Sunday, April 4th, 2010 | Posted by MaKUltra

PSP MINI: NORMAL TANKS REVIEW

Normal Tanks- Produced by BeatShapers had my mind wondering when I first heard the title, Normal Tanks, is as tank far from normal. Well, its not like you see them driving up the M25 everyday, or doing donuts in supermarket car parks. Is this game going to be just the norm or will it be one of those few break out titles that are part of the PSP MINI’s service.

Normal Tanks started its life as a PC Game but BeatShapers have done there magic by making a visually appealing port of their top down shooter. Beatshapers’ first mini, BreakQuest, is one of the best minis available on the Playstation Store. So I came to Normal Tanks with high hopes, and although it couldn’t be more different to BreakQuest in every respect, it’s still got that same playability factor and the same attention to detail I have come to love from this studio.

The game is basically a top-down shooter featuring classic run and gun gameplay, in which you take control of a tank across eight different environments, which are both challenging and dynamic. You are left to duel off against waves of other tanks, annoyingly persistent spider-bots, helicopters, and even creatures such as bats and skeleton dragons. Which really helps to mix up the game play, forcing you to learn new strategies and keeping the enjoyable all the way through? At the end of each stage you have to take on a big boss in a old-school fashion boss battle.

Normal Tanks doesn’t have any pretensions to any sort of plot, you simply get thrown straight in to the action from the main menu screen and start blowing apart enemies and traversing around the maze-like levels. Who you are, or why you’re there in your big shiny tank, you are never disclosed to this information, but it doesn’t matter much because the action is such a blast, literally!

One of the biggest gripes I have with this game, and I presume that others might feel the same way, is that the controls can make it feel a little clunky to begin with. You press R1 to shoot, use the directional buttons to move, and press Triangle, Square, X and Circle to rotate the turret, as if around the axis of a compass which corresponds to aiming the turret in the desired direction. The turret has eight shooting positions in all, enabling you to fire on the diagonal axis. The analog stick is used to auto-aim at targets, and L1 switches between your machine gun and your cannon.

The majority of the time, I would find myself using the analog stick to auto-aim rather than moving the turret by means of the face buttons to fire, as it was a more stream-lined way to control your tank.. The only downside to this method is that it’s quite difficult to use the D-Pad and the left analog stick at the same time, so you tend to stand still when auto-aiming. This is only a minor issue but it would have been nice to have had the option to customize the control scheme, but after a bit of time and even more skill you will have the controls nailed and your tank will soon be mistaken as a rally car as u literally Bomb your way around the stages.

There is a fair bit of variety to the gameplay. While the majority of the action involves driving around the levels and blasting anything that moves, occasionally you’ll get to do something a little different, such as taking control of a spider mine-bot and guiding it along before detonating it remotely in order to clear a path ahead of you. The enemy AI is really impressive – the other tanks and assorted creatures, both mechanical and fleshy, hunt you down and stalk you and play a sophisticated game of tag with you. There are plenty of Pick-Ups and power ups that you can upgrade your tanks weaponry as well as the speed of movement of your tank, as well as gaining extra lives which can come as a God send in some of the more taxing levels.

The sound design in this game is stellar, from the amazing sound track to the highly detailed sound effects, such as the sound of breaking bricks when you fire a shell in to a wall or the metallic sound when you fire at some thing with that property. A high level of detail has been paid to this game from the very outset, this is a thing I have come to know and love from BeatShapers, and which I am sure we will see in future releases.

Overall though, gameplay is fun, frantic and full of challenge that will keep you amused ploughing in hours to this great little game. The levels and enemies look great, and there’s plenty of variety in terms of locations, environments and enemies. So to some up, another great game from Beatshapers with lots of action along with plenty of challenge. Old-school top-down shooter fans should definitely give it a go, and don’t be put off by the controls because you will soon learn the skills needed to be cruising about the maps, in no time at you will find your self rallying about the maps tearing the enemies a new one, whilst completely amusing your self along the way.

Short URL: http://thegamershub.net/?p=5793

Posted by MaKUltra on Apr 4 2010. Filed under Playstation 3, Reviews, VITA/PSP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry