Scorched Earth gets a new Facelift!

Site Admin Joined: 17 May 2003 Posts: 0

So, about a week ago, I was talking with Barbos about doing a weekly column here about some of the best freeware out there on the internet. I've long been a fan of games, and every once in a while, you like those little free games that give you a change of pace. So I've decided to start running a weekly segment here highlighting some of the ones that I find most interesting. Rules are fairly simple as far as this goes:

1) Must be a completely free game, no shareware allowed.
2) Must be available for public download.
3) Must be available for Windows™. (Sorry, I had to add this for interest sake)

If you've got any ideas as far as future games I might spotlight, by all means, just e-mail me the details (website link a must) and I'll do my best to check it out and get it posted up here!

And now, without further adue, the first spotlight.

As the title states, yes, the people over at the Scorched 3D have breathed a new life into a very classic game. For those of you not familiar with Scorched Earth, it was a rather in-depth 2D game that allowed your tank to shoot upon up to 8 different tanks in the same playing field. The goal being, to destroy the other tanks. You had simply an angle of shot, and a power rating with which to shoot your shell, and you had a wide variety of shells available at your disposal.

Well, Scorched 3D takes that to a whole new level, by putting you in a 3D rendered environment (via OpenGL), and giving you some new weapons with which to destroy your opponent. The concept is rather simple, but the game play in hours can be amazing. Starting off by collecting a decent stash of cash by destroying other opponents, and at the conclusion of each level, spending that hard-earned cash on newer, bigger, more powerful weapons with which to lay waste to your opposition. Not only that, but you can battle your friends and comrades across a LAN or the Internet for the ultimate showdown of whos going to become King of the Hill. I think the guys at Scorched 3D put it best when they simply said:

In its simplest form Scorched is an artillery game. Tanks take turns to earn money by destroying opponents in an arena. Scorched attempts to recreate the simple yet addictive game play of the original game, adding amongst other new features a 3D island environment and LAN and internet play.

And of course, what review of a game would be complete without some screenshots of the game to showoff what it looks like.

Overall, I have to say, this game is definitely sure to become a classic, just as the original did. It's a simple beauty, and definite Fanboy Quality game.

Remember folks, this game is FREE, that's right, Zilch, Zero, Nadda, Zip (sorry, just got done watching some taped Monster Garage). And of course, it can be downloaded by visiting the Scorched 3D Website.

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2003 2:02 pm

heh yeah I've been playing this game since my first computer, actually I believe I had a version from the pre-Scorched Earth days....good times....

and yeah Monster Garage is pretty great...

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2003 2:27 pm

Back in the day....

In school, we each had to produce our own version of this game, written on a commadore 64 using basic, not visual basic, just basic. So that was just about 20 years ago, some games are fun enough to last this long.

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2003 3:56 pm

Anyone wanna host the game to play on?