Terrorists have captured a nuclear plant, sending out a legion of tanks to capture the land. Nuke Defender puts you at the wheel of a menacing tank tasked with stomping over foolish enemy offences foolish enough get in your way. But is Nuke Defender as exciting as it sounds? Read our review to find out…
Nuke Defender is described as a "thrilling" addition to the Defender series currently on the Ovi Store. The truth is, to call Nuke Defender is slightly overplaying things. Manning a giant tank armed with explosive shells should be fun right? Right. But unfortunately, Nuke Defender is heavily let down by poor controls and gameplay.
It's a shame, because the intentions are good. Looking at the description and screenshots on the Ovi Store we thought we'd be in for a cool top down scroller reminiscent of retro arcade titles, albeit shrunken down to mobile proportions, but it was not to be. The basic presentation is hardly inspiring to begin with. The graphics are dull and heavily pixelated, and the sound effects are largely limited to the thud of bullets hitting your tank. But we won't hold these against Nuke Defender too much. We can't be so easy on the gameplay.
To control your tank in Nuke Defender the developers have placed a series of directional controls on the touchscreen (we played using an N97). All well and good but they don't work well at all. The controls are slow, laggy and at worst unresponsive. You'll find yourself attempting to steer away from a tank, only to find it has the turning circle of a rather deadly tortoise. By the time you engage your enemy you've already taken a couple of hits, made worse by the fact you have to face them head on to hit them. You can attempt to persevere, but the fruits of your effort are barely worth a taste, as the gameplay and controls make clearing any of the levels a numbing chore.
To sum up, Nuke Defender could have been promising. Instead it's an incredibly frustrating title that suffers from poor gameplay. Even though it's free, Nuke Defender is best avoided.
Check out our Nuke Defender review photo gallery:
