Its an interesting game, the aiming system reminds me a lot of Planetside's Cone of Fire system. Essentially there's a large aiming area in which the shell with fly in. Sit still and the cone shrinks, down to a minimum size dependant on your turret, cannon and so on. As you would expect, the large damage dealers are less accurate, so the CoF takes longer to shrink and doesn't get as small, but the powerful hits make it worthwhile.
Battles seem to be 15 a side, a mixture of both USSR and German tanks, though there seem to be more German tanks in most games, though you start off with both sides basic tanks. Battles take 5-10 mins (I think, I haven't actually timed yet but thats how long they seem to take). They are rather slow affairs, not just because tanks are inherently slow to accelerate and move, if you get too far ahead from friendly tanks you're a large target and will be quickly gunned down. Hide in trees, thats the best way to not be spotted while still being able to shoot out. Sighted enemies appear as red diamonds, as long as someone who can see them is in radio distance. While they are just a triangle, there's no point shooting as you can't physically see the tank, but once there's an outline of the tank below it, you can shoot and have a chance of hitting. Present as little armour as possible to them, because they will do the same to you, unless they haven't spotted you
After the battle you gain exp and credits. Exp is used for the tech tree, and unlocks new tanks and new parts for the current one. Essentially, each army has a tech tree, and each tank has its own small one as well, where you can research different engines, cannons, radios and all the other parts. Once researched, you can buy them with credits to fit to your tank. You also need to buy ammo, the starting cannon's basic ammo is free, once you upgrade you have to pay, so watch your ammo. The exp you gain from a battle can only be spent in the tech tree for that tank, though, so you need to keep buying tanks to move up the tree. That said, I've just completed the tech tree for the starter tank, and it seems once you do that, the exp is traded into 'free exp' which can be spent anywhere, but not at a 1:1 ratio. So you can start upgrading the next tank you're going to buy so its got upgrade options available from the moment you buy it. Or you can use the exp to train your crew. And... I'm still trying to work out what exactly crew do.
You gain enough credits from losing to get enough cash to rearm, as well as have a little left over, and I've not won a game yet to see how much you get for winning, but its going to take a while to afford a new tank.
And as for it being dark, I think he just has his brightness set too low, my game looks fine. Runs at a smooth 30fps on my system, 8xaa and everything on high.
Edit: Forgot about victory conditions! There's two, the obvious being to destroy all the enemy tanks, but the other option is to make it to the enemy base, there's a flag there, stay close to the flag and a large bar counts up to 100. Reach 100 and you capture the base and win. The more tanks you have there, the faster it captures.
