Battlezone II: Combat Commander

"A great tank-sim, but leaves much to be desired as a strategy game."

Reader, keep in mind that Battlezone II is my first experience with the series, having never played the first or the origional arcade versions. Visually, it is stunning, with a variety of living, breathing planets to work on, with wildlife (some of which are quite dangerous) and plantlife (which does seem to grow back rather quickly after being burnt down/knocked over). There are a wide variety of vehicles to drive around, most of which are hovercraft, but the ones that are the most fun (to me, anyhoo) are the 'big boys', the Assault Tank and the Titan. I'll tell ya, the best memory I have of this game is driving into the enemy base in my AT, with ten more right behind me, blasting everything in sight with a plasma cannon.

Unfortunately, all that fun and enjoyment is coupled with some serious, frustrating problems. The least of them is the difficulty level. After the first few missions, the enemy gets extremely unforgiving and relentless. I stick to the medium difficulty setting, and the latest several missions (I'm about half-way through, I think) each required 4-5 tries to get through. A larger problem is that you're practically forced to remain inside a vehicle. While you can hop outside (and you always eject if your vehicle takes too much damage) and go into a relay station (which allows the game to come rather close to being a standard RTS), you have to personally oversee many operations, because various events and scenes will never happen if you don't. Plus while in the relay station, a hungry lizard might decide to see if you'd make a tasty dinner.

The largest problem (and boy is it a doozie), is the unit AI. I'll tell ya, more than once I was litterally screaming at my computer for the moronic antics of my own soldiers. If it isn't my scavengers running off and getting themselves killed (with NO ORDERS from me to do so!), it's my tanks sitting in place while the enemy pounds away at them. And then there's all the units who decide to visit the top of the Himeleyas (in vehicles which most certainly CAN'T handle vertical terrain) when there's a perfectly good, flat plain a couple seconds travel to the left. Plus if you send more than one unit to a particular spot on the field, expect a long wait before they get there, as they try to figure out how to go around all this mobile scenery (their squadmates). The only place where they seem to show a shred of intelligence is when you tell them to follow you, and even that's not a pretty sight. They're still trying to go around each other and the terrain, so odds are if you're not carefull, you're going to be alone when you reach the enemy base, expecting your soldiers to be right behind you. And when the bullets start flying, they keep trying to go around their squadmates to get closer to you, and ignore the fact that they're getting killed. On at least two occasions, as I waited for the squad to catch up, a unit (or two) flew right past me, straight into the defensive fire of the base I was preparing to destroy, and then turn around and try to make it back to my position (they didn't make it either time). Thankfully, the enemy pilot AI's no better. Quite frankly, I'd be happier if the designers just gave me an Assault Tank, a repair drone, and to heck with all the other units. Difficulty should NEVER be determined by your own units' stupidity.

Here's one customer who is -praying- Activision makes a unit AI patch, so my soldiers might possibly display -ANY- artificial intelligence.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/18/00, Updated 01/18/00