Tank Riders 2

The introduction of tanks to the battlefield had such an impact that they spilled out into our language.

Refer to someone (or something) as a jet fighter or a submarine and you’ll probably get nothing by confused looks. Call them (or it) a tank, however, and you’ll get an instant nod of recognition.

To be a tank is to be sturdy, well-built, and formidable.

Tank Riders 2 is tank-like in many respects, but in this case it’s a tank that needs constant refuelling.

As in the original game, you take control of a little cartoony tank in a bright and bouncy world where the constant threat of an explosive shell to the gob isn’t nearly as grim as it sounds.

That’s not to say that Polarbit’s world is cuddly. Not when your job is to decimate every rival tank and embedded gun tower in each arena-like level.

As before, this is executed through a virtual D-pad under one thumb and firing controls under another. You’ve got a choice of how said firing controls operate - you can either tap in the direction you want your cannon to fire or use a second virtual D-pad to pick out a precise shot.

The former is better for manic fire-and-forget types, while the latter is better for picking out for would-be snipers. Neither seems perfectly suited to a complete run through the game, which strikes us as a shortfall.

The levels themselves seem nicely varied, despite the basic requirement of blasting everything that moves and/or reaching the exit point.

You can get snaking turret-filled levels that feel like you’re playing one of the tanks in Fieldrunners, or a succession of enemy waves all converging on your location. There are even larger levels that require you to explore and hit switches to progress.

All of this is complemented by an appealing graphics engine that sports improved lighting effects and additional detail. We particularly liked the 'headlamp' effect when trundling through a night-time mission.

In other ways, however, Tank Riders 2 is inferior to the first game.

For one thing there’s no multiplayer mode this time around. We knocked the first Tank Riders for its laggy online mode, but it was a welcome inclusion nonetheless. It’s a shame Polarbit didn’t at least include a local multiplayer mode (or even a same-handset one on iPad) in the sequel.

But the main problem here is Tank Riders 2’s freemium structure. Yes, you get the game ostensibly for nothing, but after your initial batch of continues has expired you’ll have to wait ten minutes for each to reset.

Of course, you can shortcut the process by paying 69p / 99c for a continues pack. That can get expensive. This wouldn’t be so bad if there were a fixed payment option to deactivate this system, but there is none.

Tank Riders 2 is a solid, robust action-arcade game like its predecessor, but its engine seems to run a lot richer.