Sherman M4 (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com
71Sherman M4 is a 3D tank game, published by Loriciel in 1989. This was in the days when 3D was just becoming popular, and games like this were somewhat of a novelty, with only Atari's Battlezone in the arcades to set the early standard. So lets see if this arcade battle tank sim is still fun to play.
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Recorded: 7th Feb 2024
Edit Started: 20th May 2024
Narrated: 27 May 2024
Uploaded 14 Sept 2024
V3
Of all the tank battle games, such as Conqueror, Team Yankee, Pacific Islands etc, this one seemed to grab my attention. This time we play as a one-man army against the Nazi's, with the aid of some semi-AI driven tanks, a map, and some objectives. I'd played this game several times, but never got very far with it, having been killed off by the enemy fairly early. When I can to record this run, I'd already got some familiarity with the first scenario, or at least enough to know what to do, but I never managed to liberate the Jeeps or progress further than the 1st checkpoint. So this was my longest play and best try so far. Although I could get the air strikes to work for some reason. Normally you just radio in a position, and the bombardment starts.
I had to write down the functions of the F-keys into a strip of paper, and put it above the F-keys, so I could see what they all did in the heat of battle. And this really helpful!
Lots of stupid rendering and youtube issues meant I had to made a few renders of this video, and this is the third revision due to problems.
Danscore
Sherman M4 inhabits the middle ground of Arcade and Simulator, and both of these sides seems to be represented. There is damage control, but you can manually fix the tanks. There is a map with optional Fog of War. There are tons of enemy tanks to shoot at, and lots of terrain to explore. On the down side, this offers little except a seek and destroy tanks 1:1 combat element. Exploring never gives anything more to the game, unlike Hunter, and missions are basic 'Reach Point B, C" etc. I haven't spent any time with the other scenarios, so cant say more about those, but the initial mission in Normandy is predictable enough to learn it, and start to plan some attacks. The AI is feeble, and you cant expect support if one of your tanks is being shot at. Indeed, it's best to leave every tank in a very safe place, and go out one at a time - which defeats the purpose of controlling 4 tanks simultaneously from the map. Air strikes can help, but in most cases, you've have to wait for the strike to end, or risk getting blown up yourself from friendly fire. Lastly, there is no score in the game, and what I thought was a score turned out to be a fixed registration number on the internal view. Considering everything on the internal view seems redundant, and the player is better off using external view to avoid getting their view obscured by smashed glass, it seems most of the actual sim elements are wasted. The game seems to run fast enough, but moving in an out of enemy fire power, randomly getting hit, seems a bit of a risk sometimes, and lives can be lost almost too easily. For all of that, I still think this is a good game, and I give it 7.5 out of 10.