There is this unique all-or-nothing vibe with Battlezone because when you do eventually lose all your lives you also lose all upgrades and progress you have made during that last campaign. When things calm down you can find radar towers and other installations you can hack to reveal enemy locations on the radar or find blueprints for new weapons that will unlock at the next armory. With only a few enemies or perhaps a stationary turret you can be more tactical, but when 3-5 tanks are attacking you’ll need to stay nimble and unload streams of rockets, cannon fire, or lock-on missiles. There is even a cool active-reload feature (just like Gears of War) where you tap the RB button at just the right time for faster reloads. Weapons also have an elaborate upgrade system where you can increase the rate of fire and damage dealt. Tanks have four weapon slots but you only start with two weapons, so again, you have to decide to upgrade the ones you have or purchase new weapons to fill those empty sockets. Using the terrain and any natural or manmade obstacles to block incoming fire while launching your own successful attacks is key to success. You’ll go up against a variety of tanks, flying drones, and giant robot turrets that shoot you from across the map. You have indoor and outdoor battlefields as well as a mixture of both. I’m learning new tricks and tactics all the time, but the real challenge lies in the fact that everything is procedurally generated so not only is the hex map different each time you play, what’s in each hex also changes. While I would normally toss aside any game I couldn’t make significant progress in during the first ten hours, Battlezone has that addictive “one more time” arcade quality about it, and I do seem to last a bit longer with each subsequent game. You can upgrade between every mission but can only change out weapons when you land on an Armory hex. There is considerable strategy in just deciding how to best spend your data points. You start with 3 lives and may purchase more for increasing amounts of data currency (1000 for first, 2000 for second, etc.), but those credits are also needed to purchase tank upgrades for better shields and new weapons. My record is making it across six hexes before I lost, and that took nearly two hours. I can’t say for sure how long a full game of any duration lasts because as of this point (about 12 hours of play) I have yet to win a campaign. You’ll want to knock out as many of these as possible to make your final battle as easy as possible. Some of these are on the way to your target while others may require a short detour. Those numbers above are the shortest distance from start to target, but depending on your chosen duration you will also have 3, 5, or 6 shield generators scattered about the map. When I say “mission” I am referring to a single hex on a fairly large hexagonal map that has you starting on one edge and fighting to the enemy base on the other side. To put this in proper perspective, a short campaign will have about 10 missions, a medium about 12, and the long 15. This gives you a basic starting point for how you want to play, and then as the game progresses you can customize your tank with additional upgrades between missions.īattlezone can be played online with up to four players in both competitive and co-op modes or you can tackle the massive campaign alone in an offline campaign that comes in short, medium and long formats. You get to choose from light, medium, and heavy tanks each with their own set of weapons, speed and armor stats. OK – maybe things haven’t changed that much.īoth versions of the game feature the same visual isolation, but the new VR version of Battlezone puts you in the driver’s seat of the Cobra, the most powerful tank ever built, surrounding you with instruments and controls and an immersive 180-degree view through the canopy. Now, instead of putting my face into the viewfinder of an arcade machine I’m putting my face into a VR headset, and instead of primitive line art I now get to enjoy primitive shaded polygons. Things have certainly changed in 35 years. Back then the game was nothing more than raster graphics with polygonal objects dotting a barren black void with some angular mountains providing a horizon while you drove your wireframe tank model around trying to blast other tanks and the occasional UFO. As a child of the 80’s I spent more than my fair share of free time in the arcades, and one of my favorite games was Battlezone.
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