Act: Think Tanks [by Bravetree]

Game: Think Tanks
Release: April 11, 2003
Genre: Action
Developer: Bravetree
Publisher:  Garage Games
System Requirements: Windows 98/SE/ME/2000/XP, Pentium II® 400, 64 MB RAM, OpenGL Compatible 3D Graphics Accelerator (16MB recommended), DirectX® compatible Soundcard
Price: $19.95
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Garage Games made a splash in the shareware community this year with some interesting games showcasing their Torque engine. Think Tanks is one of those titles and while the production values are great in terms of graphics and game mechanics there are a number of puzzling shortcomings that interfered with my enjoyment of the game.

Think Tanks is a multiplayer 3rd person shooter where each player maneuvers their tank around the map trying to kill the others. In addition to driving and shooting there are different game styles like capture-the-flag, battle, team-battle or scrum. In short, Think Tanks is a straight up arcade shooter for on-line play. If you are looking for depth or any sort of single player experience you will have to look elsewhere.

Players get to choose from 3 tanks (light, medium and heavy), each having the speed and armor characteristics one would expect for their size and there is also a strange UFO tank that makes an appearance later in single player and in some multiplayer maps. The keyboard controls your movement and the mouse controls the rotation and aiming arc for your turret. And therein lies my first pet peeve with Think Tanks: the controls, which curiously have been raved about in a number of reviews.

I found it far too difficult to aim while in motion and despite weeks of trying I never really got the hang of it. Part of the problem can be attributed to the unheard of limits on the turret rotation. The entire purpose of a tank turret is to give 360-degrees of firing freedom and yet here the player is limited to a small arc that covers just the front of their vehicle. Add to that the fact that your camera view is locked to the direction that the tank body (not the cannon) is facing and it makes the turret pretty much useless. The end result is that almost every engagement turns into a perpetual “circle of death” chase with players driving in circles hoping to close into firing angle on each other. All talk of “sniping from a distance” is marketing hyperbole because it just doesn’t happen.

By far the biggest kicker is the lack of any real single player campaign. Solo play is at best a tacked-on feature in which you play map after map killing enemy tanks of increasing difficulty. There are no continues and no level selections, once you have lost your lives you must restart at the beginning. Despite the technical inclusion of a solo game, you might as well consider Think Tanks to be on-line only.

And that’s the shortcoming of Think Tanks because the on-line population is very sparse and most of the servers are populated by at least 50% bots. The AI for the bots is acceptable with effort having been put into creating individual personalities, but they really don’t compare to battling human players. Even still, the overall game experience lacks variety and no matter what map style you choose they all look and play pretty much the same.

Graphics: 8
The graphics are well done with particular attention paid to the amusing tank designs and environments. The terrain consists of nice rolling hills and occasional objects of interest (rock formations, trees, etc.) with textures and models that are easily up to par with bigger budgeted games on the market today. As good as the environments are they do lack stylistic variety. Simply changing the textures to lava or dimming the lights doesn’t create a new level or change the game experience significantly.

Everything has that Game Cube “cartoonish” feel that (right or wrong) I’ve come to associate with the Torque engine. However, the bullet and explosion effects are sub-par, avoiding any attempt at pyrotechnics and relying instead on colored spheres for the effects. Sound: 7
The sound effects were appropriate although their generic nature added to my confusion as to the mixed style of the game. Is Think Tanks simple cartoon fun or a hardcore arcade shooter? The music is good quality, but out of place if you leave it on during game play. I did find the voice that announces your power-ups to be particularly obnoxious: “BOUNCE-BACK POWERUP!!!”

Gameplay: 6
As I mentioned, entering combat with an enemy at close range always devolves into a circle of death chase and the first person to get bored and change directions will end up being shot repeatedly before they can maneuver back into a firing position. I found the physics to be very loose with a lot of bouncing and sliding around that seemed inappropriate for this type of game. The overall feeling for me was a lack of any meaningful control over my vehicle.

Lastly, when it came to the controls, the movement and the shooting - everything just felt sluggish to me. I know it wasn’t a performance issue as frame rates are quite good even on medium spec machines. If this were a less challenging “bouncy-colorful” game then the controls wouldn’t have been so much of an issue, but if Think Tanks is to be an shooter then the movement needs to be more precise and responsive.

Options: 7
The user has the standard options for resolution, bit-depth, audio volume and graphic detail levels. There also appears to be a child-safe filter although I never played around with that since I can’t image a child being able to play the game.

Concept: 7
This is a straight multiplayer shooter with fairly standard power-ups and game play, nothing new or revolutionary. Despite that, a good multiplayer tank game is something that hasn’t been done in a while and the developers of Think Tanks should get props for trying to fill that void. The tank designs and the plotline are cool and the attempts to create unique personalities for the bot tanks are high points for me. In fact I would like to see them go further with the AI personalities and make that part of a plotline for a single player experience.

Fun: 7
It’s the control or rather lack of control that costs the fun factor. The game feels kind of “plodding”; even an increase of 50% in the movement, turning and firing rate would have made all the difference. Bot servers mostly dominate on-line play although you can always find 2 or 3 servers populated with flesh and blood humans.

Overall: 7
I spent more than twice as long playing Think Tanks than I do for most reviews because I kept feeling like I must have missed something. I’m still puzzled as to what kind of player this game was developed for. The controls say “hardcore gamer” but the graphics and game play say otherwise. Either way there has to be a single player game included for when there aren’t enough on-line players and unfortunately there isn’t one.

If it seems like I’m being unfair or overly judgmental towards what is in reality a pretty solid game then there may be some truth to that because the people who like this game really like this game. However in my opinion Think Tanks is a well developed, extremely polished game that despite some good press turned out to be not much more than a standard shooter. I tried to have fun and play the game through but it just didn’t offer anything exciting enough to entice me to play further or give it more than a passing recommendation.

Added: December 9th 2003
Reviewer: Kyle Nau
Score:
Related Link: Official Website
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Language: english