Tank Hero Review

Tank Hero looks a bit like Tanks! from Wii Play. While Tank Hero may not have the luxury to sport Wii-like controls, this tank fighting game is well-made, fun, and fully featured.

Tank Hero has three game modes: campaign, survival, and time trial. Campaign barrels through 120 different levels on three different themed maps. I will admit that, on occasion, I became frustrated with the difficulty in some of the levels. I don’t mind difficult games, but some levels were simply too chaotic to understand what exactly was going on.

The basic goal of the game is to destroy the other enemy tanks in each level. Each level has a different set of walls and tanks. Through the campaign, various types of ammo are introduced. Each tank uses one of the types of ammo. Destroyable blocks are introduced about midway through the levels.

The survival mode is my favorite. This mode is playable in all 120 levels, which is incredible considering that the point of survival mode is to last through as many waves as possible. So Tank Hero effectively has 120 unique, endless survival games. Only one type of ammo is available in each campaign level, but survival has them all available via a shop. The player earns credits during waves and buys ammo between those waves.

The time trial mode allows replay of the campaign levels with a clock in the top-left corner. This allows the player to hold a high score for each level in the game. High scores are listed after the completion of each time trial level.

Before I started playing this game, I heard it had multiple control schemes. So I immediately played the first level in the campaign with all three control variations. As I expected, I preferred the “Dual Virtual DPad” set of controls. It reminds me of the controls for Isotope which, in my opinion, has the best controls scheme for iPhone shooters. The other two control schemes are “Virtual DPad and Tap” and “Swipe and Tap.” With the first, the player controls the tank with the directional pad (choice of right or left screen side) and taps where the shots should be fired. With “Swipe and Tap,” the player swipes at various lengths to tell tank where to move and also taps the screen to aim and fire. I will admit that “Swipe and Tap” feels natural, but two directional pads gave me more control. The second directional pad controls the direction of fire and needs to be tapped to fire.

As of this moment, Tank Hero sits as the #2 Paid iPhone app.

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