A Review: Battlezone: Rise Of The Black Dogs, N64 1998
Battlezone: Rise of the Black Dogs is a first-person shooter/real-time strategy game developed by Climax Group and published by Crave Entertainment. The player takes charge of a tank from a first-person perspective and is able to command everything on the map in an RTS style. Allowing the player to obtain victory over the enemy faction in their relentless search for 'bio-metal'. With a different campaign available depending on which side is chosen, either the U.S. or the Soviets, there is some replayability to this game. Two expansion packs were released for the PC version, and in 2016, a remastered version titled Battlezone 98 Redux was developed by Big Boat Interactive and published by Rebellion Developments.
This game was a mixed bag for me; I liked what was attempted but also recognised that there was a lot of cut content to make it fit onto the N64's game cartridge. As such, the gameplay was something of a shell of itself when compared to the PC version. I can totally see what this game wanted to be, but sadly, I felt that it was a mediocre offering for both of the genres that it targeted. The first-person shooter side of gameplay worked okay; it wasn't great, but it was fairly fun and easy to get into. The RTS side of things sort of worked, but I don't think that it worked quite as intended. The mechanics were so sluggish and it was so hard to get anything done that I mostly just gave up. The allied AI was horribly limited and would get lost without constant player supervision, which reduced most missions to constant babysitting duties that sucked the fun out of play. The enemy AI was not that much better either, and more than once I found it just bouncing off of a wall or structure. The map and command system was intrusive and never quite seemed to understand what the player wanted. So instead, I found a lot of my time was spent going down the 'one man army' route, where I would just do everything for the sake of my slowly failing sanity. It's an ambitious game to have been developed for the N64 and was always going to be limited by the console's hardware, in my opinion. As such, it was just a game that was never going to meet its potential, and that can very much be seen during play.
Visually, this game was very much in the average range of what an N64 was capable of. The worlds were okay but bland, with lots of block colours and simple textures. The UI was basic, and I might even say it was a little ugly in my opinion. The fog of war hid the hardware limitations but also blinded the player and made RTS-related decisions far more troublesome than was needed. I liked the cockpit view, though, and thought that the variations between the vehicles that the player could access and use were nice. The backgrounds were a little sparse, in my opinion, and seemed to be fixed to where the player was looking. It was like an image was locked to the end of the camera and moved with you, rather than being an actual background you could pan over. I liked the weapons and explosions, and I thought that the various animations were pretty good. Damage and smoke particles were nice, and I liked the terrain generation and the way that some of the various structures looked.
However, overall, this is one of those games that was held back by the hardware constraints of the N64. Far too much content was cut, and it impacted the game negatively as a whole. Still, it was an okay way to spend a few afternoons, and I did have fun blasting my way through the campaign missions. I know that it could have been much worse, and I want to give it credit where it is due.
5/10 – Okay!
Signed Off – Leonardo – PSJ
This game was a mixed bag for me; I liked what was attempted but also recognised that there was a lot of cut content to make it fit onto the N64's game cartridge. As such, the gameplay was something of a shell of itself when compared to the PC version. I can totally see what this game wanted to be, but sadly, I felt that it was a mediocre offering for both of the genres that it targeted. The first-person shooter side of gameplay worked okay; it wasn't great, but it was fairly fun and easy to get into. The RTS side of things sort of worked, but I don't think that it worked quite as intended. The mechanics were so sluggish and it was so hard to get anything done that I mostly just gave up. The allied AI was horribly limited and would get lost without constant player supervision, which reduced most missions to constant babysitting duties that sucked the fun out of play. The enemy AI was not that much better either, and more than once I found it just bouncing off of a wall or structure. The map and command system was intrusive and never quite seemed to understand what the player wanted. So instead, I found a lot of my time was spent going down the 'one man army' route, where I would just do everything for the sake of my slowly failing sanity. It's an ambitious game to have been developed for the N64 and was always going to be limited by the console's hardware, in my opinion. As such, it was just a game that was never going to meet its potential, and that can very much be seen during play.
Visually, this game was very much in the average range of what an N64 was capable of. The worlds were okay but bland, with lots of block colours and simple textures. The UI was basic, and I might even say it was a little ugly in my opinion. The fog of war hid the hardware limitations but also blinded the player and made RTS-related decisions far more troublesome than was needed. I liked the cockpit view, though, and thought that the variations between the vehicles that the player could access and use were nice. The backgrounds were a little sparse, in my opinion, and seemed to be fixed to where the player was looking. It was like an image was locked to the end of the camera and moved with you, rather than being an actual background you could pan over. I liked the weapons and explosions, and I thought that the various animations were pretty good. Damage and smoke particles were nice, and I liked the terrain generation and the way that some of the various structures looked.
However, overall, this is one of those games that was held back by the hardware constraints of the N64. Far too much content was cut, and it impacted the game negatively as a whole. Still, it was an okay way to spend a few afternoons, and I did have fun blasting my way through the campaign missions. I know that it could have been much worse, and I want to give it credit where it is due.
5/10 – Okay!
Signed Off – Leonardo – PSJ
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