Tankz

Posted on June 2nd, 2009. Written by James.

Enjoy driving games? Love shooters? Clickgamer (a division of Chillingo) and Sector3 brings us the best of both worlds with this vehicle based shooter ‘Tankz’. Tankz is an interesting arcade style shooter in which you take control of a futuristic looking hover tank and aim to capture all the flags in the game.

First thing I noticed when loading up Tankz for the first time, was all the options your presented with at the main menu, allowing you to almost tailor the game to suite your skills. The main menu provides you with such options as to select your tank, difficulty, level and also game mode. There are two game modes available to choose from, the first is ‘Time Based’ in which you have a set amount of time to complete the chosen level and score as many points as you can. The second mode is ‘Best Score’ in which you aim to rank up as many point as possible.

The maps span over three areas: Desert Arena, Ice Tunnels and Valley. One of the delightful features of Tankz is the way each map is split up onto two levels, giving you much more of an adventure and addded gameplay, getting up onto the second tier isn’t always an easy challenge.

Dotted all over each level are ‘Health Pads’ so if you taken a bit of a bashing from the defense towers and enemy tankz, all is not lost! These are extremely helpful as warfare in Tankz can be very unforgiving. I certainly found speed was the key and easist way to stay alive as well as using the right ammo! Also well as the ‘Health Pads’ scattered across the maps, you’ll find an arsonal of ammo to help keep you alive and also jump pads, if you hit them right you’ll be able to get up onto the raised tier of the map. Although there is a wealth of ammo around the maps, it’s still a good idea to be careful and keep an eye on your ammo supplies.

Tankz makes very good use of the iPhone with its control system using both accelerometer and on screen controls. There is a very well sized D-Pad on the screen, which can be moved to either the right or left side of the screen, this is used to move your tank forward, backwards and also to strafe and the accelerometer is used to turn the tank left and right. Although the controls felt a little awkward at first, once you’ve played for a while they begin to feel really natural and easy to use.

When you load the game you have a choice of three tankz to play with X10 Assault, Striker and Leopard. They are all vastly different and very futuristic looking. When in game, whether your in first or third person view, you have a great HUD at your disposal. The HUD provides you with your health stats, score, time left, flag count and ammo stats. The HUD is perhaps a little oversized but they layout certainly works well!

Tankz also provides an online global high scores leader board, allowing you to compare yourself to gamers across the world and compete for the highest score. Tankz also keeps your scores local as well so you can work on improving your scores and best times. I love to see this feature in games, espically with iPhone, its great to have that little bit of interaction with other gamers.

One of my only gripes about the game is that because of the aiming system, you must be in ‘First Person’ view to be able to aim properly and efficently. It would be nice to see an aiming system for the ‘Third Person’ view in a future update. Aiming and taking down enemies does take a little getting used to but after a while it feels natural and a lot easier.

Tankz is a very strong game with regards to its 3D engine, gameplay and menu system. I played Tankz on my 1st Gen iPhone (Which we all know doesn’t have the best game performance out of all the iDevices) and the graphic engine ran very smoothly and I didn’t encounter any freeze ups or issues with the game. I must point out the options that Tankz gives you is a real strong point to the game, the fact you can tailor just about everything from the difficulty down to the map you play, which is awesome as if you don’t like a map, no worries, you can just completely avoid it!

Features

* Three differing hover tanks to choose from with varying speed and turn capabilities due to size and weight.
* Awesome 3D levels including higher platform areas you can get onto.
* Cool particle effects and projectile trails.
* Very fast and responsive single finger movement controls including tilt to turn, forward & reverse, and sideways movement to strafe.
* Controls can be set for left or right handed players.
* Two game play modes… Best Time and Best Score.
* Easy and Hard game play modes for those that really need to feel the pain!
* Tap your tank to switch between 1st person and 3rd person modes.
* Hover pads for health regeneration.
* Jump pads to jump you on to higher level areas.
* In game music, or turn music off in games options to hear your own iPod tracks during game play.
* Global high-score ladder to compete against player around the world.
* Scores are saved locally if no internet connection is available and then uploaded when the internet is available, so you never lose your scores!
* Tracking of shooting accuracy % as well as game achievement stats (for use in a future version, stay tuned).

Overall Tankz is a solid game and a must for any fan of the ‘Shooter’ genre. Even though this genre has never really appeal much to me, I found myself picking up this title whenever I had a spare five minutes and enjoyed it. I’m sure with the upcoming updates you’ll seen even more play ability and features. The developer has said new updates will include news levels, campaign mode as well as new enemies, player weapons and pick-ups.

For the tiny price of just £0.59 / $0.99 if your a fan of shooters, driving games and Vector Tanks, this is a must have and with the upcoming update this game is certainly set to just keep getting better!

Current Status: Highly Recommended

Reviewed at: v1.0
Reviewed on Firmware: 2.2.1
Download size: 13.2MB
Released on: 25th May 2009
Retails for: £0.59 / $0.99
Compatible with: iPod touch Gen 1 & 2 / iPhone Classic / iPhone 3G