World War II Tank Commander is one of those lengthy game titles that
practically screams “hard-core sim”, but nothing could be farther from the
truth. What we’ve got here is a sheep in wolf’s clothing – a pretty basic arcade
shooter in which you just happen to be driving a tank. A FPS that casts you in
the role of a Sherman tank during the Normandy invasion sounds like a great
idea, but when it comes to execution Tank Commander throws a tread.
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| Easy pickin's. |
I have no problem with action games that take liberties with realism in the
name of fun, but Tank Commander goes too far with this and comes across as a
Disneyland version of a shooting gallery. Your path through the game’s levels
are so constrained that small wooden fences, telephone poles, and even hay bales
stop your mighty tank in its tracks. I don’t care if it isn’t a sim; when I
drive a tank I want to be able to go crashing through a farmhouse and come out
of the other side shooting. Tanks are supposed to be fun to drive, but
controlling this Sherman is about as much fun as driving the cars at Autotopia
once you’re old enough to realize that they’re on rails and that you’re not
really driving. Even the controls are super-simple – the WASD keys are used to
drive and the mouse swings the turret and you just need to avoid hitting walls
or fences.
I could forgive the lack of weight behind my tank and the total absence of a
physics model if the action in the game was exciting … I bet that you know where
I am going with this … but alas it is not. First of all there is not much enemy
AI to speak of in the game. Enemy tanks have a small detection radius, so most
of the time you’ll see them first, fire off a few shots while they just sit
there taking them, and then watch the explosion animation. Even when you are
detected, the enemy tanks can’t be bothered to move and will only get off a
poorly aimed shot or two before combusting. It doesn’t really matter where you
hit an enemy tank either – front or back, hull or turret, two to three shots
will cause these paper Tigers to explode.
The pacifist German armor has its counterpoint in the overly aggressive
infantry. These guys will run out onto the road one or two at a time and start
shooting at you with a rifle or machine pistol. I suppose you have to appreciate
the moxie of these panzerfaust-less soldiers, but on the other hand you have to
wonder what is going through their heads. As far as I could tell they really
didn’t do much damage to my tank and were included in the game to give something
for me to shoot at with my tank’s machine gun. If this is indeed the case, this
exercise was made pointless by the fact that the machine gun is impossible to
aim and I just relied on the main gun to send them back to the Fatherland. With
limitless ammunition and an automatic weapon-like fire rate, there’s no point in
holding back on the big gun in the game.
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