Retrospective: Wild Metal Country

Faster, little space-tank, faster.

My trusty Manta is haring along a mountain ledge with a lynch-mob of hostile vehicles nipping at its heels. Mine dispenser empty and hull integrity a hair's breadth from 'Totally Screwed', my only hope now is flight. As long as I keep weaving and stay lucky I might just escape - I might reach the nearest teleport station with my cargo of pods intact.

Assuming I remain focussed, that is. Cresting a small rise my speeding war machine almost flips over. Only deft fingerwork keeps the broad caterpillars in contact with the ground. The vehicle is still twitching, still striving to regain lost speed, when an incoming gravity shell lifts it into the air and hurls it unceremoniously off the mountain.

Tank is now toboggan. Out of control, I plummet towards certain-ish death. If the landing is hard, it's curtains. If there are hostiles below, it's curtains. If I somehow survive the descent but end up on my turret, it's probably curtains. I'm careering towards a John Lewis textiles department of doom.

The last cliff kiss isn't fatal, but neither is it kind. The Manta ends up inverted, floundering on its back like an overturned beetle. Normally I'd rotate the cannon and pump a shot into the earth to jolt myself upright. This time that's not an option as I'm so badly mauled the splash damage would finish me. No, my only chance now is to tap 'R' and wait for the recovery chopper to arrive. Fingers-crossed my pursuers haven't decided to follow their quarry down the slope.

White blips on the scanner. That's not good. Like a castle dweller evacuating his bowels over the battlements, an enemy AFV is dumping mines over the ledge edge. I watch helplessly as the lethal cylinders bounce past. Then something bigger tumbles into view. One of the mob has decided to follow me down.

That uninspired FPS you are currently slogging through? Abandon it. Play this.

The pursuer lands with a bone-crunching thump right next to my armoured avatar. I wince, awaiting the kill-shot, then realise he too is turret-side down. Ha! You should have stayed up there my friend. Now you're stranded like... Hey. What are you playing at? STOP!

My overturned companion has swiveled his weapon in my direction. There's a few feet of rock between muzzle and target, but it looks like the daft beggar is going to try a shot anyway. With the thwop-thwop of imminent salvation echoing down the valley, my foe slings his fateful shell. Shell strikes rock. Shell explodes ripping apart shell-slinger. Shell-slinger explodes ripping apart Manta. RIP little space-tank. I watch as a rainbow of multicoloured pods spews from my disintegrating chariot and bounces across the valley floor. I watch, and as I watch I mull over thoughts I've mulled over many times before.

"Wild Metal Country, you brilliant, quirky, exhilarating creature. Why aren't you better known? Why did you never get a sequel? Why did certain members of my profession think you warranted a measly 5 out of 10?"

Actually, I know the answer to that last one: some of my fellow play-assayers are 24-carat cretins who really didn't get on with the unusual-yet-inspired controls and superficially repetitive action.

If it moves, slay it then then hoover up its health-restoring energy core.

If reviewers like Mr. Prolix had spent a little more time shepherding tanks up craggy mountainsides and powersliding them round tumbling landmines, he might have realised that DMA's approach to control isn't actually "clumsy and awkward" - it borders on genius.

Having separate forward and reverse keys for each caterpillar track permits wonderfully subtle manoeuvring. Plant two fingers diagonally on the square of four keys and your metal trundler spins on the spot. Depress the upper pair of keys and you move forward in a straight line. Momentarily lift a digit while in forward motion and the tank veers towards the side of the decelerating track. Add bumps and explosion shockwaves, great physics and various surface types, and you've got the recipe for amazingly tactile, improbably interesting movement. Returning to a WASD game after a day or two of Wild Metal Country feels like switching to Fosters after a summer on Budvar.

If DMA made a control-related mistake it was giving the novice player access to turreted tanks. Even for a veteran Wild Metalist tracking targets with the turret controls while in motion, is a tall order. After a few hours of dizzy disorientation and accidental cliff descents (the camera points in gun rather than hull direction) you're either going to stalk off in disgust, or have a eureka moment and realise that there's actually no need to turret-traverse. Your heavy-calibre shell delivery system can be aligned with incredible precision just using the track keys.

Once this insight has been gained, and the eager tanker begins concentrating on tactics rather than coordination, the game unfurls like a tide-covered sea anemone. Though every mission has the same simple premise (scour lumpy moon for 8 coloured pods then collect those pods in the teeth of fierce enemy resistance) the limitless combinations of topography, foes and weaponry mean no two engagements are ever the same. Every time you scramble onto a ridge and find yourself gazing down at a pod site teeming with tracked and aerial enemies, gun towers, shield walls and mine throwers, a new bespoke plan must be hatched.

Feeling cautious? Take your time, scout the locale for good firing positions and escape routes, before methodically pounding static targets and luring out mobile ones. Feeling daring? How about a spot of daylight robbery. Dart in at breakneck speed, knock the pod from its shielded enclosure with a couple of well-aimed snap-shots, then pounce on it and flee with shells bursting all around you.

Very occasionally, unfettered aggression will do the trick. The times when you hurtle into the heart of the hornets' nest, ramming tanks, scattering mines, and plucking gunships from the sky with perfectly angled arcs of bullet fire, are particularly sweet. This is a game where the more skilful you get, the more fun you have. Somehow it also manages to be a game where confidence never brings complacency.

However adept you are at dodging Bouncing Betty mines (think kamikaze grasshoppers) or pirouetting round hover tanks on a frozen lake, one moment of inattention or clumsiness in the presence of any enemy trundler can be fatal. Even the ablest armourists will find themselves running for their lives at times, a nervous finger poised over the beacon button.

What the Roadrunner lacks in tankiness, it makes up for in stability.

Jettisoning a beacon just before a fiery demise makes finding the pods and weapon packs that spill from wracked tanks that bit easier post-respawn. You see, there's no map in Wild Metal Country. The lack of convenient cartography was probably another reason why the game attracted such mixed reviews. The fact that the intense firefights are sandwiched between longish periods of exploration doubtless rubbed a few reviewers up the wrong way. For me the orienteering is one of the pleasures of play.

As I scoot up hills and down dales, pod directions seared into my memory (scattered teleport stations provide pod azimuths) I'm constantly pathfinding - scouring ridges for potential routes and viewpoints. The gritty physics mean some slopes can only be scaled at speed, or in a particular tank type. One of Wild Metal Country's most agonizing and distinctive experiences is to scurry up a peak with enemies in hot pursuit and realise too late that you don't have the momentum to make the top.

Occasionally an incoming shell will shove you the last few yards, but usually there's no option but to jam a track into reverse, perform a nervy spin and power back down the hill, hopefully avoiding your surprised chasers.

Short of flora and texture variety they may be, but those hills are loaded with tactical significance. Terrain is as big a part of the play experience as, say, the sly, unpredictable enemies. Whether blizzard-blasted tundra, pyramid-dotted dunes, or misty Lake District-style fells, the humps and hollows are there to be read and utilized. A valley shoulder will tighten a turn, a gully will funnel barrel mines, a shallow fold will shield you from bouncing munitions.

Rockstar, if you provide the tea and biscuits, I'll provide the design for the WW2-set sequel.

If DMA had allowed us to dent the terrain with weaponry, the action would, I suspect, have been even more compelling. As you ramble about, constantly watching for the tell-tale Christmas-light glow of pods, there's ample opportunity to contemplate the sequel that never was. As much as I enjoy the instinctive gunnery and uncluttered display, I think I'd have lobbied for some form of crosshairs or trajectory indicator in the follow-up. Such a feature could have been optional, difficulty-level linked, or - like the scanner - jammable by certain enemies. It certainly would make those early hours in the field a bit less alarming.

It's tempting to imagine the game with a 1st person perspective too. If the camera was a game object - a destroyable aerial drone - then a tense ground-level view could be a temporary penalty - a mood-altering consequence of battle damage or carelessness.

There's also huge potential for enrichment in the realm of background blather. Wild Metal Country is a creation without narrative or characters. There's no cutscenes, no text briefings, no static-distorted comms pop-ups. It's almost as if the Dundee dev ran out of money or time. After years of play I still have no real idea why I'm spending hour after hour gathering those pretty pods.

Actually that's not quite true. I'm doing it because it's Bloody Good Fun. Don't believe me? Rockstar's splendid generosity means you can form your own conclusions for free.