Dawn Tanks

When I was younger I used to love artillery games. You know the kind I mean - two players taking turns trying to figure out the angle and power they need to use to launch something explosive at their opponent.

Once upon a time this involved giant gorillas chucking exploding bananas (no, really, look it up), but now the most popular example is the Worms series.

Dawn Tanks is pretty much the same thing, only it uses a third-person perspective and does away with shot strength. Instead, you and your opponent alternate tweaking your X and Y angles in the hopes of blowing each other up.

The core idea is still entertaining, but it doesn't stay interesting for very long.

You'll be dragging two different radials along the sides and top of your tank to adjust each shot, with readouts along the top and right sides of the screen giving you actual numbers to focus on.

Once you think you're lined up you just slide the attack arrow to the right for confirmation, then watch as your shell slowly makes its way to your target. You hope.

Dawn Tanks mixes things up a bit by including levels with multiple enemies (and sometimes multiple allies), enemies that will appear unexpectedly, and more.

It's also possible to unlock new abilities for your tanks such as charged shots and EMPs.

It's nice to see the developers attempting to inject new elements into what would otherwise be a pretty bare-bones affair, but it's just not enough.

Even with the added danger of multiple enemies, and the ability to control several allied tanks, it's still just a bunch of "tweak angle, fire, wait, miss, wait for your opponent, tweak angle, fire, wait, etc." And that's not a particularly compelling rhythm.

The core concept behind Dawn Tanks works just as well now as it did way back when. The only problem is that there have been significant improvements to the genre in the intervening years and hardly any of them are on show here.