Tank Racer (Playstation)

This game's title tells you pretty much everything about its premise: it's a racing game, but with tanks. You can even shoot at each other as much as you want! That's really it, I don't have anything more to put into this opening paragraph, sorry.

So, it's a British-developed game, which is obvious from the first two tracks: a pretty authentic-feeling little country village with a church and a duck pond and so on, followed by a very silly, inauthentic-feeling depiction of the USA-Mexico border. You can also tell that it's a western-developed game from the late 90s, since there are UFOs on some of the menu backgrounds, and there's a UFO power up ingame, too (though it's pretty rare, and I missed my shot every time I got it, so unfortunately, I can't tell you what it does).

How does it actually play though? Eh, it's alright. I was disappointed that the tanks just control like the cars do in any other racing game, where you hold the accellerator and steer left and right. I would have been much more interesting if you had left and right accelerators, one for each tank tread, and you steered by letting go of one of them (like how Steambot Chronicles/Bumpy Trot would have you controlling its walking vehicles a few years later. I really like that control method, actually, and I'd love to see it in a high speed racing game someday).

Also, though you can shoot your tank's cannon as much as you like, it's the weakest-feeling tank cannon I think I'v ever used in a game, as whether you're hitting an enemy or taking a hit yourself, it barely seems to have any effect at all. I guess the developers had to make a choice between making a fast and fair racing game, or a manic one with powerful weapons that could get incredibly frustrating. I'm not sure which would have been the best choice, actually, so I can't really be too hard on the game for that.

There's a few other small, nitpicky problems, too, like how some parts of stages are destructible and some aren't, but I think that's just the fault of the Playstation's hardware limitations (on the other hand, though, other games like Rollcage did a better job of hiding those limitations when it came to what you could and couldn't smash on their tracks). The biggest problem this game has is just the fact that it's on Playstation, and it can't hold a candle to the monolithic might of Ridge Racer Type 4, nor is its unusual theming strong enough to make it an interesting novelty. So, like I said a few paragraphs up: eh, it's alright.