BattleZone 98 Redux

Masterpiece is probably warranted. This game requires you not only to think and manage on your heels while still maintaining reflexes. If you try to blast your way to victory, you will fail, and this is why some say it is frustrating. You cannot win by being a one man army. Matter of fact, the best commander mostly commands rather than fight. Only careful teamwork and planning with your team will lead to success. This starts mission one. Two bad guys will show to get your hauler. You cannot get them both before the hauler is dead. You need to protect that hauler by ordering him to base as soon as the baddies appear or you will lose the mission... What is this teaching you? It is teaching you to command over trying to be a hero. If you are a casual gamer, this game is not for you as it will take a lot of thinking. However, if you like thinking quick on your feet, I'd suggest giving it a go! It has yet to be eclipsed to this day.

Other, non-GOG version players are using custom mp maps. I am unable to install Omega Squadron Multiplayer Map Pack to GOG -version, so can't play with them :(

(4 stars if on sale) There is not much strategy to be had against the AI. Build a few gun towers and let the AI suicide against your defenses until it runs out of pilots. Tactically, the AI is quite good. It can kite. It defends bio-metals fields with turrets. It adjusts its build queue to counter your forces, I think. Tactical superority almost never overcomes strategic deficiency though, and that is true here. On the other hand, piloting tanks is a joy. They handle fluidly for the most part with just the right amount of inertia to be realistically annoying. You can outfit a variety of weapons on your tanks, though you likely will only use a few on your own tank. Else the micromanagement becomes too burdensome. Therein lies the problem with this game. Combining vehicle simulation and RTT is only cool on paper. It's hard to manage a whole battlefield when you can only see a short distance in front of you, but you have to if you want any chance of winning. To be fair, Battlezone does this better than most. It has several clever features, like a robust waypoint system and a satellite view where you can issue orders from overhead. And these are well integrated into the game. Many players criticize the redux for its difficulty. I did too at first. Then I realized. Riding your tank into battle is cool for a little bit, but it gets old fast. If you don't have a challenging environment that forces you to try different things, even more players might give up before they've even seen half of one campaign. That's what the game is for most people: a rare experience.

A nice idea, could have been great fun with a more forgiving implementation. Unfortunately, the designers for some reason decided to make this game punishingly, unremittingly difficult. It doesn't so much have a difficulty curve as a difficulty cliff - one the height of Olympus Mons. You will constantly run out of ammunition after about 10 seconds as the computer player generates unit after unit, attacking you constantly. Calling in an ammunition refill is fiddly and then it takes forever to arrive. You have to sit there for about 5 minutes waiting for it to sloooooooowly drop from the sky as wave after wave of enemy tanks charge all over the map attacking your base and your scavengers and you ALL AT THE SAME TIME! I don't know how any human player can possibly keep track of or respond to any of this. I finally gave up on it during the Venus missions. It's a real shame - I liked the idea, the setting, the basic interface, the graphics design and so on. I've given the game a score of three because of the imaginative setting and atmosphere - especially on the Moon and Mars, which look great. The whole game could have been great if the game designers had perhaps remembered that games are supposed to be fun, not a form of mental torture. I play to relax, and this is too hard to be relaxing. Yes, I'm aware the game has difficulty level options - don't be fooled - very easy isn't very easy at all. Maybe I am just doing something wrong, but the game gives you few clues about how to actually proceed. It just throws you in and expects you to somehow do everything right. A game should only be this unforgiving at the end, not in the early levels. Be warned then! I'm aware there are some players who enjoy this kind of high difficulty game - if so then this is definitely for you. If you are not, be aware that you probably will only enjoy the first few levels.

Played a pirated copy of Battlezone '98 a few years ago and found it a really unique, enjoyable game. But it's also incredibly flawed and awkward. It'd be worth a four-star review to the kind of person who doesn't mind playing something awkward and flawed so long as it's unique (i.e. me) but it hasn't aged well enough to justify this price tag. Don't consider it until you can get it for maybe 60% off.