Retro Tanks Review

"Rough Blasting"

Campaign

June 20, 2020 at 7:24pm
By Jason Stettner

This is a simple old school style tank game. You’re able to play it a number of ways, including solo and multiplayer options. The core of this is the quote on quote campaign section. This is split between two options in regards to the layout of how these levels are presented. There’s stage mode where you need to fight towards the end without dying.

Then there’s retro mode where you have five lives to tackle fifty levels with progress being saved along the way. The cooperative mode has six tiers for options on how to play the game for two players. Finally, there’s a multiplayer mode where you can have up to four players battling locally. This offers some options for how you play, though everything is rather basic.

There’s not a whole lot of depth to what it actually is, but I do applaud the effort in regards to trying to cover a number of bases through different modes. With that, it still is minimal without tweaking options or even lobbies as with the local multiplayer you just start battling right away.

Gameplay

When you first load up the game there are two ways to control the tank that show up. You can pick either, but they both are rather rough in regards to controlling the game. It really does handle horribly, and often I would lose where my cursor was. If I wasn’t keeping the aim right up against the tank it would randomly flow right off the screen and be lost. This is also incredibly sluggish. Its slow paced, with no sense of speed or urgency.

That makes it just incredibly tiring to play as death makes you revisit these segments that are just so slow. Places you’ve already been to at a snail pace, and having to revisit if you die is just a hellish pain. On top of that, this is visually awful to witness. It’s hard on the eyes and almost impossible to tell what’s going on at any time.

It’s a puzzling visual style that is mostly just awful to take in. It’s one of the worst looking games I’ve seen. I’m all for unique aesthetics in games and love the concept of a minimalistic style, but it’s used very poorly here. It’s all muddled, and just almost impossible to deal with while playing. It’s a game that’s tough to control, hard to look at and I think that’s what ultimately makes this hard to play. I should also mention that this has a top down perspective for tank play as I imagine that factors into things too.

The Conclusion

Retro Tanks is a really awful experience that feels like a relic of the most ancient gaming consoles, being sluggish to handle and looking downright ugly in its presentation. It offers a selection of modes, but those really don’t have any depth to them. There wasn’t a whole lot to the main single player, and the multiplayer options are truly ultra light in what they provide.

This is a hard to play game; not only at times with difficulty, but mainly in how hard it is to see and control. The visuals are dreadful, and it’s very rough to handle. I had a very hard time getting the tank to properly move around and this killed the enjoyment as I do like these smaller arcade tank titles.

This is one to just skip however, it doesn’t offer a whole lot with a presentation that’s one of the roughest I’ve ever seen. It’s a disappointing visual choice, and if some elements would have been adjusted this might have actually been a decent offering.

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Retro Tanks Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by EpiXR Games

Rating Overall: 2.5