Bugs vs. Tanks! (Nintendo 3DS) Review

Real-time strategy titles can be extremely slow-paced and boring if not done correctly. Keiji Inafune and his team at Comcept aim to make the genre more of an instant impact affair with Bugs vs. Tanks on the Nintendo 3DS eShop. Instead, though, it turns into more of an out-and-out action blaster with not much thought required at all.

An army has been shrunk down to a tiny size and the battalion must keep fighting away against a constant onslaught of hazards en-route to finding a solution to their bizarre problem. Unusual comcep...sorry, concept, but intriguing nonetheless and good to see something different being tried. The game itself is rolled out in the form of numerous missions, each of which are ranked depending on performance (time taken, shot accuracy, and so on) and can be tackled on varying difficulty levels.

Players must protect the army's camp from ants, bees, and various other insect-like critters, or try to collect rations around the local vicinity, as well as go on rescue operations whilst dodging deadly drops of rain, plus several others on the same theme of blasting down the ants et al. Rather than commanding a whole squadron, however, the action all takes place with the gamer in charge of a slow moving tank, driving around the undergrowth, shooting down bugs along the way, checking the touch screen's radar to help with progress.

At its core, Bugs vs. Tanks is extremely engaging, offering intense situations to overcome and some intriguing presentation, inclusive of German voice acting (the soldiers are Nazi troops, after all). However, the clunky control system makes moving around slow and painful at times (perhaps purposely so to mimic real tank movement, but certainly not suitable here for a pick-up-and-play title), and the pesky enemy creatures that shuffle around can easily trap the tiny tank in a corner with escape almost an impossibility due to being hit stunning the vehicle and preventing any return fire for a short time. It is simpler to die and restart the mission.

Also, despite plenty to unlock along the way, objectives start to become all too familiar further in, meaning the variety starts to wane quickly and by the end, whatever enjoyment factor there was to start with, has begun to fade away slightly. Not completely, but still to a degree.

Bugs vs. Tanks certainly is great at first, and looks like it could work brilliantly given more development time and resources, as well as maybe some useful touch screen commands. In this download format, though, it is a case of 'it has potential' and for readers it will come down to whether or not something like that can justify the risk of £7.19. Given it is something unseen on 3DS so far, it might just squeeze into the 'yeah, why not' category!