Battle Zone 2 (BZ2) will likely be sleeper hit amongst hardcore gaming addicts.  The games flaws are arguably the games highlights, which I will discuss later in this review.  The programmers of BZ2 have stuck to their own guns, programming a game that is a gamers game, not necessarily appealing to the masses.  After you read this review you will understand.

Before jumping into the details, I should start by telling you what kind of game BZ2 is.  BZ2 is in a hybrid genre only touched by a few games such as Uprising 1 & 2 and of course, the original Battle Zone.  These games are a good blend of a simulation and a  standard Real Time Strategy (RTS) game.  I have preferred the Battle Zone series over the Uprising games because the simulation aspect of the game is more fine tuned, resembling combat in the classic sim, Mech Warrior 2.  In BZ2, you are the commander of your own ship as well as field commander for your forces.  While a large part of the game will emphasize combat in a 1st person view, you will need to also manage your base, recourses, and allied units.  I will not lie to you, this can be difficult at times, but BZ2 was presented in a way that allows you to learn how to play the game gradually.  In early missions, it concentrates solely on the simulation aspect of the game, letting you get comfortable with the weapon systems of your ship and some basic interface with your allies.  As the game progresses you get more advanced controls at your fingertips and are able to construct additional units and build a base.  Resource management is not as intensive as most RTS games.  Put simply, you harvest gas from the planet using a  single unit.  Your goal is to protect that unit and gain more ground to capture more resource nodes.

Graphically, BZ2 is one of the best games to date.  I seem to say this often about games because designers continue to release games that push the envelope and utilize the many features on modern 3D graphics cards.  I will say though, that BZ2 took every ounce of processing power my P3 500 MHz (with a Voodoo 3 3500) had to give me a smooth frame rate at 800x600 resolution.  The game looks fine at this resolution, but I would have preferred to run it with all the details on at 1024 x 768 or higher.  I can't complain to much though since there are many options that you can turn on and off to control frame rate.  I also have to come to the realization that my 1 year old (former) super computer is now outdated, and that some of you will probably have a 1 GHz machine with a nice GeForce graphics board.

The true beauty this game has to offer is the same thing that will prevent it from being a best seller.  The complexity of the game because of its perfect blend of simulation and RTS will have certain gamers rejoice and others recoil.  I would like to think that long-time gamers, veterans of this community will enjoy this game immensely.  It has all the best features that a rock solid simulation game like Mech Warrior 2 has, as well as awesome tactical strategy similar to that of a StarCraft, except you control these the majority of the time inside your vehicle.  There are times that you can control the action like a standard RTS game in a classic overhead view, but when you do this you are not piloting your vehicle, which often means your best weapon is not being used.  There is a large learning curve for this game, but because it is so fun to play, you don't know you are being trained to play the game.  The game starts off easy and increases in complexity as you learn the controls.  I say this game will not appeal to the mass audience because of the learning curve.  Veteran gamers are starved for games that require brain use and I know that they will enjoy the many features this great game has to offer.  Newbies who are looking for a quick fix of action will probably not give this game the couple hours necessary to begin playing it properly.

I tip my hat in recognition to the fine job that Activision did on Battle Zone 2.  It takes a lot of guts to release a game that is specific to a certain part of the market as BZ2 is.  This game is not for everybody, but I feel that hardcore gamers will certainly have an awesome time with this great title.  The controls, while complex, are streamlined and easy to pick up after some practice.  The many graphics options will allow everybody to play the game, and high performance settings are their for people with zippy computers.  This game is top-notch!

reviewed by Todd Alexander