Retro Game Friday: BattleTanx

This week for Retro Game Friday I’m covering a game that I have been meaning to cover for a long time. It’s BattleTanx!

Plot: The plot of BattleTanx is pretty much nonsense, a plague kills 99.99 of all the women in the world and the rest are held up as feudal ladies that are the leaders of all the various gangs that come after the world went to crap. If you are looking for a really deep story, this isn’t going to satisify you.

Gameplay: Thankfully that wasn’t the point, and the gameplay was. The gameplay is purely Tank vs Tank combat in various locales across the US, such as Chicago, and New York. It was pretty fast paced and fun to play, especially with a friend or two. This also included destructible enviroments, though you could say that took up much of the power that was used in the game. Still it was fun to play as a kid, even if it was a bit violent. Still what kid doesn’t like explosions?

Art: The art has aged incredibly poorly since it was first released, but given that this was released in 1998 for the Nintendo 64 that isn’t too surprising.

Music: I honestly don’t remember much of it. I was too busy talking with my friends while we played.

Overall: A fun game, and if you get the chance to play it with a friend or two it’ll entertain you for a bit, but not too long since games have improved greatly since this was released.

For those who like: Tanks, Explosions, Action, Drama.

Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above.

Video Game Tuesday: Why FFXV is a Success

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m going into what makes the latest Final Fantasy such a big hit. It’s all about Why FFXV is a Success!

Why?: Because it’s ridiculously fun to play, despite all the story flaws, and there are flaws no question of that. FFXV is just plain fun to play. Even 100+ hours into the game I’m still finding it fun to just run into a battle and start attacking an enemy. I’ve beaten every monster in the game except MA-X Angelus, and despite that I still have hours of things left to do.

Like What?: I still need to beat the secret dungeon, I need to procure the last few Ascension upgrades, minus the wait mode extension upgrades I will probably never get those. I need to find more recipes, and I still haven’t used a single Limit Break spell. I haven’t done all the various tour scenes, and there are plenty of items I need to earn from Totomostro and Justice Monsters 5.

The Scenery: I thoroughly enjoy looking out the side of the Regalia and just enjoying the view while Ignis drives even having beaten the game. The game is just gorgeous to the point of making me wish all games had these kind of graphics. I love going through the photos that Prompto takes every day, and posting them to my Twitter account. Some of them are just hilarious, others are just gorgeous action shots. I honestly wish that we could keep more pictures than the 150 we are limited to.

The future: We are going to be getting plenty of new content starting with the upcoming festival DLC, which will feature a boss fight against the real Square Enix President. I hear that fight is just hilariously fun to do. We’ll be getting more story content in improved cutscenes and other things like the Gladio, Ignis and Prompto DLC episodes. We’ll even get playable Aranea, Cor and Iris in an online multiplayer DLC. Hopefully we’ll get to add them to our party in the free roam after beating the story as well. Frankly I loved having Iris in my party, as she was just a fun character all around.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday!