Tread Marks Review

It seems that somehow people never grew weary of the genre mixture of racing simulations and first person shooters. Have the young game-addicts found that it tedious to just drive cars? Perhaps they concluded they need some more adrenaline, so that we now face an invasion of drive-n-shot-em-ups. Tread Marks introduces some changes here. First, the vehicles in the game are tanks, and some liquid vehicles (supposedly also tanks) and what's more: the complete terrain is subject to change and deform being very responsive to explosions. It is a good feeling to face a track that brings something new every time you pass it.

You never know what your opponents are like, if they got bored of some hill so they decided to blow it up, or what. Not only that... The number of frags is crucial in this game, evoking the good ol' excitement of deathmatching games. You may now have a general idea that this game is mostly an arcade and that it is about tanks. If you do, you are absolutely right. There are twenty of them, even though most don't really look like tanks; they are more some kind of bird-like ultra-futuristic liquid crafts. Once you have chosen your favorite one and your insignia (fifty-one of them, if I didn't miscount) and make yourself a part of a team the frag/racing fun can commence.

Before you load Tread Marks, it is vital that you completely forget about realism, which is generally, what you prepare yourself for when you load up an arcade game. On the other hand, a spoonful of reality might improve things a bit; i.e. what bothered me most: gameplay. The first thing that is noticed in a game (OK, the second one as you always notice the graphics first) is gameplay, and this game doesn't have much of it. As gameplay goes, Tread Marks is not the finest racing shoot-em-up I've ever played. Not even after two weeks of, at times frustratingly staring at my monitor, can I say that clicking on the Tread Marks icon gives me that much pleasure. Simply put - the tank controls are very badly done. The tanks simply glide on the ground way too much, particularly if you take into consideration that those are big, heavy (Oprah, without a lipo) tanks, and not hovercrafts. Not to mention the movement of the lighter tanks. In comparison to this Ratbag's Powerslide seems to be an easy and relaxed ride.

What can really get on your nerves is the combination of quirky controls and sluggish weapons. What I mean is - you can't even control your firing. The bullet trajectory depends on the current position of the tank in relation to the terrain configuration. In other words, it's a bumpy ride and you can't aim well. Further more, there are very few weapons and it is painstakingly difficult to acquire even the most basic weaponry. Compared to all the other FPS and action games I've played, in my humble opinion, this game just doesn't cut it when it comes to gameplay. I guess that there will be people who will find it catching though... addictive even.

The tanks are indestructible so that all who start the race get to finish it. Hits by enemy grenades result in flying off track, and decrease of energy level that causes the loss of the main cannon and temporary impotence to collect or fire weapons until the ever increasing energy reaches 100%. You can collect powerups and weapons on control points (if some other tank doesn't get there before you do). These so-called 'bolt-on' weapons are attached to one of the three places: the top of your main cannon or the left or rear side of your chassis. If it is attached to the cannon, you can use the cannon to target your victims, whereas in other cases you have to maneuver the whole tank. There are a lot of weapons ranging from diamond drill, machine gun, mortars to laser-guided rail guns, cruise missiles and the horrible 'Le Bomb Nuclear' ("Stand back, and put on your sun glasses" as the instructions say); or "Shadow Keeper" another powerful thingy.

I think you got the hang of it by now. It's not sadistic ammunition stuffing of your miserable opponent, it's well controlled racing with a lot of opponents and hindering their plans. Apart from the single player mode, there is also an interesting 'ladder' death match mode in which you fight for your position in the tank society. You start being No.100. Where will you end up?

The levels deserve all words of praise, there are fifty-two of them, nineteen of which were meant for death match combat. They are mostly the same, and textures provide the most variety here. They resemble the fields in Motocross Madness. Rockets and other projectiles leave the best visual impression because the terrains aren't too crowded with details and objects. This is good on one hand, because increasing the number of background objects would also increase the game requirements. LDA used some other tricks to increase frame rate, like rendering trees to be simple textures rather than 3D models...

The camera can be set to Funky & Boring modes. You may call me a blunt traditionalist, but I find the funky mode, a bit too funky for my taste. It looks like a badly done engine where the camera pathetically tries to keep something in sight.

All in all, the graphics are kid of neat and those of you who have machines with good OpenGL support will enjoy nice and smooth animation. If you also happen to have A3D support, the fun never stops. All other APIs are supported, but native OpenGL means a lot here. Even though the stated requirements are: Pentium200MMX with 32Mb RAM and at least a Voodoo 1-level 3D card from what I have seen and felt on my machine I am a bit skeptical about that, because it does have hiccups when a lage grenade falls in your vicinity inducing a huge explosion and scattering earth around. Fortunately the boys from LDA have set up a number of video quality options, so that it is fairly easy to solve frame rate problems by turning off all effects and lowering resolution and still maintaining a decent outlook of the game. If you are an owner of an older video card like Voodoo1 or Matrox G200, without hardware multi-texturing support you're in for an arduous "mostly black screen" experience.

In contrast to visual effects, the sounds (apart from the excellent A3D support) are mediocre. The engine sounds, the whistling of the rockets and explosions are average, while the background music is completely unsatisfactory, especially in a fragging game like this.

Tread Marks comes equiped with out of the box LAN and Internet multiplayer support. I did get the chance to test my skills in a few multiplayer games, which is not nearly enough to form a decent opinion, but it seams that LDA really counted on web multiplaying because they published a lot of DM maps on the game disk. All I can advise you is that you try before you buy... It's never too late to download the demo, and if you do go for it, then this game is just right for you. Which is basically all that matters in this case.