“Tank” you Titan Forged Games for sending us a review code!

Zombies huh? Didn’t these guys get the memo? The zombie fad ended like three or four years ago. Everyone moved on to cinematic experiences and battle royales. I particularly do not care much for the latter, so I will still appreciate any zombie game that comes out. Titan Forged Games, a Portuguese studio (no relation to the very similarly-named Titan Forge Games), decided to make a cute little game called Tanks Meet Zombies.

As evident in the title, It is a top-down shoot ‘em up where tanks—uh, meet zombies. After a vicious breakup between tank and zombie, the metallic armored weapons of destruction are no longer friends with the undead. You, the player, take the role of the tanks across multiple game modes to fight zombies (and in one case, other tanks).

There are four game modes in total: Campaign, Arcade, Survival, and Versus. Campaign takes you across five worlds that contain two levels and a boss level. Each level contains ten waves, followed by the boss to round it all out. Arcade takes you across levels that have specific goals to achieve such as “survive for two minutes” or “reach a score of 6,000 before wave six.” Survival is where you choose a world and tackle as many waves as you possibly can. Versus is where you can take your tank and duke it out with other tanks. It’s the only mode I haven’t played since I don’t have friends to play this game with. All modes control the same, with WASD for movement and the mouse to aim and use your primary and secondary weapons.

When any game mode is chosen, you’ll notice that there are quite a few options to choose from—or at least there would be if all but one option of each wasn’t locked from the beginning. The default loadout is machine guns, a cannon, and an adorable tri-wheeled tank called Juana. In fact, all the tanks have names such as Isabelle and Maya to name a few. I guess that makes them girl tanks? I’m not too sure what the prerequisite to unlocking weapons and tanks are, but with each completion of a game mode, I unlocked tanks and weapons. The default weapons are pretty good as I was able to beat the whole game with them equipped, but they pale in comparison to the weapons you can unlock. I’m not a fan on how unbalanced the weapon system is; the combination of the shockers and the meteor cannon outright trivialize an already easy game. The power-ups are just as unbalanced! In one instance, there is a power-up called "Indestructible Quack" where your weapon shots (with some exceptions) turn into rubber ducks. A rather funny name and shooting rubber ducks is funny, but you can easily guess how efficient rubber ducks are at killing the undead. On the other hand, its sister power-up "Apocolypse Now" shoots mini-nukes, and these nukes can be fired as fast as the weapon you have equipped. You never know which power-up you’ll get until you get it.

I am rather fond of the zombie design. Simple and cute for a simple game. A very cartoon-like look with giant heads and tiny bodies. The graphics themselves are basic, but give off that vibe like a child playing with toys. Most of the tanks look like tanks so it has that going for it too. The worlds are varied enough ranging from graveyards and beaches to the Wild West and an asteroid.

The music didn’t stand out for me as I felt the techno-like beats didn’t really fit the aesthetics and theme of the game. However, for better and worse, the choices for sound did. For the better, the zombies make funny high-pitch screams when they die. For the worse, there is an unnamed narrator who speaks whenever things happen, such as collecting power-ups, increasing your score multiplier, or just killing zombies. These one-liners are spoken very often so they tend to repeat. Some of his lines can be humorous (I love a well-placed pun), but when these lines happen over and over again—something that was at first endearing becomes annoying very quickly.

As I mentioned earlier in the review, there are bosses to fight. Each world contains one boss, making five bosses in total. The bosses, when compared to the enemies, are probably the weaker of the two. There are a variety of enemy mobs such as zombies, suicide bomber zombies, bear zombies, zombies with flamethrowers, zombies with shields, and engineer zombies that erect sentry turrets! Zombie-tastic if I say so myself! The engineer zombies, in particular, look just like those unholy spawns of child mascots; the unbearable Minion. Oh, how I despise them—which made crushing them all the more fulfilling. While in certain waves there can be a combination of enemy types where you’ll have to use different tactics, the bosses do not feel this way. In particular, there is the spider boss who spawns spider mobs, but since the spider boss is so large, the spider mobs are unable to move. The final boss also feels rather strange as it puts up a good fight for its first three phases, then seemingly gives up for its fourth and final phase by walking very slowly and letting you hammer it with artillery. Overall, the bosses need a lot of tweaking to feel fun.

Nothing major morally stands out. There are the typical zombie enemies invoking the supernatural aspect. The zombies also bleed when killed. They happen to bleed a variety of colors, except for red. And of course, there is the whole aspect of weapons. All of it is portrayed in such a goofy and silly manner that I personally wouldn’t worry too much about it.

Tanks Meet Zombies is a pretty mediocre game with everything considered. I wouldn’t call it a bad game nor a good game. There are some decent aspects to it such as part of the humor, extremely quick loading times, and the quick play nature. It seems to mostly cater to a casual audience that has a friend or three to play with often, or with people who have kids or younger siblings. For a low $10 price, It is far from the worst choice to make. People like me will probably want a more substantial product as the game only takes an hour to beat the campaign, is rather easy in the difficulty, and there is not much to come back too besides unlocking the rest of the achievments/weapons. However, if you like zombies, tanks, and want to take it easy with a few other like-minded individuals, it might be worth the purchase.