Vector Tanks

Posted on February 23rd, 2009. Written by Arron.

Designed by Peter Hirschberg and published by Chillingo, Vector Tanks is a classic remake of the retro arcade title Battlezone. After the jump I get into what Vector Tanks offers to the App Store crowd, and more importantly whether this title is worth it’s current price ..

Did anyone ever play Atari’s Battlezone? [Wiki], if you have you’ll know exactly what your in for with Vector Tanks. Vector Tanks is Battlezone plus a few modernistic modifications .. and this is as simple as games come. In true retro ‘Asteroids’ fashion, Vector Tanks throws you into a vector-based battlefield littered with land mines, enemy tanks and jeeps.

Think of it as 3D Asteroids – Only .. played on the ground .. with tanks.

Gameplay
You play as a vectorized tank in first-person. You start out on a baron vector-based landscape which features simple geometric objects as obstacles. Using your radar, your aim is to stalk out your enemies and fire at them, turning them to shards.

Along the way you’ll also come across various pickups which will further help you. These include; Rapid Fire which helps with moving targets, Nukes for unstoppable blasts, and Shields to protect against enemy fire. Careful though .. even with your shield activated, you will still be susceptible to land mines at all times. Land mines are symbolised by red lit up squares and appear on your tank’s radar.

As with most games, there are different score values for each class of enemy you manage to defeat. Blowing up a tank will net you 100 points while blowing up a jeep will net you 2000. Where it gets interesting though is after each of your shots are fired, you have to reload. You don’t have to physically do anything to reload your weaponry but it can take a few seconds.

On Screen
In game the screen is set out like a sniper sight. Top center you’ll find your weapon status message. This will let you know if your weapon is ready to fire, or if your reloading. If your reloading, the tank obviously won’t let you fire your shot until it returns to ready again. Bottom right is your current score and above this are the amount of lives you have left before it’s game over. Bottom center is possibly the most important game element. Your radar. Just like a normal one this allows you to see your enemy tank’s position as well as land mine locations.

Controls
Vector Tanks uses the perfect control scheme for iPhone. The controls consist of two control panels situated on either side of screen. To move straight forwards simply take the two control sticks and slide them both forwards. To reverse your tank just do the opposite. Changing the direction which your tank is currently facing is just as easy. To do this just slide the control stick on the corresponding side further backward or forward than the other control stick. For example if you wanted to move your tank left, you’d leave the right stick where it is, and move the left control stick downwards.

Overall
A respectable remake of a retro classic. The game has admittedly sparse visuals, and there are a few things I didn’t like. For one, after trying for a while I couldn’t find a way to actually pause a game. Also, tapping the home button and re-entering the game resulted in game over every time. I found out through doing this that Vector Tanks (at v1.0) won’t save your current game’s progress.

Aside from these little caveats I have (which I’m sure will be easily addressed through a future update), there’s no doubting that Vector Tank’s is extremely addicting to play. Not only that, the control system used in game is pretty much spot on. I think Vector Tanks can be seen as an improvement over the original Battlezone – and if you digged the original, I definitely suggest taking a look at this!

Things we’d like to see

- Online Multiplayer (no brainer!)
- Ability to pause a game in session
- Ability to save a game or session