Bugs vs. Tanks! is the kind of game that I would have expected to be pleasantly surprised by while rummaging through a PS1 bargain bin, and maybe something I’d bust out from time to time to show interested friends. As the latest entry in the Guild 02 collection, Bugs vs. Tanks! is a one of the more arcade-inspired games, and it’s concept was created by gaming legend Keiji Inafune. Like other entries in the series, it maintains the trend of “strange but fun,” though it pushes fewer boundaries than its brethren in favor of a more arcade feel.

You find yourself in a German platoon during World War II that has been shrunken down to nearly microscopic proportions. Of course, you and your comrades in arms assume your predicament is the product of some sort of Allied plot, and after two tutorial missions that teach you the basics of moving and attacking, you’re off to get to the bottom of things.

Early on, you’re given the choice of manual or automatic fire, and while it doesn’t technically recommend automatic, it’s definitely the easier of the two choices. The 3D environments sometimes make it hard to tell what is within range, and automatic fire, luckily, takes care of all of that for you, leaving you to simply pilot the tank and aim accordingly. At first it feels almost too easy, with the tank taking the initiative and blasting bugs as your roll along, but after a few missions the automatic fire was crucial for me.

The bite-sized missions often have abandoned tanks strewn about them, and you’ll need to scour each level to keep your hardware up to snuff. You can change the turret, chassis, and paint job of your tank to improve statistics such as power, speed, and defense. You’ll definitely want to visit your customization menu often, as the catalog of bugs you’ll be facing is always growing. Staying on top of gathering new tank parts and knowing when to use the powerful once-per-mission SOS attack makes up most of the strategy in the game, leaving you free to truck around in your tank blasting anything with more than two legs.

The missions take a few different forms: kill a specific amount of a certain bug, gather a specific amount of supplies, rescue a specific amount of soldiers/tanks, or defend your base from an onslaught of enemies. These would quickly get tedious in a longer game, but the brevity here means that by the time you’re starting to get tired of the mission structure, it’s just about over. With only 29 story missions and 10 extra missions, the game hits just the right length, and even the missions without time limits generally take less than five minutes to complete.

While the missions are short, they certainly aren’t easy. I found even normal difficulty to be too much for me to handle about halfway through the game. If you don’t properly save and time your SOS attack then you'll often get surrounded, and the knockback from getting hit can get frustrating when bugs gang up on you.

The sparse graphics consist of a few different environments, though most of them consist of the same sticks and leaves. The 3D effect works nicely to counterbalance the unimpressive visuals, giving the game a cute diorama effect. I found myself playing a large portion of the game with the 3D slider cranked up. The tanks and bugs seem to have received the most attention to detail, with the middling environments and the blurry soldier sprites sitting at the worst end of the graphical spectrum.

Soldiers repeat the same few lines of dialogue over and over again, which can get grating. The characters in the game seem far too verbose, with lengthy discussions taking place before and after missions. While this text can be skipped, it seems strangely out of place to have that much dialogue to be in an arcade-style action game.

Overall, Bugs vs. Tanks! is a fun action game, and the customization and collecting really saves what otherwise may have ended up being a mediocre experience. Rolling into battle in my half German/half American, polka-dotted tank kept me from taking the game seriously, and while there is far too much dialogue, it still consists of some fun banter between the soldiers. Like most of the other Guild games, it’s not overly amazing, but it’s certainly a great way to kill an afternoon.