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.

Gride is the latest game from OOPixel, who combines object oriented with pixels apparently. Why you want to know that its object oriented I have no idea but it is, some programmers just love you to know.

The game features a pink car and the idea is to get to the end of the course, the car automatically accelerates and you have a choice of 4 “upgrades” to apply which will temporarily either jump, add grip, add power or remove the upgrade applied. Its an incredibly simple idea and pretty original, I was expecting it to be the usual physics based car game with jumps etc just like Super Bike x, it was a pleasant surprise having this upgrade system works really well. Each level is pretty well thought out but pretty difficult, it’ll take several attempts to reach the end, its one of them games which is frustrating, but frustrating in a good way, it just keeps you coming back for another go.

The game was original done for the Jayisgames competition and the game deservedly came third and was the winner of the viral prize.

Go and Play Gride.

Firstly I apologise if the site has been a bit up and down over the past week, I have had some terminal server problems and had to move to a new host. Well enough of that on with the review

This little gem of a game from abduction studios popped into the mochiads feed about 2 weeks ago and I must have played it everyday since then. The basic premise is that you start with a hundred bullets and have to hit a number of shapes. Abduction Sums it up himself as…

“BoomsticK pits you and your trusty shotgun against a relentless onslaught of insane shapes. 21 Tiers of shape shooting, particle blastin, power-up grabbin madness! Compare your sick score to the entire world and flaunt your BoomsticK skills.

The story is incredibly deep, you are, well… I what I mean to say is that… hmmm… wait, I was all worried like I forgot some incredible story! But there is no story! Whew, that was easy enough.”

Its slightly more complicated than that as you only get back bullets which hit objects, so the idea is to line up shots which will take out multiple targets. It sounds complicated but it isn’t and its incredibly satisfying pulling off a quad kill. One tactic I have found is that if you shoot as horizontally as you can from the sides you get a much better spread, that is my tip of the day, oh as well as mustard goes well with apple slices.

Its so good a game I invented the robotJAM “awesome game of the month*” and BoomsticK is the awesome game for March.

Anyway I don’t think I can waffle on any more about such a simple game.. go and stick some BoomsticKs.

(* if you read this abduction I will send you a free robotJAM T-shirt)