Cacophonous, airless, unreliable, and relatively thin-skinned, first generation landships were often more hazardous to their crews than the enemy. You wouldn’t guess this from playing
Armoured Battle Crew, a likeable £15 Bomber Crew-like currently in Early Access.
Like Bomber Crew, ABC spurns the opportunity to educate and evoke, choosing ‘entertainment’ over ‘realism’ at almost every turn. I approached it the way a cheerless, ageing schoolmaster approaches a pupil doodling Hawker Harts during a Classics lesson, but soon found myself smiling rather than censuring.
Controlling one of the game’s rowdy rhombuses is really rather fun. Because the trundlers struggle on slopes and often need a little run-up to crush, fell or mangle obstacles, WASDing your way about the stylised, pleasingly destructible battlefields takes thought and manual dexterity.
There’s also crew assignments to think about. The Mark V that is the game’s main attraction (
Whippets and
Rolls-Royce armoured cars are also provided) bristles with weaponry, and manning every MG and 6-pounder in the heat of battle is usually neither practical or advisable. At least one member of your crew will need to work his socks off as a mechanic/medic/ammo gopher if you’re to have any hope of keeping your charge mobile and malevolent.
A slo-mo mode means things never get unbearably hectic. Dab SPACE and you’ve got all the time in the world to tell Ernest to abandon the port MG, retrieve a first-aid kit from one of the store lockers, and attend to injured Albert, while Desmond switches from firing his sponson gun to fixing it, and Francis dashes to the radio to call in an artillery bombardment.
All guns can be fired manually using a first-person view – a nice touch. There’s smoke grenade launchers on some machines, and winches fitted to the front and rear of the armoured car. As caterpillared AFVs never seem to bog, the current lack of deployable
fascines and functional debogging sleepers isn’t a major concern.
For an Early Access title, Armored Battle Crew is already reassuringly issue free and generously proportioned. In addition to the clashes concocted by a well-equipped
skirmish generator, eight chapters of a ten chapter Allied campaign are playable. Despite some rather unimaginative/inflexible victory conditions (‘Kill 100 infantry, three AT guns, and one mortar to prevail’ sort-of-thing), all forms of play engage.
I’m not a huge fan of all the World of Tanks-style upgrading and titivation you’re expected to undertake between outings, but if you’re the sort who likes to personalise and incrementally enhance, you’ll be as happy as Larry. There’s no shortage of tech trees to shin up, and camo patterns and decals to unlock and apply.
Although I can’t play Armoured Battle Crew for long without picturing it draped in grittier textures, equipped with more truthful arenas, and stripped of history mocking elements like airdropped supplies and automatic-repair zones, I can’t, with hand on heart, pretend that its Playmobil visuals and arcade tendencies seriously weaken it as a fun furnisher. The pre-teen Tim Stone would have loved ABC, and, truth be told, the middle-aged Tim Stone enjoys it too.