Gods of war. Something about the artillery games. Part II

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The main drawback of today's portion of artillery games, I consider them to be widely known. They are not just mentioned in the comments to the previous article, they are loved, remembered, practiced. It deprives me of the pleasure to take the haughty look of a grated kalach who finished coding on BASIC back in the times when some people did not even begin to master the tanchiki on the Dandy.

Moreover, I find myself in the position of a manager trying to sell tanning salons in Africa to affable mambila, who evaluate my taste qualities with the eyes of experienced cooks. Connoisseurs of the genre really will not find anything new in the text. It remains to rely on the young girls of young geeks, crazy enough to follow the links left by an unfamiliar uncle.

Tank Wars. Aka BOMB.exe. Aka My Eyes!

^{Developer: Kenneth Morse
Release Dates: 1990 - 1992 (v.3.2)
Platform: MS-DOS}
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This game reminds me of brawn with horseradish. Or dumplings with vodka. Another sausage with mustard God, how to eat something you want . Because it is perfectly balanced simplicity of the gameplay and the vigor of the gameplay, during which you can suddenly lose half of the card because of one small “bale!”.



Can play from 1 to 10 players. The number of players is selected in the main menu of the game, the number of rounds that you intend to play is selected there. You can also adjust the strength of the wind, the visibility of the trajectories, the reflection of shells from the limits of the playing field; indicate whether you want to play as a team and whether you want to bluntly qualitatively from a height when there is no land under you. For each player, a keyboard / mouse control is configured. If there is no one to play with, Billy Milligan AI will come to the rescue with multi-split personality. You can choose your opponent by skill or trust in fate. The landscape is generated randomly. At the end of each round, you can replenish your arsenal for points earned.


Separately, I want to bow to the belt to the developer for the background selection button in the main menu, filled with love for humanity. No seriously. I have met for the backdrop of this game a lot of definitions, ranging from “Hurray, thanks to this I remember the game!” To “original, uh-uh, charm”, and I completely agree with the latter. 10 rounds accompanied by this hypnoboad - and it seems that you, along with Albert Hoffman and Timothy Leary, are shooting under the substances of the evil FBI somewhere in the spurs of the Alps, under a benign cow mooing.



The heir to the old game considers itself the Tank Wars Classic game, available for Android 2.3 and higher, but — to my taste, of course — the remake frankly loses to the original. The developer turned the waste of a collective farm thresher into an unhurried bourgeois duel with breaks for dances and a buffet table.

Scorched Tanks. Good artists copy, great artists steal.

^{Developer: Kirkorov Michael Welch
Release dates: March 1993 - December 1994 (v1.9)
Platform: Amiga}

In the last article, we recalled the "mother of all games." So, Scorched Tank is an aunt, whom a visiting fellow has snagged, having previously rolled the poor thing into the Bukhara family carpet. Michael Welch then saw the game for the first time for the RS , yes, Scorched Earth , played a little, admired immensely and decided to do something similar for the Amiga, which at that time lacked a "competitive artillery game."



The main drawbacks of the “Scorched Earth” were considered to be poorly crafted textures, a buggy interface and a playing field limited by the screen, making it difficult to use powerful weapons without the risk of dropping it onto the tower itself. Welch corrected these shortcomings, but he did it, by his own admission, by chance, since he reproduced the game from memory without having access to the PC. Compared to the ancestor, the game is considered “made more professionally,” although they are similar as twins raised in different families.


Up to 4 players can participate in the game. The main menu adjusts the initial amount of your military budget, the number of rounds, the number of players. If the opponent is a computer, then the level of “intellect” is chosen for it, and the degree of borzota is the preferred combat tactic - from a dull defense to an aggressive attack. The purchase is made at the beginning of each round, unused weapons can be sold.

The most notable change was the expansion of the playing field. Yes, it complicated the gameplay: the players, who were freely located on the map, were sometimes forced to shoot at random. But everything was redeemed by the possibility of using a weapon without false shame and fear for one’s physiognomy, for which, in the company of gentlemen playing SE, one could ogreste a candelabrum of wall-mounted sconces produced by the Moscow Radio Instrument plant. And all the weapons in the latest version was already 70 species. In the future, it was planned to increase the number to 100 varieties, but the 1994 version was the last for the Amiga. But not for the game itself.

Pocket Tanks. MOAR! MOAR!

^{Developer: Michael Welch, slightly aged
Release Date: October 2001 (Windows)
Platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, Android, Windows Phone}

There is a wish to eat Not only the author of the article, but also shareware developers. Here, in general, is all that needs to be said about the idea of ​​transferring Scorched Tanks to modern platforms and gaining new popularity by the game called Pocket Tanks.



I, of course, lied a little. Michael is still faithful to Amiga's visual aesthetics and for each of his games he puts on the site a free version, with only limited content. Some packages with additional game weapons are also free. A paid package will cost you 99 cents, and for only $ 19.99 you can get a version of super mega exclusive VIP only deluxe with a fully stocked arsenal. 320 types of weapons! In someone the Minister of Defense vanishes, yes.

In addition to common exploding, burrowing and blocking options, there are still quite demeaning for the enemy (for example, Water Balloons and Gyro Glue) and auxiliary ones that improve your shooting results. The vastness of the arsenal determines the flexibility of tactical decisions and provokes an aggravation of greed in a player who is not able to drag everything into the game at the same time. There is an opportunity to play on a local network and Wi-Fi, the kindergarten mode of shooting is working The winner is determined based on the amount of damage done.


If you do not have a partner, then the computer will be your company. Just tell him how hard you need to resist, on a scale from 1 to 10. For the Android version, there is a fan app Tips: Pocket Tanks-Live Chat , which allows you to receive hints and swear bad words in the chatty without closing the game itself. So far only in English.

Hogs of War. First Fatty.

^{Developer: Infogrames
Release Dates: June 2000 (PS), November 2000 (Windows)
Platforms: PlayStation, PlayStation Network, Windows}

At times, it seems to me that the developers of artillery games somewhere in the depths of their hearts are failed biologists or veterinarians. The fauna of this genre is surprisingly diverse, and how much more can you realize? Giraffes are railguns. Porcupines are nails. Ground beetles overflowed with napalm. For developers from a country where the heir to the throne slaps in rubber boots in the meadows, inspecting herds, pigs are quite suitable heroes. Sheep would be a more logical choice, but pigs are angrier and smarter. Communication with a pig that was configured in a fighting manner, in my recollections, only slightly falls short of communication with an suspicious cow, which I, at an unkind hour, caught in the village street.



Among the features that highlight HoW among its peers, I can single out the following:

First, the third dimension. Three years before Worms3D and one year before Scorched3D;

Secondly, the hog has a specialization, each soldier can be pumped to a certain level, which in turn will give him unique skills and weapons. However, contrary to this separation, every pig can use any type of weapon found on the ground or dropped from an airship;

Thirdly, the plot, humor and voice. It is fourth and fifth.


The plot unfolds during the era of the First World War, during which the anthropomorphic pigs of six nations fight for the Sostrahlia archipelago, seeking to seize the Drain Island. Throughout all campaigns, you will have to sit on the defensive and attack, disguise, spy, steal, destroy buildings, bridges and equipment, provide first aid and earn medals that are spent on pumping fighters.

In addition to the single-player campaign - for the right to hoist the flag over the island - there is multiplayer. In addition to the classic hotseat, the PC version of the game has a network mode, but through the setting process it can be used as punishment for sinners, along with flogging with a wet rod and standing in a corner on a pea.

PC spit connoisseurs strongly recommend the version for the PlayStation, since in it the enemy, controlled by AI, is mobile, can use buildings and combat vehicles to secure a tactical advantage. Fortunately, there are now many PS1 simulators for almost any platform. But on the PC you can get the title of Legend, if you modify the save game.



Of the relative shortcomings, you can point out the indestructible landscape and the absence of the influence of atmospheric phenomena on the results of the shooting, but we are mentally without it.

On February 13, 2008, Infogrames announced Hogs of War 2, the game was scheduled for April 2009, but the game was canceled due to lack of funds. The development of the franchise, apparently, was completely buried.

There is a group of enthusiastic developers who they have forgotten to call for a funeral: they stubbornly develop a continuation of the legendary series, having previously designated it as HoW2. The discussions I had seen on Igromania and GameDev.ru were very stingy, in short they can be conveyed in three words: “Fu!”, “Rights ?!” and “Where?”. The answer is - here , the work is still underway.

I sincerely hope that the history of HoW will not end. That there will be more wars, say, between Bekongo and Shkvarkomerun during the African campaign of Hryummel. Huge tanks firm SaltissenHrupps, crawling on the savannah. And other nonsense, funny and ironic, which so adorns our too serious life.





For today, perhaps, it is enough. Next time, I hope, we will have a chat about interplanetary artillery and its pedigree tree.

As usual, I will be grateful for comments and observations. Special thanks to the Asfer user, who is the moderator of the Hogs of War Vkontakte public account, for the helping hand. Swineland will not forget the hero :)