Atomic Tanks

Simple video games have the capacity to get you hooked just as much as triple-A productions do, especially if they feature ingenious gameplay mechanics. Hence, whether it’s Snake or Angry Birds, a bit of a challenge always gathers a crowd, which is why the titles mentioned above are so popular. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work in all cases, at least if something is way off.

Atomic Tanks is very straightforward when it comes to what your purpose and goals are: use missiles to destroy the enemy tanks and avoid dying yourself. The gameplay is much like in the classic Worms franchise, although there are no flying sheep and everything seems to take place somewhere on an alien planet. However, it’s certainly quite appealing in the beginning.

To make matters more interesting, you are allowed to manually select the number of players going head-to-head on the same map, although that also makes it more difficult for you as well. Hence, it is possible for up to ten other AI-controlled tanks to be on the battlefield, which makes for some very explosive combat. Naturally, the winner is the last man standing at the end of the round.

After each successful shot that does a bit of damage to one of the enemies, you are rewarded with money, which can then be used in between the rounds to buy special missiles. These range from normal oversized bombs to nukes and armageddon-causing doomsday machines, which have the capacity to take out half the map at once and cause a lot of trouble for the enemy tanks.

In fact, this also happens to be the game’s greatest flaw, because the missiles are quite cheap and everyone can easily afford them after only a couple of rounds. Naturally, who gets to use them first wins the round, which means that he gets even more money and the chance to buy the same nukes over and over again. Thus, a great deal of balancing is needed to make this game feasible.

All things considered, Atomic Tanks has the potential to turn into a fun game, as long as balancing is taken care of. Otherwise, the gameplay gets repetitive and boring quite quickly, especially when more than two players are involved in the battles.