Short game review: Bubble Tanks 2 is a simple arcade shooter in which you control a small group of clumping bubbles with a gun made of bubbles mounted on top. Strangely enough, you shoot bubbles at enemies made of bubbles, hiding away in a grid of arenas, each of which is actually a large bubble. If it wasn’t for the different colours, it’d be right confusing.

Each enemy destroyed releases pale, little, food bubbles that you absorb, causing your tank to grow and, over time, accumulate upgrades. There’s a tree of upgrades; probably about 20 in all, some of which only appear if you play the game on Armor Games (which the link above points to).

It’s a nice, easy game to get into, and, despite a few small niggles, is good fun. Onto those, then (because complaining is more fun that promoting):

• The arenas are laid out in a grid that you can freely move about. There’s a map so you can see where you’ve been, but it’s off on a separate screen, which makes navigating a little harder. It’s not a complex map, and it could easily have been accommodated in a corner of the screen.
• Given the screen space available to your average flash game (which has to accomodate a range of screen sizes), the graphics are rather large. Since combat in Bubble Tanks 2 is a matter of shooting at enemies while avoiding their return fire, it would be nice if they were smaller so you could maintain greater distance. As it is, you either don’t know where you should be shooting, or you’re right on top of them, sucking down the bullets.
• The game requires a lot of clicking so you can fire your gun. This isn’t a problem, except that all the sites I’ve seen it on thus far have it surrounded by a ring of advertisement links. So, if, while frantically killing dudes, I move the mouse off the edge, I end up being shunted to another website. Not desirable. In the end, I got around this by downloading the flash file and playing it locally.

With all the bubbles, my mind is inevitably drawn to Yog Sothoth, and so I was a little disappointed that most of the bubbles were blue and a little flat looking. I’d have been much more impressed with iridescent clumps of bubbly death. Oh well. You can’t have it all.

Three and a half shimmering orbs out of five. From one to four hours distraction.

Thought I might give a quick little plug for Ainevoltas 2, a quick little platform RPG..

Basically, you’re a guy with a sword, and there’s a castle full of monsters. Slay them, gain experience points, go up levels, and gain stats. Collect gems and other items to gain special abilities. Nothing special so far – what makes this game interesting is its flat genre mocking sense of humour, and all the little secrets that it’s full of. It’s not difficult or drawn out, just distracting and funny.