Games Revisited: Battlezone 64

[Sk8teland85]

Battlezone: Rise of the Black Dogs is an N64 game that came out pretty late in the life-cycle of the system. It did not sell well obviously but it still is a pretty nice game overall. Now this is apart of the Battlezone series that started way back in the days of Atari but this game really has no relation to those titles besides the name. While looking through my old N64 games today I decided to go and give this another go.

Now for starters this is a pretty unique game overall in that it has a wide array of modes each of which play different. The basic gameplay in all the modes is that of a First Person Tank shooter meaning you are in a tank and riding around shooting at other tanks, buildings, and such. Overall this does work well. Each veichle handles in it's own way which is nice. Like light veichles are more manuverable and faster than the heavy ones but cannot take many hits.

Another minor part of thew gameplay is the on foot segments. Now when on foot you are in 3rd person most of the time. You are armed with a basic Plasma Rifle although this weapon is almost useless since it is so weak. You do however get a secondary Sniper Rifle which while hard to handle is pretty handy. With the Sniper Rifle you can not only hit targets at range but you can also snipe pilots in veichles and take the veichle as your own.

Well with all that out of the way on to my revisit. The first mode I played was what is known as the arcade mode. Now this is a very simple mode, you are put into a veichle and must destroy all the enemy veichles without getting killed. You then earn a score based on how well you do. This may be simple but it works well and is very fun.

Next comes the pilot mode. Now this is like the story mode of the game, you play through missions as one of 3 sides and try to finish the objectives and complete the mission. This too works well as a whole and is fun. Although some of the objectives are rather annoying like the escort ones since the veichles you have to escort are just so slow at times.

Finally comes commander mode. Now it was all nice and fun up to this point. First let me tell you what commander mode does different from the regular modes. In the regular modes you are just a pilot who runs around the battlefield doing things. In commander mode you are not only doing that but are also the base commander and have to setup the base and deploy all the units like an RTS. Now this would have been all good except the N64 controller just is not a good way to controller this kind of thing. The interface is just not responsive enough to use for this kind of thing and adding to that you have to do this all in real time while piloting your tank and completing objectives. It is just a complete mess at times and while yes you can get it to work with practice it never feels as if it works well.

Other prolems I had where the controls, which while good where a little too responsive at times and not reponsive enough at times. Although this could be partially be due to the age of my N64 controller. Next was the graphics, while not bad they all just seemed muddy and bland when compared to other games on the system. Finally there where a fair amount of audio glitches through-out the game and while not reallt something that effects the game itself they where still very annoying.

Now overall after this revisit I have to say this is not really a bad game but not really a good one either, it falls somewhere in the middle. While yes it is a fair amount of fun it has it's issues which cannot be ignored. But that being said if you can find this one cheap it is worth at least considering since it is rather unique that is for sure. Just be aware that it might not be your kind of game.

[Captain Justice]

I looooooved this game, I played it so much back in the day.

And I thought that Commander mode was the best part of the game, actually I would of quit playing it if not for that mode. All opinions I guess.