Tank! Tank! Tank!, the spiritual successor to a Japanese arcade game, hurls players into a variety of wheeled death machines to hunt down swarms of rogue robot praying mantises, giant floating heads that shoot lasers out of their mouths, or other mechanized gigantic monsters. The Wii U launch title offers a one- or two-player story mode and four other four-player multiplayer modes. Developed and published by Namco, Tank! Tank! Tank! offers a multiplayer experience that isn’t ground breaking, but is high-grade condensed fun.
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The controls are simple and intuitive; one button to shoot and a directional pad for movement. Driving through city streets blasting bulky robot spiders from buildings is incredibly simplistic, but that doesn’t detract from its charm. Easy controls encourage players to improve and clear levels faster and more efficiently while allowing non-gamers to actually enjoy the experience and coordinate power up pickups with team members instead of panicking and defenestrating a touchscreen controller. Using the game pad camera, players take a picture of themselves with a silly mask superimposed over their faces to represent tank drivers. Taking the pictures is fun at first, but it can grow tiresome after extended multiplayer sessions with that guy and his stupid faces.
The visuals are impressive, but that’s mostly because all of the enemies are titans, giant robots, or a flying sea monster wearing a battle fortress. This delicious assortment of jumbo mecha-monsters aren’t the visual foie gras of the next-gen gaming world, but graphics were never Tank! Tank! Tank!’s most impressive feature or selling point. This is a party game designed for four players to roam through a destructible city in tanks destroying oversized three-headed dragons and other invaders like it. Tank! Tank! Tank! doesn’t tout the most intricate or complex environments, but small details like demolishing buildings and blowing chunks of armor plating off creatures, big or small, capture its essence. In short, each of the monster, tank, and level designs are charming, vibrant, and engaging.
“Don’t worry, I have another.”
The side attraction, story mode, is a series of one- or two-player levels with a vague mention of a plot line as a mission briefing. Characters are flat, generic, and unimpressive, just like their bland headquarters where the mute protagonist receives the mission. Blindly following seemingly suicidal orders for some unknown special task force, players determined to defend Earth (and their moon base) against some unknown evil. Story mode, secretly a mistranslation of time attack, showcases a slew of different tanks, each with their own power ups and awesome names like Gungir (named after Odin’s lance).
Completing a level for the first time with a tank rewards a player with medals, which unlock new tanks and new levels to continue the story mode, in addition to experience points based on a letter ranking system. Trying to get high scores is addicting. I’ve wasted hours seeking that higher score, but being forced to replay earlier missions with different tanks to collect enough arbitrary tokens to continue the plot is an unappreciated grind. Thankfully, it’s fun. Power ups — like super powered laser beams, lock on missile barrages, and flame throwers to name a few — are dependent on the type of vehicle first player is driving and the level for the second player. Unfortunately, all of these unlocked, leveled up, elite, and unstoppable tanks are only available to the first player of story mode, not second player and certainly not multiplayer. Essentially, story mode is a lonesome grind to the top with nothing to show your friends.
Surprisingly, the protagonist does not receive danger pay.
Multiplayer easily steals the main attraction of Tank! Tank! Tank!. Through four different game types, players battle monsters, obliterate each other in teams of two or as a free for all, and in a three-on-one boss battle. Tank fighters can scurry through different levels, killing either monsters or each other, scouring them for different weapons and assaulting enemy tanks in the PVP modes; whoever/whichever team has the most kills wins. The final game type, My Kong, is an inclusion of the asymmetrical gaming the Wii U makes possible: one player plays as a giant mecha-gorilla boss and must keep smashing the other players to stay alive until the clock runs out. The robot kong player looks at the gamepad screen because his view is different and separate from the other three players. At times, I felt like the My Kong gorilla was a bit overpowered, but the tank team just needs to play better to wipe that stupid smirk off that robot face. My Kong is an absolute joyride of manic mayhem and destruction, but why can’t I also play as the three-headed dragon, titans, or even the robot disguised as a building?
“Gimme five!”
Tank! Tank! Tank! brings hours of explosive entertainment, but there are a lot of glaring opportunities for improvement. The game is on the Wii U, so it could have easily incorporated a Mii profile system in game to track individual’s unlockables, tank levels, and high scores. It could even double as a multiplayer profile for another missing feature, the online multiplayer mode. Come on! It’s a multiplayer title, why can’t I murder people across the world to assert my cybernetic dominance? Also, if the single player story line is so incredibly lackluster, would it have been that difficult to include a four-player campaign instead of the repeatable multiplayer missions? The missions are fun, but a sense of progression is all I’m asking for here.
There isn’t much about this game that I don’t enjoy; I see only possible improvements and crave them. Lacking an online multiplayer is unfortunate, but it’s definitely worth considering as a four-player couch co-op party game. Well, maybe when the price drops. I’ve had a great time playing the game and crushing my friend’s steel frames and hopeless dreams for victory and I’ve become somewhat addicted to S-ranking all of the levels, but the flashy pick-up-and-play multiplayer game doesn’t offer enough content to warrant the price of a new game, launch title or otherwise.
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