No one envisions the future of sports as a peaceful one. Tomorrow's version of football won't be played on clouds by angels (all of them wingers, we guess), with no fouls allowed and a ball made of entwined daisy chains. No... Future football will be played by steroid-inflated meat-heads foaming at the mouth and wearing spiked armour, attempting to decapitate each other with a heavy metal sphere.

Metal Drift goes a step further, and insists that its players actually drive around in tanks. Aside from being sat in first-person perspective hover tanks, the game is very much like that venerable classic Speedball, with a similar futuristic style arena for a playing field. The idea is to grab the ball and deposit it in the opponent's goal area, while blowing each other up with a variety of weapons.

Before we go any further into the gory details, there are a couple of things you should know about Metal Drift. Firstly, it's an independently developed Steam game priced at a wallet-friendly £7.99. Secondly, all the real action happens online, although it is possible to set up a LAN game or play versus bots.

In fact, the bots are used to make up the teams when there aren't enough players to fill out spots (or as replacements when people drop out). Matches are played with teams of up to six on each side, although one problem we quickly came across was that there weren't often many human players online.

During the day there are very few indeed, if any. And in the evening there are a few more around, but still only a handful of active tank jockeys. Those that do play tend to be on the US servers, with the EU servers pretty much constantly empty. That meant we were forced onto the Stateside servers with pings of 200, double what we were getting in Europe. In fairness, matches were still perfectly playable most of the time, aside from the odd nasty lag spike and clipping errors (other tanks passing through us).

Initially, Metal Drift is something of a baptism of fire. Firstly, steering with the WASD keys and moving your turret independently with the mouse takes some acclimatisation. Then there's the fact that the game is level based, and you start at level 0 (a complete zero, literally). The other players you encounter are often level 20 or 30 plus.

And with every few levels bringing access to new weapons and upgrades, this makes those early matches even tougher. While you've only got a basic pea-shooter cannon, that smug-looking level 36 driver has a hyperspace key to elude you if he's low on health ("where'd he go?") and can blast you through a solid wall with his temporal cannon ("what happened there?").

However, we'd advise you to stick with it, because Metal Drift actually gets very entertaining after you've got a few levels under your belt. Fortunately you can practice against the reasonably competent bots to gain experience, unlocking new weapons (from ion cannons to grenades and rockets) and trying them out.

On every spawn you've got a choice of available weapons and upgrades, one of each, with certain combinations working together synergistically. For example, the cloaking device twinned with the high-powered shock cannon can be used to stealth up behind opponents and give them a point-blank blast that will make them wish their tank had never been built.

Another option is to take the armour upgrade, which makes the tank much slower but hardier, and position yourself as a goal defender with the plasma grenade cannon. There's nothing like spamming grenades down at an approaching attacker desperately weaving about with the ball, or blocking him with a head-on collision just in front of the goal area as you furiously click the fire button and destroy him.

On attack, your best friend is the speed boost button, which saps the tank's power for a burst of turbo. Although that power can also be used to charge up your weapons, so there are always split-second tactical decisions to be made as - with one eye on the radar for approaching enemy blips - you figure out which route to take towards the goal.

Generally, you won't get far alone, as the ball carrier is clearly highlighted on everyone's HUD, so defenders will be drawn to you like fire-extinguisher-bearing moths towards a flame. That's when teamwork becomes paramount, as you'll need escorts to get through. It's also possible to pass the ball to team-mates, or indeed dribble it ahead of yourself to travel that little bit faster (possession of the ball slows the tank down slightly).

And all this tactical teamwork and varying combinations of weapons and upgrades makes Metal Drift immensely fun to play at times. We say "at times", because there are certainly frustrations as well. Not only the already mentioned difficulties in finding a game with humans, but sometimes in remaining connected to that server.

We found ourselves freezing up and getting disconnected on a number of occasions, although at least this only seemed to happen upon initially joining a game (as opposed to in the dying seconds of a fantastically fought match when we were about to score the winning goal). It's also true that the maps are thin on the ground: there are just five, and they're not massively different from one another.

But even though we've had a bit of a moan here, the positives definitely outweigh the negatives, especially in light of the budget pricing. However, the player base issue is definitely a problematic one, and if active numbers don't grow soon, this hunk of metal will sadly drift into obscurity.

Verdict
Metal Drift isn't perfect. It's somewhat tough to get into for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the difficulty in finding a populated game, and the odd server disconnection issue. However, when a match gets going properly it's an absolute blast, and levelling up to unlock weapons and discover upgrades gives this tank-athon a real hook.

Company: Black Jacket Studios

Tags: speedball tank arrow keys united states hud (video gaming) cannon games video games