Price: $49.99
Tank! Tank! Tank! Review
Rather than incorporating the Wii U’s name into the game’s title and calling it TankU, Namco Bandai decided to go with the much weirder Tank! Tank! Tank!. With this game, you control various tanks and must go into missions, destroying various mechanical enemies that are all absurd.
What I Liked
The Action and Enemies
Since Tank! Tank! Tank! is solely centered around you in a dinky little tank shooting enemies, the developers clearly wanted to make those enemies memorable. So, they made those bad guys completely robotic and fashioned them after gorillas, spiders, dragons, dinosaurs, and more.
While the action in the game just boils down to you shooting from your tank every couple of seconds and destroying enemies, the constant offerings of power-ups and non-stop action do keep you invested longer than a game of this quality should.
The Multiplayer Aspect
Oddly enough, Tank! Tank! Tank! doesn’t allow you to do full 5-player multiplayer, opting for the standard 4-player. Aside from that omission, you can play through the entire campaign with a friend, making it somewhat more bearable.
As for the actual multiplayer, you can team up to go through waves of enemies, fight against each other, or even have the GamePad owner control a giant gorilla while the other players try to bring it down. If you do end up buying this game, make sure you have some people to play with because it isn’t very fun at all by yourself.
Putting Your Face In the Game
In order to identify your friends on the screen, you take pictures using the GamePad. It’s a very goofy little feature that does add a little fun to the experience, especially when you make a funny face.
What I Didn’t Like
The Low Production Values
For a full priced Wii U launch title, you should be getting a game that looks and feels next gen. With Tank! Tank! Tank!, you get a game with no voice acting (except when you collect power-ups) and graphics that wouldn’t impress during the GameCube launch. Furthermore, the battlegrounds throughout are generally very small. It does have destructible environments, but this doesn’t make up for the fact that it doesn’t run smoothly. Multiple times I’d have enemies clearly walk through buildings, and on other occasions the game would encounter slowdown when multiple of enemies were on screen. If you then use the off-TV play on the GamePad, the slowdown gets worse!
The Tank Controls
Instead of making this a twin-stick experience, it only uses one joystick–most likely to accommodate people who want to use the Wii Remote instead of the GamePad, Classic Controller, or Pro Controller. Because of this, you can only see what is directly in front of you and have to let the game auto-lock onto enemies. If there’s an enemy behind you, your tank has to be completely turned around before you can even think of killing it.
I honestly don’t know why they didn’t allow you to use twin stick controls at some point in the game because the single stick option feels terrible.
The Mission Structure
One positive note about the missions is that they are very short, usually taking no longer than a couple of minutes. On a negative note, the mission structure is horrible. Your entire campaign will pretty much consist of you going into a cramped area and clearing out the enemies in one mission. Then once you beat that, you fight a boss. Then back to the swarm and so on and so forth.
To make matters much worse, in order to unlock some new missions you have to replay missions multiple times with different tanks. I guess this is a way to extend the length of the game, but when you have to play the same mission 8 times over just to unlock the next couple missions, you really start to get annoyed.
The GamePad In The Campaign
Aside from the off-TV play that is supported for Tank! Tank! Tank!, the GamePad is pretty useless in the campaign. Rather than it showing a radar, a view of your side or top, or anything else, it shows your tank’s speed and RPM’s, something that is completely useless.
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Final Word
It’s very difficult to recommend Tank! Tank! Tank! to anyone right now. While the game isn’t completely terrible, it just features way too many issues as a full priced game. If you’re still somewhat interested in the game, wait until it hits the bargain bin, but until then, spend your money on better exclusive Wii U launch titles like New Super Mario Bros. U and ZombiU.
Tank! Tank! Tank! was reviewed with a copy provided by Namco Bandai.
