Mobile Armor, a Great Idea , but only a good effort behind it.
The tanks themselves are all of World War 2 vintage.(for me that =YEAH BABY!) You start the first mission in a Sherman tank, and are given a pretty simple objective-shoot the other tanks. Although these first 'other' tanks are from the British Army- to my knowledge, they were Allies to anyone in a Sherman (U.S.A.) tank-why did the game make them enemy targets? But that is only a thought from a WW2 tank collector and afficianado...Anyway if you defeat those tanks, you 'win' control of the final Boss Tank from that level, to play in a later level-this is also where you get to 'trick out' your new prize tank, but some of the upgrades aren't historically, or realistically, true (It is a video game,afterall).
Each subsequent level offers the same choice-beat the Boss Tank after blasting its smaller buddies (also tanks) in the level, and you can keep that boss tank to use in another level. You don't have to use JUST the most recently won tank however-good idea because you can deliberately outmatch yourself using a weaker tank to fight with, to see how skilled you actually are. The start of each level, there are 9 levels, you are in a Briefing screen-"You will do this( its always blast the tanks) in your next mission, and do it here", show map layout screen of next level. Ho Hum. Finally you go to Customize tank / select tank screen. Here you can beef up your frontal, side, or rear armor-within accurate limitations,pick the paint job-Desert Camoflauge, Forest Camo, Snow camo..etc to match the next level's playing field, and even add a better gun,fuel tanks, or the not so realistic Super Engine or the Long Range armanent gun to the selected tank. then ya go to town (or desert, or snowfield, or city etc,) and duke it out, tank to tank. BOOM.The tanks in the game are from World War Two era, as I said, and are from the American(speedy little things), British(medium grade tanks), German(best overall tanks in game), and Russian(monster armor) arsenals of the time.
Mobile Armor is not a super fast paced arcade game however- you actually have to maneuover your vehicle to get in range, take cover and stalk the other guy, aim your cannon., and mundane but accurate movements like that. There is excitement though, since the other guy can and is doing the same to you-he can pop up on you unexpectedly! Nicely enough the designers didn't get into in a lot of inner mechanical gizmo/gauges for you to worry about- I say if they did that, the game would really slow down on you.There are no 'battlefield powerups' that you can find-there are mines! If you get foolish enough to take a hit? -it ain't gonna get fixed soon (not at all actually-you are in a battle). So you do get a biting your nails feeling in this game. My least favorite part of the game are the graphics in the battlefields that look just like stage props. If you shoot a bush, an entire rectangular section of bushes will fall down, and in the last level-a fortress, you are going to hate getting your tank hung up on corners/ walls or bridges. A saving grace to this is that so do the enemy tanks!
Overall for me, Mobile Armor is one of those "Should I dump it today?, Ooohh, but wait!, just ONCE MORE first" type of games any of us have in our collections. I have asked myself that same question almost 7 times already- it still sets in my collection today. For the lack of graphics and slower playing pace, the real fun comes in blasting that other guy, getting blasted (Oh shoot! I'm hit!), and hunting the bozo down without getting hit.(Yer number is UP, pal! BOOOM!, take that). Mobile Armor is a great idea, but only good effort behind it. If you love tanks-you probably at least should try this game. I have found that Rent It First isn't always a bad thing....