Independent games from smaller, lesser known development studios have become more popular recently with services available like Xbox LIVE arcade, the PlayStation Network and Steam helping developers get their creations out to the gaming masses. Titles such as AudioSurf, Everyday Shooter and Braid have shown that games don’t need to cost $60 a pop and have a development team consisting of a hundred people to make a decent title. Developers Meridian 4 and Dialog Design have released the first of two episodes for their game, Tank Universal: Challenger Eight on Steam and are looking to see if their creation has what it takes to compete with some of the best indie games around.

As the game starts, you find yourself in the shoes of an older gentleman named George. The narration told through text boxes tells you that you have been given a VR (virtual reality) device to help cope with your mystery medical condition. As you put the helmet on, you are transported in mind to a world that can only be described as a Tron-like. Well, maybe “Tron-like” is not accurate, but more along the lines of “exactly like Tron”. The world is dark and ominous, with the neon highlight of red and blue grids glowing across the ground, buildings and vehicles. The similarities between the world of Tank Universal and the game world of Tron are stark.

As you get your bearings within the world by openly exploring your surroundings, you are quickly ushered to an arena and introduced to the leader, a massive eyeball much like the Eye of Sauron, named Gorgon. People are given the chance to challenge Gorgon to duel for leadership instead of voting and given the lackluster performance given by previous challengers, he has upped the ante by issuing tanks and maps to you and the seven other challengers. As the convoy of tanks rolls out, they are attacked by the Gorgon forces, pinning the blame on resistance fighters.

With help from an unknown resistance fighter, you escape the attack and from then on you move from level to level finding more resistance fighters to help. While almost each level is made up of the same neon red and blue atmosphere, the objectives of each level do vary, but not quite enough. Every few levels, you will need to play through a Capture the Flag style game, where you need to capture the key from the red team’s hub and return it to yours. As the levels progress, more objectives are added to be able to get the key, like capturing network points and knocking down fortress walls, and it becomes a much longer – and more frustrating - battle than would be expected.

The majority of missions don’t have the CTF objectives; they are mostly “point A to point B” while destroying things along the way. Take down power generators that let the juice flow to force fields, destroy turrets that deal death from above and in one instance, complete a puzzle that has you flipping switches from red to blue while the opposing team was trying to switch them back to red. Most of the missions also take place in huge environments and you may go for sometime without seeing any action, making it quite the tedious trip, just cruising along with nothing to do. A cruise control of some sort would have helped greatly, but sitting there with your finger on the forward key for minutes on end, gets very boring, very fast.