Let your buddy take the fire - he's indestructible.

During your missions you will be joined by other tanks, but they also suffer from their own set of AI quirks. First of all they always come to a complete stop when enemies are around, even if you can’t see the enemies and they are not shooting at you. You’ll be moseying along, your buddy will stop dead in his tracks, and you’ll know it’s time to look for some targets. Your ally will only move forward again once all enemies are eliminated, so once the other tanks begin to roll you’ll know the coast is clear. Your allies will fire at the enemy, but I can’t even tell you if they ever hit anything while I played as it felt like I scored every kill of the war. Lucky for them they are impervious to enemy fire – well, unless the script calls for them to die at a given time, that is.

Needless to say, this all makes Tank Commander a pretty repetitive and unexciting game. I don’t think I ever lost a tank, thanks to the poor aim, invulnerable allies, and health power-ups that appear after an enemy tank is destroyed. Perhaps as an attempt to make things more challenging the game does not allow you to save your game mid-mission, but the only times I was forced to replay missions from the beginning again was during one of the game’s random lock-ups. It would have been nice if the game was kind enough to crash to the desktop, but perhaps this feature will be added in a future patch.

I can’t really recommend this game to anyone – it’s a novel enough concept in a setting that has produced many enjoyable shooters, but it just doesn’t deliver much excitement. Even if you stick with the game through its relatively short campaign, there’s no real motivation to play through it a second time.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 50%.  Tanks, but no thanks.

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