Graphics

Optical Treats

Can we say eye-candy? Initially I could never decide between weapons, since all of them looked powerful. One normally expects only the best weapons or the end sequences to look great in a game, but these guys managed to make almost everything look impressive. Since I am drawn to shiny objects, this game had me enthralled for quite a while just looking at the weapon fire. The tanks all looked quite impressive - the liquid ones looked really funky, very mercury like. That's one thing this game is really big on, metallic blobs, be prepared to see lots of them. Levels are extremely spacious and highly interactive. A few problems with the engine were encountered, other than that this thing was a class act.

Eep!	Burning mercury

Lights! Camera! Action!

There are a total of four camera angles. Two of them are determined by using the "boring" and "funky" tracking modes. About the only difference I could tell between them was that boring held the camera behind the butt of the tank, and funky held it a little to the side of the butt. The other two options come from turret view. This allows you to see where your tank is going or where the turret is pointed.

Death approaches

Ooo the mushroom 1

Camera angles are one thing this game needs some work on. There were many moments when I was stuck in a crater and left looking at a pile of dirt. It would have been nice to be able to zoom out to get a better concept of where I am in these instances. It's bad enough when you're alone in the crater; it is far worse being in a crater with opponents who are shooting at you. The other time I encountered trouble with the angles was when I was trying to shoot off a cliff. The cameras don't allow much vision to view what is in front and below the tank.

Ooo the mushroom 2

Ooo the mushroom 3

Zits?

Oh did I mention craters? If there was an entry in the dictionary for "deformable terrain," you'd find a screenshot of Treadmarks there. This is about as close as I have ever gotten to obliterate everything in sight. There are no buildings or park benches, but that still doesn't make it bad. Everything you fire leaves a crater, some bigger, some smaller. When you fire the normal tank turret a small black pothole appears. If you fire a nuclear warhead, you get an extremely large hole in the ground. When I mean large, I mean on the scale of that pimple you popped in junior high.