Turbo Tempest is the first Boat Battle Royale (at least the first I have heard of), which makes it a pretty unique occurrence (EDIT: Upon further research there also seems to exist another Boat BR game called 'Maelstrom').
It has a player maximum of 8 and allows up to 3 additional Bots per match regardless of the player count. The Bots however aren't too smart. They can get stuck on the environment and they will stop moving after all human players have been eliminated, even if there are still other Bot Players around. Nonetheless, the Bots can still actively shoot and sometimes put up a little fight. They are however no real substitute for human players.
Turbo Tempest offers Online and LAN matches. Both modes can also be played versus Bots regardless of connection. During the launch week multiple players complained about broken servers not allowing them to connect to other players. I experienced these problems as well and couldn't connect or find other people ingame, even though according to stats a handful of other persons were playing the game at that time. These problems seem to have been partly solved when I recently tested the game with a friend. With random people however it remains a gamble, whether you can join their game or receive matchmaking errors.
There are 3 unnamed maps in Turbo Tempest. Map 1 is located in a field of icebergs, Map 2 contains tight rivers inside a canyon and Map 3 is a jungle map. I didn't like Map 2, because human players would always hit the side of the walls on these rivers and Bots got stuck too easily (The map also aesthetically looked worse than the others). The iceberg and the jungle map on the other hand looked and played well. You only have to point out that all 3 of these maps are rather small (especially if you consider that you are driving fast boats) and together with the small player maximum make Turbo Tempest a really small scale Battle Royale game (you can extend the relatively short length of matches by giving players more lives, but that makes it less of a BR in my opinion).
There are 6 different types of boats, the differences however seem to be only cosmetic and do not affect gameplay. The boats can take up to 2 different weapons at the same time, which have to be found on the map. Ammo runs out pretty fast, but there are many weapons scattered around the map. The weapons do behave somewhat differently. Most of them are projectile based and differ mostly in shot speed and ammo capacity. There are however also Mines and a shield item/weapon, that temporarily protects the boat from damage.
What on the other hand did annoy me about the weapons, is the fact, that the boats are only able to shoot straight ahead. If you miss your first shots you will have to rotate and try to get your boat into a position to hit other players. This makes fights clunkier than they have to be.
A very interesting and bold design choice of Turbo Tempest is, that there are no UI elements in this game. All relevant information (like the health status of the boat, the weapon types and their amount of ammunition or the number of lives left) are symbolized on the boats themselves. This might potentially sound overloaded, but it actually works pretty well and I liked it. What I didn't like however is the fact, that the game gives you a very noticeable blur effect, every time you move the camera and this effect can also not be deactivated in the options.
The customization options in Turbo Tempest are nevertheless pretty decent, as far as visuals and sound are concerned. Controls however can not be changed, but function pretty well. This surprised me a little, since the game oddly doesn't assign the mouse buttons any function (you can only move the camera with the mouse). I found the controls nonetheless to be simple, yet satisfactory and the game even supports gamepad use as well.
Pro:
- Boat Battle Royale
- Bot Support
- Map environments mostly look nice
- No UI (all info on the boats)
Contra:
- Really small scale BR game
- Combat gets clunky through fixed aim
- Bots not too smart
- Forced Blur effect when moving the camera
- Still occasional matchmaking errors
- Tiny playerbase
Result:
Turbo Tempest offers an unique experience, unfortunately it is on such a small scale. I do like the concept and the aesthetics of most maps, but matches are super short and the maps really small. The gameplay however is decent to a large extent, even though the restricted aiming definitely makes combat clunkier than it has to be. Online Matchmaking also often still doesn't work. Turbo Tempest can therefore not compete with the big fishes (pun intended), but it could perhaps be fun to play with a group of friends.
4.5/10
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