Nintendo ported the shit out of the Wii U library, reasonably so, hence there are very few exclusives that are “trapped” on the Switch precedessor… most are crap like Devil’s Third and Sonic Boom: Rise Of Lyric, Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival, some sports-fitness games or party games, and somehow STILL the HD ports of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess.
Tank Tank Tank is technically not an exclusive, since it’s a port of a 2009 arcade game published and developed by Namco Bandai internally (itself a spiritual successor on a previous arcade game by Namco, 1996’s Tokyo Wars, according to Wikipedia), rereleased in 2012 on Wii U, serving as launch title for the console in North America.
It was initally released digitally as a free to play thingie where you could play the single player campaign for free but had to buy the various multiplayer mode as DLC (which it eventually reverted to 1 year later) but it was also released physically as a complete package, which its the version i own and i’m basing the review on.
How could i pass this up? It looks like a tank based arcade version of Earth Defense Force…. and indeed it has the same vibes, given the retro sci-fi aesthetic, like a 50s b-movie about giant monsters and all that. And indeed that’s what you get: robot monsters are attacking Earth, so hop on your tank alongside a friend (or a IA controlled second tank in Story Mode if you play single player) and blast the mecha bastards to bits.
You move, shoot, pick up ammos for the special and heavy weapons your tank is equipped with, all in small locales with plenty of destructible building you can raze, alongside a time and lives limit.
That’s about it for gameplay, it’s super simple, and on paper should be right my alley…. it is, but the simple and limited fun is hampered by some issues that really can’t be shoved under the carpet and ignored, the first problem being oddly the controls, which are overly simple yet somehow iffy, ironically because they are way too simplified.
You see, the game basically has auto-aim on, so even if you decide you don’t wanna move the tank turret around using the Wii U tablet’s gyroscope controls (which can be turned off ), you’ll still have to adjust at the game deciding for you what to aim the weapons at.
There are multiple control configurations (though player 1 simply has to use the Gamepad, regardless) you can use, even use the Wiimote or the Classic Controller (the Wii U one or the old Wii one, too), it even supports the Wii Wheel, i guess to emulate the arcade controls, but i haven’t bothered dusting that one out.
You can play the campaign single player directly on the gamepad and basically miss nothing (aside from a bigger screen), since if you used both screens the Gamepad one just display some cloche info that’s useless. Guess they had to use it somehow.
Honestly even the turret aiming gyroscope function seems hastily slapped in at the last second, since it’s unreliable and kinda pointless since even if you decide not to use it, it just means you can rotate the camera around with the right stick… you can do that, but it barely changes things, as you don’t also control the turret with the right stick, vertical aiming is always on, and the controls – as previously said – are plain akward, and just simply make the game more difficult than it actually is.
I did some research and saw the game arcade cabinet has a vertical smarthphone style screen display, so you simply steered and shoot (and i guess accellerate and stop), with icons at the screen bordering indicating that there was a monster coming or attacking from that side, to compensate for the lack of a mini-map, though it would have been kinda pointless anyway, the stages aren’t huge like in EDF, they’re very tiny, so….
Speaking of cameras, the only cute thing the Gamepad is used for is using its integrated photocamera to take a photo of yourself (and the IA controlled support player) and had silly pre-made cutouts like pirate hat, helmets, funny faces, like you could do with the camera included in the original arcade cabinet.
The second is that it’s an obvious budget release, and so …. actually, the problem isn’t so much that, especially if you like EDF, is that they also were clearly desperately trying to give more longevity to a game meant to be originally experienced in short bursts before you spot a foosball table or an old pinball machine to practice on, go get a beer or just fumble about trying to redeem tickets for maybe a bootleg phone strap or a Pokemon TCG card pack.
Hence every 5 missions or so the game basically forces you to replay the previous ones, as clearing a mission with a specific tank gives out a medal, and they force you to basically replay all previously unlocked missions in order to ammass the required amount of medals so you can unlock the next story mission… which often means replaying the missions once more with the new tanks you unlocked by collecting medals.
This so the campaign can require like 7/8 hours to beat instead of 2/3 hours, with the extra tanks requiring a ludicrous amount of medals and some in-game achievements/trophies.
Weird too how the game stops this halfway through… then resumes for the final block of missions.
At least the tanks are fun enough to use, fall into 5 different types, get exp and improve their stats when levelling up, so it’s not for naught, but let’s be real, this is the only reason why it takes more than 1 hour to finish the campaign, and on that regard i hope you enjoy reading the children anime styled military advisors sprites repeat the same dialogue every time you beat a mission, just to waste some more seconds of your time on top of the load times being longer than they should.
And fighting the same 6 enemy types now in barely noticeable variants/reskins, there’s not the enemy variety required for this to work over a campaign’s lenght, and since the arenas are small, the enemy just pop out of the ground or the air few at a time, there’s not even that EDF or Painkiller “monster spam sandwich” appeal, you don’t even get the same satisfaction of facing proper hordes of giant enemy spiders or robo-alien, as you deal with the same 5/6 fucks that respawn in a boring diorama, recycled in pairs, often with their own variant/reskin.
Expecially stupid when you can’t even carry over the unlocked selection of tanks to multiplayer.
What the fuck was the point?
Make no mistake, though, as multiplayer is the clear focus (local only multiplayer, to be precise), the campaign can be played with a friend but it’s telling the game when started off by default is on the “multiplayer” section of the menù, which has co-op missions, deathmatch, squad deathmatch, and the more unique mode, My Kong, which has Player 1 use the Gamepad to control bootleg Mechani-Kong and up to other 3 players play as the tanks trying to defeat the mecha simian.
Look, i’m not gonna rag on the obvious low quality textures and overall graphics, an arcade port of a then 3 yo game that was clearly a budget release of sorts, though i’m sure it looked fairly good in arcades when it came out, the presentation is quite colorful, in its simplicity and its joyful embracing of 50s b-movies cliches, with some really fun monster designs.
heck, i’m surprised they did bother to dub the various starting mission cutscenes, even localized the dub in italian too, so i’m not gonna rag on the obvious “low” budget nature of the game, i expected that, and again, it’s a port of a 2009 arcade game, it looks better than one could expect… kinda.
I really feel bad having to trash a game that’s basically “arcade tank EDF”, but this ain’t it chief.
One thing is to make a port of a game that really didn’t belong on console, i can understand the struggle in making content for it when the experience really is made for brief 5 minutes sessions at the arcade, but forcing player into replaying the same tiny amount of content over and over just to let them progress a bit in the story and then having to replay the newly unlocked missions… it’s shit.
Then the weirdly overly simplistic and iffy controls just happen to make gameplay more akward and stiff than it would be, and even the multiplayer offerings do not help much, as there’s little to unlock (the story tanks you’re asked to spent hours unlocking can’t be used in multiplayer, stupidly enough), zero depth, no online multiplayer of any kind and not much content to play anyway.
I don’t recommend bothering with Tank! Tank! Tank! unless you’re a hardcore Wii U collector (or ScottTheWoz), even if you like EDF and similar games, and while for preversation’s/availability sake i’m glad they release this physically….it felt like squeezing blood from a stone.
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