The scent of burnt gunpowder fills your nose. You open your eyes and black inky smoke is filling the chamber you are sitting in. The only thing that you can hear? Is the high pitched ringing you’d get after an explosive round would’ve hit the thick plating of your tank. You open the top hatch and fresh air rushes in, blowing out the inky smoke that was filling your chamber. You look around and in the distance, you spot one of the enemies mechanized trucks. You grin, close the hatch and load up another round. It’s time… To go hunting again! All of this may sound epic, and would’ve been epic! If it weren’t for the fact that Attack of the Toy Tanks was a DOA (dead on arrival). It sports every bad trope in gaming! Glitchy levels and AI. Cheating AI. A bad soundtrack. Horrible controls. Yup, every reviewer’s worst nightmare. So let’s just get this one over with… This is, Attack of the Toy Tanks!
- A lot of levels: If there’s one thing that would be a good selling point for the game? Then it’d have to be the sheer amount of levels. They didn’t shy away with putting quantity into it. But you know what they say about quantity… Quantity doesn’t always equal quality, and sadly enough, this seems to be the very case for this game… Sad… O so sad…
- Skip this section: Roses are red. Violets are blue. There’s nothing to write about here. So you can immediately go to bad if you wanted to. Oh well, maybe the easy and quick 1000G gamerscore. If you wondered. It’s a ratalaika game after all. They pump out 1000G games like crazy!
- Throwaway game: What you are about to read, are the death throes of a game that was meant to be buried in a desert, next to E.T. A game that was so lazily put together, that you’re better off just throwing away your money. There’s nothing fun to be had or experienced here. Sure you could play with friends on the couch… But if you’ll ever hit 4 hours in this game? Then you’ll be holding a record I think…
- Glitchy A.I.: These braindead tanks weren’t gifted with the blessings of being smart. I’ve seen multiple tanks just crash into each other, and not understanding what to do next. So, they’d just stand there… Doing nothing. Or run into one of the blocks that are strewn all around. I mean, don’t they know what reversing it? Whoever programmed these should look into this because that’s just idiotic as hell. How could they just release this as-is? Sigh…
- They have got dead-eye: If you’ve ever played Overwatch, Dead-Eye will surely ring a bell. If not? Let me quickly explain. Dead-Eye allows a character called McCree to automatically line up shots and go for critical hits in one go, on multiple targets, depending on if they’re on his screen or not. If they are, he automatically locks on to them and then fires, without missing a bullet. Got it? Okay. Because that’s exactly what your A.I. opponents will be utilizing against you. It doesn’t matter if they weren’t even looking at you. The moment one pixel that would be targetable, appears in their line? They’ll immediately snap their gun towards you and shoot. Oh, and did I already say they get an unfair advantage? Yeah… First, their bullets travel faster than yours. Then, they’ve got different kinds of rounds to fire away at you. Some may be bouncy bullets, others are homing. You? You’ll be lucky if you ever get a different type of round to fire off. Because yup, you guessed it. This is predetermined! You can’t choose!! I mean… WHAT?
- Awful controls: So, you’ve got a twin-stick top-down tank movement game. Yup, if that sent cringed feelings through your spine? You’re not the only one. Not only are these movements overly sensitive, but they’re also EXTREMELY ANNOYING. And why you may ask? Your left stick controls in which direction you go, so ergo, your turn controls. Your right stick dictates where your gun is aiming at. And the go button? Is the A button… And that doesn’t even command the shooting! That’s reserved for the trigger… So that means to get everything working? You’ll have to be doing 4 actions at the same time… And with how twitchy everything is? That’ll just turn this entire experience into a nightmare to play through!
- Annoying song: Remember those old war movies that had epic songs throughout the entire thing? Yeah… Don’t even think you’ll find this here! Moreover, this is a one-track-minded game, set to destroy any form of sanity you’d still have in your body after going through this misery ridden game. I don’t know where creative thinking went wrong? But whatever the main gameplan was? This probably WASN’T it. My opinion? Just turn sound off if you actually decide to play the game…
Developer: Petite Games Publisher: Ratalaika Games
Played on: Xbox One X Also available on: PS4 – Switch and PC
Alexis spent 3 hours playing around with his little tank.
Achievement difficulty for 1000 Gamerscore: 1.5 hours to get all of the achievements.
Perfect for: Anyone who likes to burn money.
Xbox Game Store link: Click here