In Soviet Russia...
You control Atomic Tank and charge into the depths of the Middle East and eastern Europe to win the nuclear war.
Looking purely at the gameplay, you'd never guess that PopCap, developers of casual games like Bejeweled and Bookworm made this arcade style shooter. It's fast, it's violent, it's funny and most of all, it's hard. The game requires fast reflexes and accurate aiming in order to succeed, and will seem like bullet hell at times with all the bombs and globs of nuclear waste flying in your direction. It's fun and colorful, and you'll find yourself wanting to try a level over and over again until you beat it. Overall, it's a great concept and a blast to play, but unfortunately it's weighted down by some bad mechanics.
The game does have its flaws, and upon closer inspection the fact that it was made by developers who are unfamiliar with the genre is made obvious in many areas. First off, the game's controls are unnecessarily clunky, with both movement, shooting and aiming controlled by the mouse. This means that if the player wanted to aim right they would also move right. The shoot button is the left mouse while the bomb button is the right mouse, which is kind of awkward to pull off with your index and middle finger when you're firmly pressing down the left mouse button. The move and aim mechanic isn't very well thought out either, as most of the time the player will find themselves dying or getting damaged inadvertently rather than by the enemy's well aimed shots.
Also, the game uses a very old shooter idea of pixel on pixel contact. What this means is that if even a single pixel from an enemy or enemy projectile contacts even a single pixel of your own unit, you'll die or get damaged. All modern shooters make it so that you only get damaged if the contact is near the center of your ship (heck, even old games like Raiden III didn't use pixel collision anymore). The old pixel collision idea is counterintuitive and not very fun gameplay-wise. This issue is exacerbated when there are certain enemies that attack you horizontally and kill you instantly if they touch you. Because of the control scheme, you actually move towards the enemy, and even if they barely graze you you'll explode as if you were hit by a mega proton laser.
Bad points aside, the game still has its high points. The humor is bitingly strong and you'll find yourself laughing at loud reading the descriptions of countries like "Dictastroika" who's main export is mail order brides. The above mentioned points aside, the gameplay is fluid and and action packed.
All things considered, the game is a decent foray into more hardcore gaming by PopCap and is quite fun. Any fan of shooters should give it a try, especially if they can find it at a discounted price. Besides, the game has a boss named "Kommie Kong" in it. You can't pass that up can you?