Tank Battlegrounds is a brand new game that’s coming to Steam. Its graphics look a bit dated, but that’s nothing particularly new or interesting for a game coming up on Steam. After all, graphics aren’t everything! What is interesting about this upcoming title is that it looks suspiciously similar to the 2002 first-person shooter Battlefield 1942.
The disparity was first noted on gaming forum ResetEra. A casual examination of the game’s Steam store page show sights that are well-familiar to longtime veterans of the Battlefield franchise. The trailer, too, appears to be the same one as Battlefield 1942 originally used with some minor editing like a different music track.
Perhaps the most damning indictment is a side-by-side comparison of Battlefield 1942 and Tank Battlegrounds. The image on the left is from Battlefield 1942 and the image on the right is from this mysterious new game on Steam:
As you can plainly see, these two games are worryingly similar, so much so that they may in fact be the same game.
Although these two titles appear strikingly similar, this may not necessarily be indicative of the game’s actual content. There are more than a few games on Steam that use placeholder images & trailers for one reason or another, although it’s typically a bad sign if a developer uses imagery that isn’t completely representative of what their game looks like. There is, of course, also the possibility that some dude just uploaded the original Battlefield 1942 to Steam and almost got it put on sale undetected.
The similarities get even more striking when you read some portions of the game’s description:
It has single-person mode against computer and multi-person online. In the game, players can choose five kinds of soldiers: scouts, assault soldiers, anti-tank soldiers, medical and paramedics and engineers.
Players can also use various World War II vehicles, including tanks, fighter planes, bombers, destroyers, artillery, defense facilities, armoured personnel carriers and air defense weapons. Each battle took place on a battlefield in the name of World War II, from the Pacific to Europe and North Africa. The two major confrontational forces in the game are allies and Axis powers, but countries change with the location of the map.
[…]
Provide a variety of game modes, support up to 64 people simultaneously online combat, but also support single-player game mode. In the game, players can choose the roles they are good at – pilots, tanks, artillery, engineers, snipers…. In order to enhance the status of individuals in the war, the very subtle influence often determines the victory or defeat of the war.
Aside from the terrible grammar, this is a largely accurate description of Battlefield 1942.
You can watch the Battlefield 1942 trailer below and note how it’s largely similar to the one hosted on the Tank Battlegrounds Steam Store page. In the meantime, it’s a race to see whether or not this game will actually make its May 2019 release window before getting taken down off of the store.
[Battlefield 1942 Image Credit: Giant Bomb]
