits read like a laundry list. The music isn't half bad, but a lot of it sounds the same, while the character portraits and art aren't garish by any stretch but sort of resemble your standard Saturday morning cartoon. The play environments follow suit, doing their job but remaining ceaselessly bland and flat-palleted. Ultimately even the fun you end up kind of having lingers only for a brief moment, fleetingly enjoyable but unmemorable, and sufficiently, tolerably, ordinarily, routinely average in all respects.