Ghost tank is the first game from developer Roland Machaalani of id8games.com. The basic premise is that you have failed your mission and come back as a ghost tank to complete your mission, well its never going to win an award for best plot but then the same could be said for most games.

So what do you do ? Well deep down its just an 8 way shooter, you control a tank and have a variety of enemies to shoot up from turrets to helicopters or stealth fighters which mainly fire missiles at you. When you first start you have 3 mission types training, normal, or insane. The big thing which sets ghost tank apart from similar games is the control system. Most games the missiles fire at where you click,ghost tank employs a click and drag system where the longer you drag the bigger the missiles you fire. At first I thought this was a good thing and it is for the training missions. However on the levels with lots of enemies I generally found it slightly frustrating, especially as once you’d clicked you can’t change the angle of fire. I’d suggest a click and hold for power, rather than drag would work sightly better. In the heat of the battle I found I was killed far too easily. I also found it frustrating that bullets collide with each other, it’s one of the only games I know where that happens and it’s annoying as when you and the enemy fire a lot of the time it ends in stalemate as the bullets just blow each other up. You do have a number of power ups such as 360 fire and “ghost mode”, which are written in small type on the main menu. It was quite a few goes before I realised these were there, it would be better if these were introduced throughout the tutorial.

Graphically Ghost tank is pretty good, there’s a nice menu and all the typography is well thought out, the tanks and enemies are nicely drawn if a little bland. The worst part graphically is the battlefield which is a little dull, and the explosion effects could have been a bit better.

The game has obviously had a lot of effort put into it and has been really well put together, nicely coded and is generally fun to play if a little “hard core” in places. Its comes in slightly below Tank 2008 by Freeworld Group, but is a good game in the genre. Amazing job for a first game and has an original control system, even if I found it slightly awkward to use.

Go and Play Ghost Tank.