Treadnauts Review

We’ve all been there before. You know, back in the day when local co-op/versus would either make or break the bonds of friendship. The good old days. Times in which multiple players would huddle up dangerously close around a single television unit and play for hours on end; blood, sweat and tears. Treadnauts attempts to tap into that long-lost field, producing a game that’s exclusively a multiplayer couch experience. The question is, however, is whether or not Treadnauts manages to stand out with its dated concept in a very connected world.

Does it? Sadly, not quite as well as I would have hoped. Now, the game sports just two modes; one single player mode and one multiplayer mode. Players take on the role of a tank, but one that’s not quite as traditional as you would believe. The opposite, in fact. You see, tanks in Treadnauts can wall climb, jump and practically fly around the map as they see fit. Ideally, this would make for a crazy mayhem-fest that’s hard to put down. The reality of the situation, however, is that the overall experience is hindered by its lack of content to keep players engaged.

There’s no campaign to soak up or light back story to rest on. By and large, Treadnauts is all about getting quickly into a game and wreaking havoc. The game does indeed support bots if you want to fill out the four player slots, but in all honesty, these bots don’t really go above and beyond to maintain the intended excitement. Playing with bots only makes for an inevitably boring, stale and tiresome affair. I fully recommend playing with real players for this, if for anything, to offset those issues. I also recommend hitting up the tutorial mode before anything else.

The game does a good job at teaching you the basics of play; movement, environmental gripping, jumping and so forth. However, this is where the first technical issue with Treadnauts comes into view. Once I had completed the tutorial, the screen faded to black and failed to return me to the game. Here, I had to restart the whole game just to bypass the error. I would love to tell you that this was an isolated incident, but sadly that wasn’t the case. I had to endure this twice in a row, which is something I hope is fixed in a post-launch patch, sooner than later.

The single player mode is a target mode, which plays out exactly as it sounds. You’re given a set amount of time to use your tank and its skills to shoot all of the on-screen targets as quickly as possible. If you’re fast enough, you’ll earn a medal; bronze, silver and gold. I have to admit that the difficulty curve here is through the roof. So much so that it made me not want to continue further in this mode. Modes like this should be challenging and fun, not damn-near impossible and frustrating. Still, it’s nice to see that the game is padded out to some degree.

The alternate mode is where most of the action is at, and gives you all out tank warfare. Now, as I alluded to above, you can indeed play with bots but I would suggest hitting this with real players. The aim of the mode? Battle it out in up to four player mayhem to stand victorious and bag those all important bragging rights. I took to this mode with my daughter and I have to admit, it’s an absolute blast for the first few hours of play. What really works is the game’s mod system, in which there’s heaps of different mods that you can cycle between to change up the playstyles.

For instance; you can turn off gravity and watch as all of the tanks helplessly float around the environment, you can activate bouncing bullets, or even initiate total invisibility. I’ll add, this isn’t Halo invisibility, this is “hell, I cant see a thing” invisibility. On that note, the replay value in Treadnauts is quite generous and it’s fun to toy around with the parameters of each mod. Throughout the course of play, the game will unlock more mods and new sets of levels for players to take to. Much like the mod pool, there’s a fairly nice portion of level variation to dive into.

You can indeed hand select your destinations, which vary as far as design and visual presentation goes. Each level is encased so that you cannot fall off the map, but you can indeed enjoy the occasional map that supports environmental destruction, providing the game with another layer of depth. During play, a range of upgrades will drop in crates – very Worms-esque, I might add. These upgrades will bestow a power-up to whoever grabs them first, and believe me, these crates can be the difference between winning and losing, making them very much sought after.

Again, the variation is spot on. There’s massive bullets, shields to pick up, and much, much more. So, what’s the problem? Well, despite its generous serving of mods, maps and upgrades, there’s just not a lot going on in the gameplay department. There’s a lack of evolution that ultimately makes for an experience that becomes repetitive after the first couple of hours. There just wasn’t enough difference to keep me playing, nor engaged. Fun in short doses, yes, but boredom shines through sooner than it should. It doesn’t help that the menu navigation is off.

I would have much preferred swifter, easier access and menu layout so that I could quickly select a player, select a bot and dive straight in. In regards to the audio and the visuals, these are pretty solid for the most part. There’s nothing revolutionary here to elevate the game to heights unseen before for a game of this type, but it’s all very serviceable nevertheless. I did appreciate the game’s neat use of colors and its clever level design though, which gets two thumbs up from me. In summary, in the midst of a busy week as far as game releases go, this is just above average, at best.

Conclusion

Treadnauts is a fairly passable couch party-like game that houses some interesting ideas and design choices, but is fundamentally flawed as far as varied gameplay content is concerned. This is the definition of fun in short doses, though, tiresome and boring in the long-run. There’s enjoyment to be had through the use of the game’s various modifiers and maps, but that’s pretty much as compelling as it gets.

This game was tested and reviewed on Xbox One. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version.

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