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Post by Ayen on Nov 1, 2020 18:45:16 GMT -6
BattleTanx is an action tank game developed and published by the 3DO Company for the Nintendo 64 game console and was released on December 29, 1998. It stars Griffin Spade who travels through the United States from east to west to save his beloved Madison from the custody of the U.S. government. Without further ado, let’s dive into BattleTanx.
Gameplay: The gameplay in BattleTanx is pretty simple. You can select from three main tanks, the Motor tank, which is really tiny, the M1 tank and the Goliath tank which is a giant. You can fire your main gun and then use power ups to fire additional weapons like swarmers and guided missiles. I hope you like hearing the words ‘power up’ a lot, because it sounds every single time you pick up an item.
The game has a couple of modes you can choose from. Most of them can go up to four players with the exception of the single player campaign mode. We have Annihilation, Deathmatch, Battlelords, Family Mode, and Campaign. Annihilation is a tank wars mode where you have up to five tanks and the last tank standing wins. Battlelords is like capturing the flag only, you’re saving a woman titled a ‘Queen Lord’ from an enemy base guarded by a Goliath tank. Deathmatch is where whoever destroys up to seven enemies wins and Family Mode is the same except you can’t switch between ammo.
In each multiplayer mode you can select which gang you want to play and choose between the colors blue, red, green, and yellow. Except in Campaign where you can only play as Grffin’s army. In addition to blowing up enemy tanks, you can also blow up different buildings and interact with your environment.
The single player campaign contains seventeen levels and various enemy tanks and gun turrets you have to fight through each level. It even contains a bonus stage where you play as a Goliath tank destroying as many enemies as possible before you yourself are destroyed. You can use both a N64 memory card or passwords to resume where you left off in the campaign mode.
Story: The story begins by explaining that an unknown virus has killed 99.99% of all women making them extinct, and then the country goes under martial law detaining the remaining women survivors and several cities are destroyed and the world ends. Leaving different gangs to take over different parts of the country and Griffin claims a tank of his own to travel across the country to save his beloved Madison.
Throughout the story mode you learn about the different gangs, especially the Dark Angels who are cannibals, and that there are others like Griffin who just want to be reunited with their loved ones who join Griffin’s army. The game takes place in the year 2001, and yet it just happens to take place in New York with things blowing up. That’s kind of bad now given what did happen in 2001 in New York City, but the game came out in 98 so we know it wasn’t intentional. Just a bad coincidence.
Graphics: The graphics have a unique style about them that you don’t soon forget. While it’s limited to the technology at the time, the graphics have aged well. All the tanks look pretty cool and the surroundings are very well defined.
You can also see as clear as day the symbol on the back of each gang’s tank. The artwork for the people in the campaign mode are well detailed and everything looks polished. All in all I have to say the graphics represent the themes of the game well and there isn’t much to complain about.
Flaws: I didn’t find much in the way of flaws in this game, but one glaring issue of mine is what I mentioned before. That every time you pick up an item a voice says ‘power up!’ to annoying levels. Also, you can’t move the tank’s top at all to fire at other enemies. You have to turn the whole tank around to fire at different enemies that may be to your left or right, but the enemy tanks can turn their tank’s top all they want. I don’t find that to be fair, but that is something they fixed in the sequel.
Summary: All in all BattleTanx is a fun tank versus game with a very well detailed story and plenty of modes to keep you entertained throughout the day. It stands the test of time and remains perhaps one of the best games on the Nintendo 64 library. Nothing more to say except:
Get It!
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