Tank Titans HD Revew

When you imagine the power of a tank, that iconic bastion of military might, you probably see a massive metal goliath grinding across the battlefield, annihilating enemy armor and flattening troop divisions. You probably imagine a mechanical beast of roaring fire and crushing steel, the kind of weapon that can turn the tide of a battle with its mere presence.

If that’s what you’re looking for, Tank Titans HD is not the game for you.

Each round of Tank Titans HD drops you into a desert wasteland for an arena deathmatch against AI tanks, though the truth is that the terrain is so sparsely populated I thought I had screwed up the settings at first, and the phrase "deathmatch" implies a level of excitement nowhere to be found here. The visuals straddle an odd line between bland and interesting, with the environment itself fairly well done but the animations and textures feeling a bit disjointed. The game’s audio is sub-par, somehow making your tank’s mighty engine sound less like a roar and more of a gurgle.

While it is obvious that tanks are not the most agile vehicles around your tank handles like a barge, feeling terribly slow as it trundles along. There is a separate control for aiming your turret, which is useless since your tank will automatically target-lock as soon as an enemy is in range. As the first of my tank foes puttered into range of my guns, I charged at him, blasting away with my apparently unlimited ammo. A puff of fire and black smoke later, and I was rewarded with my first kill.

And then got temporarily stuck on an indestructible vase.

The radar displays a bunch of symbols, but no tutorial explains what any of them mean. At one point I aimed my tank at the ominous skull on the radar and just drove for as long as my patience would allow, and nothing ever came of it. Occasionally, I got to shoot at tanks, they shot at me, and nothing exciting or engaging ever really happened. Only one tank is available to begin with, and an in-app store offers more for purchase, but nothing suggests that a new tank would bring any sort of new or interesting gameplay.

Tank Titans HD feels, above all else, unfinished. It is distinctly empty; more like a proof-of-concept than an actual game - as hollow a gameplay experience as the tinny, rattling sound of your tank's little scooter engine.