Exclusive O3 Entertainment Interviewed On Tank Beat

DS-x2 and O3 Entertainment sit down and talk about Milestone's Tank Beat, which is released today.

In the past, DS-x2 and O3 entertainment already showed their cooperation in the form of the Konductra-contest and the Tank Beat promotional banner which was served to you during the past month. Today, our friends from O3 Entertainment answered our questions on their latest product: Tank Beat for the Nintendo DS. The DS-x2 team sat down with Mike Pepe, Product Marketing Manager at O3.

Why did O3 decide to pick up Tank Beat and what sort of relationship do you have with Milestone? We were thrilled to sign Tank Beat because it was going to deliver something not yet seen on the DS. In the way of its stylus controls and the fact that it would be a tank shooter made it very unique to the platform. The depth of the game and the amount of tanks you can play on it made the signing decision easy.

We have a close relationship with Milestone. Dating back to Chaos Field for the GameCube, we have partnered with them on several projects. The Milestone team is incredibly talented and have produced quality games time and again.

How robust is the single player mode, how many missions can we expect? Tank Beat's single player mode is very robust. There are 27 stages to play and almost every victory gains the player a new tank to play on the next stage. The game has been designed to allow the player to choose the best tank to complete a mission with : bigger is not always better.

How is the game structured? May we expect a linear story development or is the game more 'free campaign'? The game is not exactly linear. I cannot go into the details without giving away the plot and story line, but I can say that player's accomplishments will change the story line and game play.

The game seems to focus on strategy as well as action, how strategic is the gameplay in terms of what you command? Tank Beat is very strategic in terms of how you command and control your allied tanks as well as which vehicle you use to accomplish each mission. Most of the stages in Tank Beat give players the control and command of an allied tank to face the opposition with. How players use the allied tank to pass a stage is completely up to them. Fodder, hero, guardsman, etc, the allied vehicles in Tank Beat are essential to completing each mission.

From the screenshots released so far, the maps seem very large. How large do the maps vary and how long can we expect battles to go on for? Is the battle plane flat or are there elevations on the playing field? The maps in the game vary in size and time. Each mission revolves around a certain goal: protect, invade, capture, retreat, etc. The different situations within each stage determine the time and size of the map. The battle plane ranges between mountainous to flat urban. Elevation changes do impact the game in that most vehicles are most vulnerable from the top and firing from a hillside will give players a greater distance in their shots.

Could you expand on the multiplayer options, what kind of modes are we expecting? Is team mode play an option? Tank Beat can be played via Multiplayer Battle Mode on wireless and the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. You can bring any tank with you into battle that you have unlocked. The exception to this rule is in download wireless play where only a handful of tanks are available. Multiplayer is a free-for-all, but that doesn't stop people from teaming up before hand. Careful though, friendly fire counts!

As the game features online play through the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, what kind of statistics can we expect to judge our competitors on? The statistics involved are wins and points. So if you're hammering away at a player and someone swoops in and takes your kill, you will still be awarded the shots you landed on the defeated tank before it was destroyed. However, kill shots give considerably more points.

How easy is it to implement an online mode into the game? Does Nintendo fund the online servers entirely or does the publisher/developer have to do that? It is very easy to implement a game in online. Players choose how many people they want to play and go. Players will be automatically matched into lobbies with people seeking the same amount of competitors. Friend play is also available in which the same scenario above occurs except players are pointed to a specific lobby for play.

Online play is co funded between the developer and Nintendo. All online game play is through Nintendo's Wi-Fi Connection.

So what do you think will be the favourite aspect of the game to the end user? What's going to keep them playing and interested in? We think initially users will be compelled to play the campaign story line in full, thereby unlocking the most powerful tanks. Skirmish Mode, included in Tank Beat, will support this in additional scenarios to unlock the remaining tanks to play online. Once players have gotten a good command of the tanks in the game as well as their strengths and weaknesses, we see online taking off. Here players can match up with different tanks and take advantage of the terrain and features of the exclusive multiplayer maps included.

DS-x2 would like to thank Mike Pepe for answering our questions and wish O3 Entertainment well on their release of Tank Beat and all future products. We'd also like to thank various members of the NeoGAF community for input on what the gaming crowd wanted to know about the title.

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Comments

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  Hope that Radio Allergy will come to Europe too, even converted for the Wii.

  Olpus Bonzo, 30-11--0001 at 00:00