Here's the first in what will hopefully a weekly / biweekly rant - What needs to be on the XBLA?
This week: Death Tank Zwei
If you don't know what Death Tank is, you didn't own a SEGA Saturn. This game - hidden within a copy of Duke Nukem 3D - is quite possibly the best multiplayer experience available for the system, better than Saturn Bomberman!
In order to play Death Tank, players needed to own a copy of Duke Nukem 3D and do one of two things - have your own copy of Exhumed or Quake (also made by Lobotomy Software) and a save file from either, or break every single toilet in the game. People may be scoffing at the latter, but you know some poor soul would do it for 20 achievement points in this day and age. You also needed a Multitap, for 7 player multiplayer.
But enough about the elaborate requirements needed for this game, what makes this game so awesome? It's just a load of fun!
The graphics aren't much to look at, but they don't need to be. Just looking at it you might think "Oh that just looks like Scorched Earth, Tank Wars, and Worms!" but you'd be wrong! Unlike those games, Death Tank is real-time!
You can move your Tank left and right to avoid attacks. Players can move an arrow to aim in a direction and the length of shot, and after a 'reload' time you can shoot off the next round. You can buy Hover coils and Jump Jets to fly around the landscape until they run out of juice, or buy yourself a shield to bounce away incoming bullets for a short period of time. There is nothing more satisfying in this game than shooting down some smart arse who's hovering in the air.
Up to 7 players can play Death Tank, give yourself a name and choose round count and away you go! Each player is randomly thrown onto the battlefield, and your only mission is to kill everyone else. Killing people gives you points, points buy new weaponry, and new weaponry gives you more kills! Repeat this until the game ends and a winner is declared!
The game features a large array of weapons you can buy with points, such as Nukes that make giant holes in the landscape, Missiles which can be controlled to fly into other players, MIRVs which will split into several explosions, your mine which can get other players by rolling down hills, and your air strikes which just blow everything away.
The game will also randomly throw players a Blitz Round! In this round, the reload time for weaponry decreases dramatically, it's a hail of bullets!
If this was to come to the XBLA, not a whole lot would need to change. An actual single player mode is completely unnecessary, just having local and online multiplayer would be enough. With widescreen support, boosting the player list from 7 to 8 should be a snap, add some new weapons, maybe remove some of the useless ones (I don't think Target Comp ever worked), and you're set!
Blowing up people online would be an absolute blast, and even if players start quitting before the game is up, it’s still plenty of fun with only a few players. Even local play could have a chance of 8 player mayhem – it’s just possible to use the Xbox controller for two players, similar to that of the classic Micro Machines controller schemes. Nobody should miss out!
Death Tank’s chances of coming to the XBLA depend on a few issues. The game was made by one man - Ezra Dreisbach. Dreisbach is currently working at Snowblind Studios. He has mentioned in some interviews that he wishes to make a stand alone Death Tank game, let’s hope that the XBLA is his answer.
For more info on Death Tank Zwei, check out these sites:
DeathTank.com
Death Tank on Wikipedia
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