Battlezone: Rise of the Black Dogs

In yet another travesty of an N64 plot, Earth's resources have been depleted and everyone has taken to the stars in search of new wealth and alien technologies. To cut a long story short, this game is all about blasting the opposition and stopping them from getting what you want. Depending on which team you run for, the opposition are either the Americans, the Soviets or that well-known nation, the Black Dogs.

What makes Battlezone different is that it isn't just your run-of-the-mill, blast everything shooter. In fact, if it were then there would be absolutely no reason to fork out money for this game. The crucial element which gives this recipe a bit of extra flavour is a small sprinkling of strategy. By using a simple but effective menu during the game you can control your troops, turrets and production in the 3-D world, all from your first-person perspective. This basic strategy element may not be up to the standards of Command & Conquer, but this simplicity ensures playability.

Striking the perfect balance between strategy and good old-fashioned arcade blasting makes Battlezone a more than playable game. The missions are all pretty much the usual norm of kill this, collect that, protect this area or escort the cargo. For once, this isn't a bad thing because you can concentrate on tactics. For example, on a defensive mission, you can command friendly units, so you might order your army to protect specific areas or tell them to attack incoming enemies. It doesn't end there though, because once you build up enough resources you can place sentry turrets and construct other vehicles to back you up.

Tank Boys

If all this planning and tactics sounds too much, you can choose to play through the game on a variety of settings which double up as difficulty levels. First up is Arcade, which is a standard blastfest, but then you have the two scenario-based modes of Pilot and Commander. In Pilot mode all the defences are built for you and all units do what they think is best, so you can concentrate on the job at hand. This is good to start out with, but after a while it can become frustrating when the computer AI doesn't do what you want. When you are ready to become a full commander, you can try the next setting up. On Battlezone's highest level of difficulty, you decide exactly what all your tanks do and where they do it.

As you might expect from a game set in the future, the tanks you get aren't exactly the average Sherman that you'd find at your local arms dealer. Each of the tanks you can pilot not only offers a variety of high-tech weapons, some of which can be collected as power-ups on each level, but can also hover. With enough momentum, you can effectively get the tanks to jump. This is essential on the later levels when you have to make your way up steep lunar dunes. Momentum is unfortunately one thing this game isn't short of. Perhaps it's the gravity on the various planets, but controlling the tanks is one of the biggest problems that needs to be overcome, when learning how to play Battlezone. Getting from A to B is fine, but trying to shoot anything down along the way is quite difficult until you get used to the handling. This isn't helped by the fact that the 'lookspring' function cannot be turned off, so you have to hold the analogue stick precisely in position when you want to line up your shots. Thankfully, the computer does auto-aim to some degree, but successfully targeting moving opponents with the basic weapons can be frustratingly difficult.

What really brings Battlezone down to Earth are the completely unacceptable visuals. As you can see from the screenshots, the graphics would not grace a first-generation N64 game. What really puts the icing on the cake is the fact that the game uses the Expansion Pak.

Shell Games

Battlezone's dull appearance is accompanied by awful explosion and weapon effects as well. This does the game no favours at all. Killing things would be a lot more fun if the screen were to fill with massive brightly-coloured explosions, dancing with spinning shrapnel. Instead, what you get is a puff of smoke, followed by a fireball which looks as powerful as a Bic lighter. At best, all you get is a shockwave which is about as awe inspiring as watching Lost In Space. The sound effects for all this space war aren't exactly divine either, but then sound never did travel well in space.

Having said that, any explosion is going to be a welcome sight when you're battling against your mates in a four-player space deathmatch. To spice up the action, you can even enter some computer drones to take pot shots at. This is nowhere near as much fun as many other multiplayer games, but the advantage it does have is that you can play a strategy game as well as the usual deathmatch. If commanding units against human opponents isn't enough for you, there is also the third option to race against your friends from checkpoint to checkpoint across the lunar landscapes. Of course, if the odd bullet hits the other racers by mistake then that's their problem...

Battlezone: Rise Of The Black Dogs has some great and involving gameplay, but unfortunately it is held back by its terribly old-fashioned visuals. If you want an all-out blasting tank game go for Battletanx (reviewed in this issue). If, on the other hand, you fancy a bit of strategy and can see past the cosmetics and through to the gameplay, get Battlezone instead.

Been wonderin' how to serve up an old classic on a 64-bit console? Well try this recipe for Battlezone: Rise of the Black Dogs. Take one cup real-time strategy (a ripe Command & Conquer should do fine) and one cup first-person shooter (a la Quake), add a dash of planetary exploration and a generous helping of "bio-metal," throw it all in a genre blender, set to liquefy, pour into an Nintendo 64 cartridge and serve to one to four players chilled.

Let's take our time machine back in time for a second. The year is 1962. The Americans and Soviets have somehow orchestrated the world's biggest cover-up, and we're not talking the recovering of alien bodies or the capture of some swamp gorilla. While we civilians were busy picking our noses, the cold war duo snuck whole armies to the different planets in our solar system. Why, you ask? To gain control of mysterious alien alloy deposits known as "bio-metal" and use it to build advanced weapons. Whoever gets the most bio-metal could win the war.

Battlezone developer Climax is taking the Activision PC hit and not only faithfully porting it, but adding new Nintendo 64-exclusive features as well. Players choose between the Americans and Soviets of the PC version, or they can opt to be members of the renegade Black Dogs. You can play the full Commander Mode game which includes all the strategy elements, like building structures that will produce troops and commanding multiple units at one time. Alternatively, you can just blast away at the enemies and collect repair and ammo power-ups without bothering yourself with the strategy part in the new Arcade Mode. The other new feature, Pilot Mode, allows players to be a member of an elite squad of hover-tanks following specific mission orders from your commander. Of course, you can always blow up three of your friends in the various multiplayer options: Death Match, Capture the Flag or Arena Battle.

Battlezone supports hi-res with the RAM Pak, and the PC's complicated controls are porting over nicely to the N64's controller. Action and strategy fans should be in for a treat.