Scorched Earth is not a bad game at all. It is based on the famous Q-Basic game Gorillas where two Gorillas are bombing each other with bananas. This intention of this game is the same. The gorillas are replaced by tanks, and the bananas by bomb. There is wind that blows away your bomb so you have to adjust the bomb in the right way to hit your enemy.
Reviewer: Dos-Games-Online Scorched Earth, more commonly called Scorch, is a strategy/simulation game involving small tanks that sit on mountain-like structures.
Scorch is shareware, but do not be too concerned about that because you get a full featured game. At the end of the game there is an advertisement telling you to register to get the full version; however, I have always been very happy with the shareware version.
Game setup is very easy... all you have to do is pick what kind of tank you want and what weapons you want to buy with the money you have. Also, the game is highly customizable. Pretty much if you can think of some aspect of the game play you want to change, you can do it. The game features an extremely simple interface where all you have to do is specify the tanks angle, power for the projectile, and projectile type. You can battle against other human players on the same computer or against the computer itself. Be warned that some of the AI personalities are not very good at playing the game.
The game itself consists of turn-based round play. The tanks take turns seeing who can destroy each other first. Each round ends when there is one tank/team left standing. The player with the most round wins at the end of the game wins. Players receive money for each tank they destroy. This earned money allows the player to get better weapons which make the game even more interesting. Some of the weapons available are nukes, missiles, funky bombs, diggers, sandhogs, tracers, plasma blasts, and lasers. There are also other items besides weapons for sale. You can buy shields, batteries (for tank repair), parachutes, a gas tank, guidance systems, and auto defense mechanisms.
Scorch runs in DOS. If you have a computer that still runs DOS or a DOS environment, such as Windows XP and below, be warned that modern computers tend to run Scorch much faster than their old 386 counterparts. This results in highly accelerated game play which is highly problematic for Scorch. The slower the computer the better the game works. My recommendation is that you find a DOS emulator such as DOSBOX which slows down the clock cycles that the game runs. This, in turn, makes for a better Scorch experience. Scorch is an awesome game and can entertain you and many friends for hours on end.
