With over 300,000 Touch Battle Tank games sold to date, from the hugely popular original (which has since been ported to both Vita and Wii U as well as smartphone) to the even more popular sequel (which is the 18th most popular eShop title of all time) and even if bypassing the Touch Battle Ninja spin-off (which sold like shit), Silver Star have returned with a third mainline title: Touch Battle Tank 3D-3.

The first thing that hits the player is how noticeably improved the graphics are in relation to the originals. Not in any way do the graphics actually constitute anything particularly decent but compared to what essentially looked like how one would imagine N64-Ware to look like if it actually existed (which is how the initial games looked) then an upgrade is definitely the intent.

Silver Star have also upgraded the game with both the amount of content offered and the variance of the two Touch Battle Tanks at your disposal but sadly the former fails to alleviate the biggest flaw throughout the series (a serious case of repetition) and whilst the latter adds a new battle formula to the mix (overheating); it’s not long before this new formula ultimately too becomes formulaic.

It’s not like there’s not any fun to be had in TBT3D-3. Driving around the screen destroying other tanks whilst avoiding return artillery fire does bring a degree of fun – albeit a mindless kind – to your 3DS screen, and there are almost literally a million levels to challenge you and some of the latter ones exude excellent design, but perhaps the biggest challenge is actually having the willpower to get that far.      

6/10