Battletanx: Global Assault Review

Battletanx Global Assault is the sequel to Battletanx, and it shows the improvements time brought in many ways. First off, the graphics are greatly improved. The tanks have good looking textures, weapon fire look more like what it is and not a fire ball. There is a greater variety of tanks, in addition to the 3 in the original, there is now tanks such as the Rhino and the Rattler. Out of the 11 tanks in the game, Kiwi would say the only one that is really crap, it's the flamethrower touting Inferno tank, the others are all pretty fun to use. There are a hand full of new weapons, some existing weapons got improved, and some of the more powerful weapons, like the nuke of all things, got weakened. Tanks move faster in this game, and there are now ramps and such for you to fly off of. The speed does help make the game more exciting, as if tanks blowing stuff up wasn't exciting enough.

This game takes place a few years after the original. You and your wife control San Francisco, and you have a son. Everything is going well, but we can't have that, can we? An evil woman attacks to kidnap your child for something called The Edge, it might as well be the Deus Ex Machina because the game avoided saying exactly what it is (it can shoot lightening bolts and control minds apparently; it could probably wash the dishes if that's what was needed). The story seems to take a more prominent role in the game however it doesn't feel good enough to warrant this extra attention. While the story may not be that great, the game play is better then ever. This time you can CHOOSE THE TANK YOU WANT TO USE. Yes, that is big enough to warrant the capitals. This solves one of Kiwi's biggest complaints with the game. Now the levels goals, they are better as well. There are now more destroy'em all objectives, and much fewer CTF style missions. There are also some gather x amount of things and destroy a certain thing objectives. Kiwi will say that the one CTF mission is harder then previous ones in that the respawning enemies are more aggressive and there is a variety of what is being spawned. This time instead of straight forward lives, you get tank bucks, basically each type of tank is worth a certain amount and should you run out of bucks, game over. With this it encourages destroying and searching the levels even more. The AI is more willing to use secondary weapons this time, so don't be surprised to get nailed in the face with a guided missile. Even with this improvement, Kiwi found this game easier then the original. Even with this downgrade in difficulty Kiwi found it more fun, which is the most important thing.

The multiplayer got some of these delicious improvements, there are new game types. Tank Wars replaces Annihilation, this time those other tanks are live and it's the first team to get to 25 points that wins. Frenzy is where the game places Queen Lords on the map and it's a scramble to see who can get the most. Hold'em places a Queen Lord in the center of the map, the teams run to grab it and place it in their base, and hold it for about 30-40 seconds. This would be more hectic except that there are Goliath tanks guarding the bases, making it harder to take'em away. Then there is convoy, one team guards a convoy while it heads to a point and the other team tries to stop'em. The problem with this is that while the convoy vehicles aren't exactly fragile, it's quite easy for the attacker to win by ignoring the guards and attacking the convoy. You do get to choose what tanks you use after you die, but unfortunately, you don't get to choose when the game starts up. The gangs are much more balanced this time around, and the tanks each squad has is more varied. Even then, some gangs are worse then then others. The game still has one of the same problems the first one did, you can't change the scoring options and such for the games.

The graphics have greatly improved and the weapons sound good as well. The music doesn't see great improvements. The music didn't really stick to Kiwi, he found it better to just listen to some of his own music.

Overall, Global Assault is a vast improvement. The game play is just down right better, the single player is better, and the multiplayer is better as well. At the rate the developers were going, one more sequel and they would have had the perfect game, too bad 3DO went down.