WWII Tank Commander
It’s like driving a tank… Oh, wait.
Tags: WWII Tank Commander Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Mike Morgan on Mar 9th, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| WWII Tank Commander (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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I have a hard time disliking games, I really do. I try to find the best even in the worst of games, hoping to gleam some diamond to savor. It’s a character thing in myself, trying to be positive about people and trying to accentuate the positive. That being said, I really really had to try hard to find something worth while in this game. I shouldn’t have to try. I am getting a bit ahead of myself though, let’s slow down and take a deeper look at this… game.
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WWII Tank Commander starts you off in *Le Gasp* The European Theater of combat. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy killing Nazis as much as the next guy, but come on, is this the only job that Fritz the German video game actor can get?! Anyhow you start off in July 25th 1944, Nearly a month and a half after D-day. You traipse across the country side with your tank and another computer controlled tank. Here is where you can immediately find the first glaring problem with the game. Try as you may, your partner… tank… thing will pretty much always get in your line of fire. Trying to take out Panzers is hard enough without some nitwit crossing your line. Fortunately he doesn’t take any damage from friendly fire (or enemy fire really). The second issue that pops up is the fact that there is no A.I. NONE. It is one scripted reaction from your enemies to your allies. They can lob bombs at each other all day long, but until you come along and blow them away, they WON’T DIE. It’s sad really.
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It is rather frustrating when you shoot your machine gun at a German foot soldier and see him continue to fire at you. The targeting is not at all accurate 90% of the time so you are barely shooting over his shoulder or past his face and you don’t hit him. This causes you to use your valuable high explosive rounds to take out the foot soldiers, and while this is a bit more fun than just shooting them, it is an overall waste. Why have the machine gun if you can just mega pop your way through the level? Also, while we are on the subject of the machine gun, why did they make it so pitiful? There is the targeting thing I mentioned above, right? In addition to that, when you do manage to hit something it give a little weak circle sprite that is very dim. There are little German mortar areas that are manned by a pair of soldiers. You can drive right up to those areas and shoot the Germans in the faces, those little weak sprites appearing when you do, and they will not die. They just sit there and take it till you decide to pop them with the turret.
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What about the controls? Well… it’s like driving a tank really. I don’t have much more to say about it other than that. At least it’s a very simple tank to drive and you don’t have to worry about gas. Although, one problem that I found was it was very easy to get stuck in some places in the game. There are some hedgehogs in the second level and just beyond those was health and ammo that I needed. I rolled over the ‘Hogs easy enough, but trying to get back out was a chore that took about five minutes.
Not Cool.
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Graphic wise what are we getting? Well the best way that I can describe it is its very very similar in feel to Medal of Honor Allied Assault. There are no real brilliant colors, everything is pretty washed. The models for the tanks are detailed enough, but the German foot soldiers are pretty poor looking. Explosions are pretty sad looking too. Its not horrible per se, but it is very dated and badly executed.
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Is it fun? Barely. It’s an untapped section of the WWII experiance so it does have a bit of novelty there. Also, it is good fun to peg the Germans with a tank round. It is a somewhat easy game, flowing about in a very point to point matter. Thats a mixed bag though. Sure, being able to check out a game and seeing what it has to offer is a good thing, but some of us would like to control the difficulty. Also, there is a matter of the lengths of these levels. They are pretty dang short. I mean seriously, daaaang sort. If you know where you are going and where to shoot you can complete the levels faster than you can cook up delicious Beeferoni in the microwave.
That ain’t right.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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+ Tanks are neat, I guess. + Tagging Nazis with tank rounds is slightly better than not. |
3.5 |
| What Doesn't | |
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- A.I. - Dated graphics - Controls are pretty much mush. - No difficulty controls - Short levels. - Too dang predictable after the first time through |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
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If you are really hard up for some tank on tank action pick this up and then get some help, sicko. If you are like the rest of us you should probably just walk away and let this rust in peace. |
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Tags: WWII Tank Commander
Posted by Mike Morgan on Mar 9th, 2006 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
