Ready, Tanks, Racing, Action!

Cosmo3D's 24 hours with Tread Marks

The cosmic boy just received a copy of a not so usual game. First of all, it's an innovative Off-Road Battle Tank Racing and Combat game, with heavy focus on multiplayer. And it's made by a father, a mother, and two children. Neither does it have a big publisher. Our man, Cosmo, are narrating about his first late-night experiences with Tread Marks.

Tested and written by Axel "Cosmo" Sjøstedt, published 27th February 2000

I got a little sceptic when I saw the specs. I mean, "Off-Road Battle Tank Racing and Combat"? First-person-shooters has always been my main thing. But, when paying some oh'so'deep attention^TM to the just-mentioned genre, I realized that it has become so repetitive that it would be nice with something new and innovative to try.

Tread Marks is like the little angel coming down from the skies. The graphics are impressing, deathmatch is fun, the game has is rating unusually well on the cosmic replayability scale - and I sure enjoy blowing stuff up. And oh, did I mention you can blow stuff up?

Story/Introduction

As always, lamers need an explanation before kicking off. To give you a basic clue on what the game is like, I can tell you that the Game Gist (engine, fool =) is made pure in-house, by one person; Seumas McNally. Everything is pretty in-house, actually. The idea, the code, the engine, and the publishment. Four little Canadian folks - aka. Longbow Digital Arts - has developed the game, as well as they are publishing it. So you need to buy it online through LDA's site. I don't know if this is a smart strategy - but LDA claims that being an independent developer is increasing the game property. And I'm not going to disagree 'bout that.

There's no story to care about, really. The three words tanks, racing and action are indeed enumerating the game quite well. This is a game you can play for hours, and it appeals to a wide spectrum of gamers.

Get Ready For The Launch

The install went without a glitch, and GLSetup is included to help you tossing the best softwared power into your card. I started with selecting "Godly" on the pre-set graphic options. When arriving to the in-game menu, my first thought was that this was a bunch of messy stuff. On the plus side, they are fast navigating (I hate those menus that intend to be so nifty-keen that they are destoying the whole plot). But on the minus side it's a bit hard to see the text. Anyway, that's just a detail I'm not going to hassle about.

As I already were online (and the Norwegian phone prices is like a medium-sized diamond an hour) - I went into multiplayer mode, and selected the server with the lowest ping, two bots and three online-players.

You need to choose your own tank - there's plenty of 'em, just as with the maps - but they all feel pretty much the same, though someone is faster and bigger than the other ones. We have two groups of tanks speaking of the visual aspects; the normal-looking ones we are seeing on CNN News every day, and some fancy-pantsy liquid ones. As the Tory Man I am, I selected the classics. But you might enjoy being a liquid dude...

Graphics

The first thing I noticed entering the gameplay was the graphics. They are just plain gorgeous. No notching on my TNT2U-system in 1024x768, and a terrain with hills, valleys, maybe a few trees and some fresh water hits your eye.

The maps are all basically the same on the bottom, though they are feeling quite different - with different colors and stuff. Even the gravity changes. One other real cool thing to take note of, is the ability to real-time deform the landscape when firing off some missiles. After you have fooled around on the same map for a while, you'll feel the humpy-bumpy ground tickeling under your toes...

The Feeling, mate. The Feeling.

As mentioned, the gravity are changing. On the moon, for example. You may also easily modify the gravity settings if you want feel a little techie. And that's fine, because the standard gravity feel a little junkie. Especially when getting a bit out of control and flying in the air, fooling around up-side down. Until you suddently are bumping over on the right side again.

View?

Another aspect of the game that I feel could have been made better, is the camera view. There are two distances; "boring" and "funky". They seem very similar, and more far distance with a better view could increase the fun.

Also on the viewing subject, there are two other options. You may choose to follow the tank's ass all the way, but I preferred the turret view, which allows you to see where the turret is pointed. You'll probably want that too, by the way.

Aha! I found a gun. Boom-bang!

There's a whole buttload of guns to explore in the game. They are placed out in the terrain rotating just like in Q3A or any other usual FPS - but it's not easy to figure out what the bad boy does at first. After some time, however, you'll find your decent favorites. The guns are producing some really cool craters on the ground - you'll definitively enjoy the mutha nukes that's exploding like a failed NASA shuttle that fell down in Sahara. Basically, deformable terrain rocks!

That was the Match o' death. How about the other features, then?

One of the other good things about the game that will make you play it for quite a long time, is the different gameplay modes. In addition to the classic batte deathmach - where you are killing and blasting around on a huge map, we have different racing types - even a latter league thingie.

If you are one of these checkpoint fans, you'll sure enjoy the racing mode. With the guns as an extra tool to play with when vrooming the huge tank-motor in over 180 km/h (!), the pleasure gets fullfilled.

But you know I'm the careless guy, enjoying the battle mode where I have nothing to care about the most. Dont't worry about all the multiplayer chatting here. Relax, man! *saddam-southpark-style*.

All the online goodness is possible, as well as fun - on the disconnected compu.

Last Words

Technically, the game is very well-done. Nice graphics and outstanding effects - and the multiplayer features is generally good, except for some unstability and lag on slower modems.

The music might be a little weird, but it's OK to play to. And if you don't like them, just throw in some wav-files in your music-directoy. I also would have appreciated a little something of improvements on the camra dealie.

It might be a little stupid that the gravity and speed of the tanks is like a normal racing car, but what the heck. It's fun, and indeed perfectly simple! When we're putting together the small issues and the whole game experience - Tread Marks is a great game, which is easy to pick up, and fun to play - for a long time.

One of the best racing and combat games to hit the market for a long time. If you are a racing fan, or just enjoy blowing tanks up (who doesn't) - I strongly recommend this game.

	Pros		Cons
	Nice graphics and effects It's tanks, racing and action! Replayability deluxe Quite innovative		Some multiplayer issues A bit hard to control, camera view not so good. Messy menus

How we rate...

More Screnshots -- Tread Marks Site / Order Online -- Longbow Digital Arts