iPhone Friday - Tank Pack Attack - A Grindy Economy And Low Quality Music Hold Back This Merge Game

For this week's iPhone Friday i tried Tank Pack Attack from Fattoy Game Technology on my iPhone14Pro. 

There are a lot of merge styles games on phones. many have you combine items to make a new item. i'm seeing more games that have taken that merge mechanic and applied it to levelling troops. in both instances, there's often a large play area so there are a lot of things to merge. with Tank Pack Attack the space to place items and troops is much smaller and requires a little strategy and luck.

The tutorial at the start is quite good. it goes step by step explaining how to play the game and takes you through your first run of the game. when the run ends, it continues by explaining what to do with the loot you got. once things are leveled up, it's back to do another run. it's a simple enough routine and as you can play this game one handed Tank Pack Attack is a decent game to play whilst commuting. the problem is that the loot you get is quite slim and the amount you need to upgrade means you may have to do 5 runs to upgrade something from level 1 to 2. i remarked whilst playing that the game's economy doesn't feel quite balanced.

One issue is that whilst the game has a good tutorial for the gameplay side, it failed to point me to the daily achievements and the rewards you get from doing them. had i known earlier in the video about it, i would've been less frustrated with the game's economy. but i didn't know about it until right at the end and so for me it felt unbalanced.

There's one more thing about Tank Pack Attack that felt noticeably bad and that's the quality of the audio. as someone who grew up in the MiniDisc and MP3 era, i'm familiar with low bit rate music and in this game it sounded like it was 64kbps at best! i'd recommend turning the music off, it sounded far to rough to enjoy.

It's unfortunate that these two issues are as big as they are as the game was fun to play. i wanted to see more, but i would've had to grind several runs to level up items to progress to the next area. Tank Pack Attack uses an energy system, but doesn't say how long it'd take to recharge it, so there's always the chance i'd run out of energy trying to get to the next area. Tank Pack Attack is fine for the daily commute. the little and often approach would probably work well with this game.

Version 1.2 Played

Demo Play Thursday - Revolgear Zero DEMO On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Revolgear Zero, from developers Bikkuri Software.

Side Scrolling Shooters is another genre, much like last week's Vertical Shooter, that i'm not great at. i've got more practice with this one but it's been a while since i last played a game like this. so the fact that there's a demo is great for me as i'm always happy to try one of these games, as i hope to find one i enjoy and might be decent at.

Revolgear Zero certainly got the look and soundtrack down.  it feels like a game from the Mega Drive, SNES, PlayStation era but with none of the slowdown. It has some interesting gameplay mechanics revolving around your ships power and weapon platform looking things called bits. But the game fails to properly convey how it all works. there is a tutorial to watch, but it goes fast and does it's best to never mention which buttons it's pressing. in the top right there is a listing of what some of the buttons do, but the terminology used there is different to what's said in the tutorial.

This demo only has Standard mode, consisting of two levels, and Mission mode but there is replay-ability as there's 4 different difficulty levels and you're able to play as different characters who have different attributes and also there's a large variety of bits you're able to equip. the two levels i played were very different from each other, not just in music and style but also in enemy mechanics and level hazards. the 10 missions available took place elsewhere and challenge you to do something specific in a very short time.

Because the tutorial for Revolgear Zero is a bit rough, i didn't quite get how best to play it and this affected both modes in the demo. however, now i've practiced a little and realise some things i was doing wrong, i feel like i could play the game better than i did this demo. so that almost makes the demo required playing before the retail game. other than that, i think that this is a decent demo but i don't think Revolgear Zero is quite for me.

Demo Play Thursday - Blaze of Storm DEMO On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Blaze of Storm.

I'm not good at vertical shoot'em ups but i'm always on the look out for some to try, and hopefully find one i like and i'm decent at. Blaze of Storm interested me because it's not small in size, the graphics are a bit chunky. this means the gameplay takes place in a fairly sizeable 2 thirds of the screen with the final third being used to show what power-up is currently equipped. 

The demo is fairly limited, only giving us a tutorial and a 5 minute score attack mode. the demo is quite effective as it goes over the game's mechanics and how power-ups work. it could be a little slower so we can read and then try to do what it says, but even with my low skill level i was able to manage the tutorial. if you let the screen stay on the main menu, a "Demo Play" mode activates and 1 of the demoes is showing the tutorial in action. it was first in my rotation so it might be worth watching it before tackling it if Blaze of Storm is your first vertical shooter.

An interesting aspect of the gameplay was that i found it just as tough evading enemy attacks as evading weapon power-ups i didn't want. the power-ups themselves aren't bad, it's more like there were a couple i liked to use more. i wouldn't say the difficulty was too high or too easy. i felt like i could clearly see and understand when it was Game Over.

If you're interested in vertical shoot'em ups, i wouldn't say Blaze of Storm is the easiest. but i would say that it's quite approachable and this demo is well worth checking out if you're curious.

Backlog Conquering - Anthem On PS4 - Part 11 - The Final Part

Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it.

Our new game is the #PlayStation4 version of #Anthem. i have previously played around 5 hours of this game back in 2019, but i stopped playing once EA announced they weren't going to update the game. The main reason for picking up Anthem now is that the game servers are going to be turned off on January 12th 2026. I started recording these videos before the servers were taken down so from Part 5 onwards, these will go live on YouTube AFTER the servers have been shut down. You can't play Anthem anymore as the game doesn't have an off-line mode, it was online only.

Check out previous parts:

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/A9yTrycU5gk

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/e8-wLS1CmN8

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/n-V3VDh_cJQ

Part 4 - https://youtu.be/kgWj3TeJWXg

Part 5 - https://youtu.be/ujvrBZeRZOI

Part 6 - https://youtu.be/OaOLQf336ZQ

Part 7 - https://youtu.be/ivTkSJ9nJGg

Part 8 - https://youtu.be/CV1P3tc7pOs

Part 9 - https://youtu.be/ir62lx7d7rc

Part 10 - https://youtu.be/GvIrLcniu5Q

Stories on Tuesday - Fatal Twelve - Part 2

The new Stories on Tuesday game is the PlayStation 4 Disc version of Fatal Twelve from Sekai Project and aiueoKompany.

Part 2 changed things up in a way i wasn't expecting. Part 1 had focused on Rinka and her friends. in this Part we do start with her and we learn that she's remembered more, but we actually shift to a different group for most of this Part. it seems that two of the twelve died together, or at the same location, and they've teamed up. we see in Part 2 their dynamic and how things looked like they were going to take a twist didn't really. This part ends focusing on this new pairing and whether or not they were successful.

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/U-1z9NQScOI

Switch Funday - Pokémon Legends: Z-A - My Battles Z to A

I really enjoyed my time with Pokémon Legends: Z-A. playing it in my own time meant i was able to play the game at my own pace and try different Pokémon in my team. As i went, i recorded the battles of my Z to A journey as well as the end game. The Battle for F video had some tech issues but the key battle was safe.

iPhone Friday - HUNTER×HUNTER NEN×SURVIVOR - An Average Themed Wave Based Rogue Like Survival Game

For this week's iPhone Friday i tried HUNTER×HUNTER NEN×SURVIVOR from Bushiroad on my iPhone 14 Pro. 

HUNTER×HUNTER is a famous manga and anime with iconic characters, but i was dubious about this game from the screenshots shown in the app store. single screen wave based rogue like survival games have been popular since Vampire Survivors popularised the genre. but this popularity has flooded the market with poor imitations of the original. Last year, Medabots Survivors came out and i decided against checking it out as it was a Japan only release. i didn't realize that HUNTER×HUNTER NEN×SURVIVOR is also, at the time of writing, just a Japanese release. but both are the same, re-skins of the genre.

There is an additional download when starting this game, but thankfully the game is transparent about this and reminds us to do it over Wi-fi. whilst that's taking place, there is a nice animated opening that seems to be a mix of original anime and freshly made stuff. it's an interesting choice to keep it 4:3 like the original anime. with the download being small and quick, there's only really time to watch the opening video once.

Version 1.0.4 Played