DS Roundup

Tank Beat (US import)

Despite the leading title, regrettably Tank Beat isn't a military-themed rhythm action game. Instead this is a stylus-controlled tank simulator-lite in which you control an armoured vehicle by tracing directions and shot angles on the map-based touch screen while the action outplays in 3D on the top screen.

Story Mode follows tank pilot rookie Vill Katjue, a young soldier separated from his platoon during a skirmish. Throughout the short campaign Vill is able to take control of a number of different tanks as he goes rogue working to liberate his homeland from the Codusal Army and reunite with his family. While the anime style portraits that illustrate the story are well-drawn, the dialogue is tiresome and ineffective ensuring the tale in Story Mode quickly becomes an irritating obstacle to the action.

And, sadly, that action lacks lustre when you eventually get to it. A blue dot represents Vill's tank on the touch screen and by drawing a line away from your position you can manoeuvre the vehicle around the map. Dragging the stylus in a circle around your tank swivels your turret view and, when a red dot appears on the map screen, you must hold the L-trigger and tap at it to fire off rockets.

This simple mechanic is built upon with the addition of friendly units that join your side on the fly. These units can either provide support to Vill by following your movements or they can be independently controlled by the player or even sent off to seek and destroy using their own AI. However, as micromanaging one tank with this control scheme is tough enough, you'll soon simply set comrades to follow your lead to ease the burden.

The problem with DS games which use this system of control is that, while all of the art team's work has gone into creating the 3D models, environments and textures on the top screen, as a player you only ever need to watch the 2D abstracted map screen on the bottom. This isn't such a bad thing with Tank Beat as the environments are bland, models blocky and textures dreary and repetitive but, nonetheless, moving dots around a map is rarely compelling.