To be fair, it kinda makes sense. The person best equipped to criticise a game or work is probably often someone who's experienced it for the longest. That way, they get to know all the things that don't add up, get repetitive on repeat playthroughs, various UI and UX annoyances that get worse the more you experience them, etc.
There's a reason the biggest fans of a game or film or TV series tend to give some of the harshest criticism, and why the most active users of a tool or program tend to have the most to say about it.
I loved this game growing up as it was one of the few games which ran well on our family computer, despite not having an internet connection to participate in any of the PvP elements. It was probably the most played game of my childhood. I've also logged almost 300 hours in the redux version on steam.
Interestingly, since I didn't have the internet to participate in the MMO elements of the game, my views of it are entirely rooted in the storyline and campaigns. The community is something I haven't experienced. And none of these netcode or pvp bugs or phantom players showed up there.
I love the game. In the single player modes, you can play as the NSDF (US) forces, USSR, (and later as the Chinese forces too) in a sci-fi retelling of the space race where you discover alien relics throughout our solar system and try to piece together where they came from, and more importantly, where they went. And it did this while combining a first-person vehicle combat mode with a top-down RTS system that, in my opinion, worked really well together. And I still take inspiration from it in hobby game projects I work on.
Now that I've grown up as a software developer I've thrown so many hours into writing Lua scripts to build my own missions and AI, and creating custom maps!
My god I love BZ98. For me, the remaster was frustrating. The most annoying thing was that certain things, like the combat AI, had been improved in ways that broke the balance of the single player campaign. I doubt players with the subject’s level of mastery would be bothered, but it significantly reduced my enjoyment.
It remains a rare gem, though. There are so few RTSs that place you in the world there isn’t even a name for the genre. The only others I can think of are Brutal Legend and Sacrifice. But BZ98 was the one that I discovered first.
Those are rookie numbers. You gotta pump those numbers up.
Oh, a newer Battlezone. Not the original from 1980, the first 3D coin-op game.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone_(1980_video_game)
Can’t help but think that amount of time is better spent elsewhere, and that goes for all video games. A bit sad really.
8000 hours isn't unheard of. It's definitely above average dedication. But it's surprisingly common.
The first Battlezone was an awesome game, graphics were amazing for its time. Second one was also not bad TBH.
I loved the feeling of hovering above the ground and shooting down enemies. Then if your ship was about to be destroyed, you would eject out of your ship and you could try to snipe your enemy's ship to steal theirs. When you were outside your ship, you were very weak and ships could kill you by just running over you or with a single shot so you had to have really good aim to snipe and hijack one of your enemy's ship fast. Then you could literally drive around in their bases in their ship to spy on them and they wouldn't recognize you as the enemy (until you started shooting at them). That way you could check out their positions and defensive infrastructure to decide whether or not to mount an attack and how. Brilliant concept.
I also loved that there was a goal of exploring the map to find and secure geothermal geysers as you could only start a base around those. It was one of the first truly immersive game experiences.
This was many years before counter-strike, but the game mechanics were far more complex. It definitely didn't get the hype it deserved.
No way to get more sniper ammo on the Nintendo 64 version very frustrating
Recycler here!
Really enjoyed this article last week. I wonder how obvious or how long it would take most players to see the difference between the (preferred) original, and the redone Remastered.
The part about why the author spent another 600 hours playing after the negative review is heartwarming as heck: to help other people modding.
Battlezone 98 was an incredible game for me, even if I didn't get far into it. The blend of fps and rts felt sweeping and epic, gave a sense of scale I hadn't experienced. The game ran incredibly smoothly on the Pentium mmx with crappy voodoo banshee.
My hours logged is nowhere near Sacrifice, a game with incredibly different setting (planes hopping wizard currying favor with local dieties), but both games had that blend of first-person and rts that was incredibly challenging & of incredibly neat scale, teaversing huge open spaces. I only play them once or twice a decade now, but they're games that recur in my thoughts a lot.
There’s also a remake of battlezone 2: combat commander which is excellent. Truly excellent games!
Objects are made by men and used for many purposes. But we never love objects
I worked on BZ2 at Pandemic in 99-00 and setup the forums, and I don't remember this fellow in particular (tbf I can't remember anyone's names), but I recall we had a lot of trolls so I wouldn't doubt he was there. It's been quite a treat to see how passionate the Battlezone community has been over all these years. Anyway, AMA.