Battlezone Ii Combat Commander
Directed by George Collins. With James Warwick, Peter Jessop, Lance LeGault, Tasia Valenza. Battlezone II: Combat Commander for PC game reviews & Metacritic score: The designers have neutralized the fast pacing and complex mechanics that made the first game so much fun.
Overview
Battlezone II: Combat Commander, often abbreviated to BZII or BZ2, is a 1999 computer game released by Pandemic Studios as a sequel to Activision's 1998 Battlezone. Like Activision's Battlezone, Battlezone II is a hybrid tank shooter, first-person shooter and real-time strategy game. The player pilots various futuristic vehicles, while using the function keys to select and command units. Battlezone II: Combat Commander is highly recommended both for fans of the original and new players to the space genre. But do play this on a PC with a fast processor and a good 8MB minimum, 3D enhanced graphics card to get the full effect of the experience. Graphics: Perfect graphics; needs 3D graphics card for maximum effect. Battlezone II: Combat Commander is a 1999 computer game released by Pandemic Studios as a sequel to Activision's 1998 Battlezone. Battlezone II features two races, the ISDF (humans) and the Scions (aliens). Like Activision's Battlezone, Battlezone II is a hybrid tank shooter, first-person shooter and real-time strategy game. The player pilots a tank, while using the function keys to select.
This sequel to Battlezone, one of the best selling games of 1998, is set in the current day as the International Space Defense Force (ISDF) defends known human space from the scourge that are the Scions, a vile alien race bent on our destruction.
During the Cold War, the NSA defended the United States from the USSR in the ISDF’s previous incarnation as the National Space Defense Force. During that war, many American soldiers died and humanity itself faced destruction first by Soviet space forces and then later by a Soviet super-weapon gone out of control, code-named the Furies. Now, under the auspices of the Alliance of Awakened Nations, the ISDF defends human space from any incursion. Under the leadership of General Braddock, a great leader during the Cold War, the ISDF has helped foster great peace on Earth.
At the core of this great space force is Biometal, the alien substance that first spurred mankind’s exploration of space, unveiling ancient technology no one had ever dreamt of. It is this Biometal that fuels the spacecraft and forms the basis for all space technology, allowing the ISDF to protect Earth. However, at the edge of the solar system an old enemy has returned, threatening everything the ISDF stands for. General Braddock condones a course of war, but others under his command think the aliens could be reasoned with. Which side will you choose?
Gameplay, Controls, Interface
There’s nothing quite like the low-to-the-ground, fast moving perspective you’re presented in Battlezone II. Racing across terrain at breakneck speeds behind the controls of a Biometal warmachine can give you quite a kick. The problem with this is that it is the same kick I got out of the original Battlezone.
In Battlezone II most of the missions you will undertake don’t require you to leave your vehicle. This is good considering that your hovertank can withstand an inordinate amount of punishment compared to your fragile body. Your vehicle, which can be one of about 10 different vehicles by the way, is armed with a primary and secondary weapon along with some kind of special weapon and a utility device. The vehicle itself has a Heads Up Display (HUD) to keep your radar and weapon supply at close view and in many ways using one of these tanks is like playing a first person shooter (such as Quake or Unreal), while wearing a HUD over your face.
Movement with these vehicles is simple to understand -- using the keyboard to thrust and strafe and the mouse to pan and fire weapons. You’ll find, much like in the original Battlezone, that each of the vehicles has distinct maneuverability characteristics. The agile Sabre battletank is a vastly more maneuverable vehicle than a Rocket Tank, which has a turret that turns independently of its treads allowing for precise delivery of payloads.
While fighting with each of the units, you’ll also notice other small differences, like the strange ability of the Scion units to morph. Almost every unit of the Scion attack craft types has the ability to morph between a slow, yet powerful assault mode designed for destroying bases and a fast, agile attack mode best suited for turning the enemy into Biometal scrap.
The missions available in the single player mode are challenging, at times frustrating, and very different from one another. Unfortunately, even with the critical acclaim of the original _Battlezone to build from, _Battlezone II fails to achieve anything other than the same gameplay as the original. The battles can be frustratingly long and the number of scenarios in which one simple mistake can lead to disaster are ludicrous.
Graphics
The graphics in this game, while not stunning, are still very impressive. High quality textures, attention to detail, and the ability to play in 1024x768 without a lot of slowdown really highlight all of the engine work that the programmers at Pandemic Studios put into this game. The new ship designs are magnificent and show that the development was geared towards making ship and character models that stood out as very different from the original game. Battlezone was set during the Cold War, with the Biometal equivalents of WWII fighters. Now they’ve returned with the Biometal equivalents of the F22 fighter.
Along with the improved character modeling, the terrain and interface for the game have been redone, each with an innovative design that still has roots in the original Battlezone layout. Impressive fog effects, shadowing, and an engine that can comfortably support 1600x1200x32bit color (okay, well maybe not comfortably save on high end systems), make the graphics in Battlezone II an enjoyment.
Audio
The soundtrack is worth listening to for a while, but falls victim to the normal mistake of being very repetitive. On my shelf, it sits alongside the soundtracks to Mechwarrior 2 and Quake 2.
As for the sound effects, once again expect more of the same. The original Battlezone sound effects have been recreated for this new game and, despite being much clearer and nicer to listen to, are just the same old sounds.
System Requirements
Minimum: P200, 32 MB RAM, Windows 95/98, & 3D hardware acceleration required.
Reviewed On: AMD K6/2 400, 64MB RAM, W95, Diamond V770 Ultra, & a SoundBlaster AWE 64.
Documentation
There is one thing noteworthy about the documentation provided with Battlezone II. In the original game you assumed the role of a soldier -- someone in the thick of the battle, someone who could be lied to easily. As such, you didn’t have all the information. The Battlezone II documentation refreshes the original events portrayed in the first game as well as explaining what was true in the original and what was cover-up.
Bottom Line
Battlezone II is a good game, but only for the same reasons that Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun and Freespace 2 were good. It is essentially the original Battlezone with a few improvements to the graphics engine and more vehicles to choose from. Since Battlezone itself was an amazing game for its time, I cannot fault Pandemic Studios (much) for going with a tried and tested favorite, rather than innovating the genre.
My advice? Play, don’t pay. In the end, Battlezone II is not much more than a glorified expansion pack with a story that really didn’t grip me or even bring me closer into the universe of Battlezone.
The original Battlezone game, released in the mid-1990s, was a truly original and innovative breakthrough in computer gaming. It combined the addictive adrenaline rush of a first-person perspective shoot-'em-up with the stealth and planning of a real-time strategy campaign; and, although it won the hearts and trigger fingers of fans everywhere, it was not a huge success in the shops. Due to various business deals, it was bundled with new computers and graphics cards, where almost everyone who played it fell in love with it.
In making this sequel, Activision has relied heavily on the feedback and comments of this large army of fans, with the satisfying result of an improved game with any small original problems ironed out.
Like all good strategy games, Battlezone II: Combat Commander has a complicated but absorbing storyline. A valuable natural resource known as Bio Metal can save the world and two opposing forces seek to control it. These armies--the National Space Defense Force and the Coso-Communist Army--obviously hate each other and the player can choose either side.
An important part of the game is its excellent multiplayer mode. Each army is made up of teams and you can choose which role to play within the team: a communicator, builder, defender, or attacker. These team members (i.e., your friends) can communicate with each other enabling you to work closely as a coherent team to beat the opposition. This is especially satisfying when attacking the enemy in the shooter parts of the game.
Battlezone Ii: Combat Commander
The original game allowed the player the safe option of retreating from one's tank and firing at the enemy from a cozy distance away. This time around, the local animal inhabitants of the battle zone will be very interested in you if you try to wimp out this way, as they haven't eaten for a while!
The graphics are stunning, especially when a 3D graphics card is available, with landscapes that go on for ever and finely realized battle craft. The game play, even when playing on your own, is fast and furious and the strategy elements of the game do not take away from the pure adrenaline rush of the shooter levels.
Battlezone II: Combat Commander is highly recommended both for fans of the original and new players to the space genre. But do play this on a PC with a fast processor and a good 8MB minimum, 3D enhanced graphics card to get the full effect of the experience.
Graphics: Perfect graphics; needs 3D graphics card for maximum effect.
Sound: Wonderful if you have a subwoofer, still great even with average speakers.
Enjoyment: Unbeatable fun.
Replay Value: The action can be undertaken in either of the two forces, with a multitude of roles to play.
Battlezone Ii Combat Commander Cheats
It has been quite a while since the original Battlezone was released, and since its very late expansion pack's arrival, now Pandemic Studios finally releases their long-awaited sequel to one of the pioneering games in creating the blend of 'Strategy/First Person Shooter' (Uprising was first, but that sucked =). This being Pandemic Studio's debut game, soon to be followed by Dark Reign 2, it remains to be seen, apart from all the beautiful screenshots, whether Pandemic Studios can successfully build upon those great originals and improve them efficiently.
Starting with the graphics, the developers have chosen to stick with the original graphics engine, and build upon that. The units are all brand new of course, and many new features have been introduced. As you can probably judge from the screenshots, the main style of units has been that of very sleek, fast fighting machines. The ISDF (good guys) have their main color (orange) and their recognizable variations of fighting machines, whilst the Scions (eeeviiillll) have all their range of alien'ish yellow fighting things. The quirk here is that these aliens, whilst their ships are pretty well modeled, are a tad undistinguished really. They all have different models but its only after many hours of playing that you know which alien craft is tougher than the other...they all just look... alien. With the ISDF you can at least recognize scout (kick his arse / tank (think twice) / tracked tank (run away) / really big walker (run away faster). For the Scions (sounds like some sort of kitchen knife) its either an 'alien ship' or a 'ack, its really big and has many legs'. The original Battlezone featuring US Vs Ruskies, whilst the units were essentially the same, both sides were recognizable and nicely modeled. There are some more problems, one is that the new addition of 'water' (as they dare call it) whilst nice, does in no way act like any sort of water *I've* been in. Water has a nice rippling texture, under which there is supposedly what you would refer to as a 'liquidy substance'. Except there isn't. You fall in the 'water' and there is absolutely no difference in your falling velocity or movements. The only difference water seems to offer is that only hover vehicles can traverse it, and all tracked vehicles nearby have this unnerving urge to throw themselves into the water and tumble to the bottom. Any map with a few small deep lakes becomes a nightmare as your scavengers repeatedly hurdle themselves to their doom, thanks to some poor pathfinding skills.
One last feature I must comment on, which is really unforgivable, is the fact that the same shadowing problems are still here exactly as they were in the original Battlezone. The one where your shadow is 10 meters ahead of your vehicles and veers in opposite directions when you steer up hills. I booted up the original Battlezone just to make sure, and yes, exactly the same problem is there just like in Battlezone 2. This is a rather poor oversight by the programmers, which should have been picked up after all this development time.
Battlezone Ii Combat Commander
Enough of the graphics, they are not that important. More important is what they have done to the game. The basics are all still the same except for the one important feature of resource collecting. The original had your scavengers only getting metal from biometal found around the place and taken from destroyed vehicles. This meant fights start breaking out if scrap was empty, because destroyed vehicles were required for more resources. This has been changed to suit the more calmed persona's, There are still small areas of scrap, but now there are 'Scrap pools' were you deploy your scavengers to gain a steady income of scrap. Personally, after many hours of playing I find the system works great, but really for the professional players the old method was much more fun, as you had to protect your scavenger to the last few scraps available and escort it back. In Battlezone 2, scrap collectors do not have to return to base to dump scrap! Also, you cannot snipe scavengers, which is really disappointing. Sniping a scavenger and trying to sneak into your friends base with it was about the most fun thing you could try in the original Battlezone. One nice addition is that you can walk 'into' your recycler/factory and some other structures, there you can manipulate the weapon loadout of vehicles, so constructed vehicles don't always have the default loadout. Another nice feature is that your pilot can now get powerups from the Armory, like a Rocket Launcher, and your pilot has a 'jetpack' which gives you a once of boost up into the atmosphere, its great.
The single player experience is nothing different from the original, except that there has been some heavy scripting work going on, with some of the most inflexible scripting a title could have seen to date. Most missions are fine, but then in others it becomes impossible as the strict script refuses to let you win because of some minor thing you didn't do somewhere. Still, when it works, the scripting makes the missions varied and more interesting than the usual 'survive with a base first few minutes, build big army, kill all' scenario. After completing the ISDF missions you can play as Scion, which interestingly 'branches of' from an ISDF mission, assuming a different outcome had occurred. The storyline is pretty well presented, but your 'character' is sometimes just not the right guy to relate to, always following orders even though when talking to himself, he doesn't really agree with things. You never once get an option to just do what *you* want, not your 'Cooke' character.
A disappointing element that's missing also is the fact you cannot play a 'skirmish' type affair where you play the AI in a multiplayer map. You can only play the AI in 'Instant Action' which has the AI set with preset units and structures scattered about the place. Getting a game going isn't quite as simple as it used to be either, instead of using the original's excellent system of joining a regional server to a chat room, and there hosting a game, they had to change it to a crap gamespy system. I must assume the only reason for this change is because the original's regional server option was not economically viable. Well apart from the crappy new gamespy system, games you host/join now have fewer options to choose from. You either win by destroying the enemy's recycler, or by killing him a set number of times (default is 0, meaning the feature isn't used). You can't say, set the kill limit to 3 (for the pilot this is) AND have him lose when his recycler gets destroyed. In the original you could. Tsk. Also, the most horrifying little feature they introduced to multiplayer is that when you die, you loose your sniper rifle, which can only be regained from the armory after you've built a barrage of advanced buildings. There better be a tweak to change this soon, because this really starts to destroy multiplayer for the original's fans. A patch is already out, by the way, to fix a small amount of multiplayer bugs (there's more left though).
Well, I have still failed to speak of the new 'tracked' vehicles which cannot be sniped, the scion mortar which can always kill you once spotted, wherever you are, and the cool new APC with rocket guys in them.
To wrap it all up, Battlezone 2 is like the original, with better graphics, a small dose of crap additions, a small dose of good additions, an overall attempt to perhaps simplify this game and make it accessible to the less intelligent gamer, taking the edge off some of the radical maneuvers that could be preformed in the original Battlezone which really, is very disappointing for me. Now this whole review has been whining about all the bad points, but since it's a sequel, I cannot recap on all the good points that the core of this game possesses, they were discussed in the review of the original (I hope). It's an enjoyable game, but blunting all the radical features means this game doesn't score anything radical either, I pray for perhaps the original Battlezone to simply be updated with nicer graphics and a few minor tweaks, its simply too hard to try and add more good features to the great game that was 'Battlezone'.
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