I.T. Kid

A tank, an arena and a lot of incoming fire. Tank Wars is FreeOnlineGames' 2009 arena shooter, and its instruction screen sets out the controls in one column: the mouse moves and aims, the left click shoots, and holding the left click fires the time stopper. WASD drives the tank, Q and E are the two special attacks -- the screen names them, and the movie's own code holds a bullet burst among them -- and the space bar cycles the weapon.\n\nPressing on leads to a setup screen rather than straight into the fight. It carries a quality setting (low, medium, high, best), a level number, and a list of loadout options -- vulcan, plasma, missile, bullet burst, spinning, spread shot, scan -- each showing whether it is switched on, beside the maximum health, the special-attack points, the time stopper and the sound volume, with a Start button to begin.\n\nThen the arena: a top-down field of enemies and bullets, a health bar, and a combo counter that rewards a run of hits with a bonus and shows the highest combo reached. The game's code names the parts -- enemy bullets, cannon and counter fire, the enemy cap and the losing-life state -- and the fight runs until the health bar empties.