Hands-on: Battle Tanks

Battle Tanks, coming to the PlayStation Network from mobile developer Gameloft this July, feels very familiar. At its heart, the game's a two-stick shooter with a few interesting mechanics to help differentiate it from the crowd (bullets ricochet off of walls and power-ups break up the monotony). Which isn't to say what we played of the the game was bad -- it felt like digital distribution's equivalent of a rental-worthy game -- which is quite the dilemma, considering the PSN-based distribution of the title.

Commanding a World War 2-era tank, we piloted ourselves around a handful of different square maps, where a variety of enemy tanks and power-ups laid in our path. The layout of each level's semi-destructible environments helped to dictate our tactics while we dominated Destructoid's Ben Perlee -- er, rather, while he blew himself up, given that ricocheting bullets (even your own) can mean game over. While we weren't exactly jonesin' for more once the demo had ended, Battle Tanks' detailed environments and combination shooter/puzzle gameplay could very easily help us while away an empty Saturday. Too bad we can't rent it.