Battlezone: История и Эволюция Серии

1998 video game

Battlezone is a first person shooter real time strategy video game, developed and published by Activision. It was released for Microsoft Windows in 1998. Aside from the name and presence of tanks, this game bears little resemblance to the original arcade game of the same name. Activision remade it into a hybrid of a tank simulation game, a first person shooter and a real time strategy game. In Battlezone the player is controlling everything on the battlefield from the first person view. Two expansion packs were released in 1998, Battlegrounds and The Red Odyssey. In 2000, a Nintendo 64 port was released under the name Battlezone: Rise of the Black Dogs. In 2016, a remastered version titled Battlezone 98 Redux was released developed by Big Boat Interactive and published by Rebellion Developments. A sequel, Battlezone II: Combat Commander, was released in 1999.

The primary resource in Battlezone is bio metal scrap which is used to produce new units and construct new buildings. Building and directing units is done via interface either by selecting onscreen object with the mouse or by using number keys on the keyboard. Starting with a bio metal recycler (the most basic construction unit), the player constructs vehicles to scavenge scraps of bio metal, build base defenses, and construct new base vehicles capable of building more advanced structures and vehicles. Players can acquire bio metal scrap by either finding it or salvaging it from a destroyed enemy unit. The American campaign starts on the Moon, but the NSDF is forced off after the destruction of their main base. They relocate to Mars, but find the Soviets already there. Both sides locate alien artifacts, and the Americans also find a factory; the long dead alien race that created the bio metal is identified as the Cthonians, who inhabited the planet Icarus (now the asteroid belt) and visited Earth on several occasions, influencing Greek mythology. The Americans learn of an ultimate weapon called the "Fury" and head to Venus to learn more about it. Another Cthonian relic is recovered, pointing to Jupiter's moon Io. The NSDF finds a third relic, but this is stolen by a scientist defecting to the Soviets. The player must steal a Soviet fighter craft and tap into the communications network, which reveals the CCA relocation to their main base on Saturn's moon Titan. The Americans clear nearby Europa of CCA units to prevent early warning to those on Titan, but the main assault is annihilated, as the Soviets have begun to manufacture Fury vehicles. The Furies then turn on the Soviets; they are self aware and programmed to destroy all life. Icarus was destroyed by the Cthonians to prevent the Furies from reaching Earth. The NSDF and CCA ally against the new threat, and after destroying the production factory on Titan, travel to the fictional moon of Achilles, orbiting Uranus. The Americans destroy the main Fury base, but this causes the moon's core to destabilise, and the player must destroy the Furies' evacuation vessel before it escapes, then escape themselves. The Soviet campaign follows the same basic storyline, but from the CCA's perspective. Starting on Venus, the Soviets are hounded off the planet by an NSDF unit called the "Black Dogs". They travel to Io to capture one of the Fury relics, but after the Black Dogs destroy their main base, are forced to regroup and reestablish a foothold. Once this is achieved, the production of Fury units begins, and the CCA uses them to wipe out the Black Dogs in the final mission, just before the Furies turn on them. The Soviet campaign is the shorter of the two, as the NSDF missions were intended as the main game. However, the CCA missions are meant to be more difficult, and the player must manage the full technology tree from the beginning, instead of being gradually introduced over the course of the campaign. An add on, called The Red Odyssey, was later released with an American and a Chinese campaign. The American campaign follows an NSDF unit, also called the "Black Dogs", during scrap gathering operations on Jupiter's moon Ganymede. The Americans, expecting boring garrison duty, are ambushed by Chinese tanks, which are capable of cloaking. After being mauled by the Chinese, the Americans reestablish themselves and discover that the Chinese are using a Stargate like portal to travel between Earth and Ganymede, and to the planet Elysium, which is located in another planetary system. Control of the portals changes hands back and forth several times, but the campaign ends with the Americans in control, and the Chinese annihilated. The Chinese campaign starts earlier, with the first few missions focusing on stealing the Portal technology from the Soviets (who do not have their own campaign) and establishing their own. Later missions follow the American attempts to control Ganymede and Elysium.

Producer Mike Arkin explained the motive behind the game's concept: "The original Battlezone was action only. Action alone doesn't cut it 17 years later. But when you combine action with other genres, you get wildly fun and wildly successful games. Action meets RPG, you get Diablo; action meets simulation, you get MechWarrior 2; action meets adventure, you get Tomb Raider. We said, 'OK, there is no action meets strategy yet'". To solve the display issue which makes combining the action and strategy genres difficult, the development team created an interface which combined a first person, in the field viewpoint with a 3D topological radar and transparent drop down menus which allow the player to monitor and control the battle situation at all times.

In 1998, Macmillan Publishing released Battlegrounds, an authorized level pack for Battlezone, after conducting a contest in which players submitted their own creations. The pack contains 45 Instant Action missions, and 52 multiplayer maps, provided with a new utility for launching and managing maps. Also in 1999, Macmillan Publishing released the Team Evolve made addon pack for Battlezone: The Red Odyssey. This expansion contains a new single player story arc pitting the Chinese Red Army forces against both their allies, the CCA, and their enemies the "Black Dogs". The "Black Dogs" were a roughed up, beaten up offshoot of the NSDF with the reputation of ending up with the toughest missions. The Chinese forces introduced both Portal technology that allowed travel outside the Solar System and a 'Cloak', which hid their ships while disabling weapons. In 1999, a Battlezone Gold Pack was released which includes Battlezone, two authorized add on packs: The Red Odyssey and Battlegrounds, and an official strategy guide.

In 2000, Crave ported the game to the Nintendo 64 under the name Battlezone: Rise of the Black Dogs. Compared to the PC version released a year earlier the game includes an additional Black Dog campaign distinct from that of The Red Odyssey, but the multiplayer is very limited. The game features a standard deathmatch mode where up to four players combat each other and a number of computer controlled bots, a race mode where the objective is to navigate from one beacon to another for a set number of laps, and a strategy mode in which players choose three computer controlled bots to assist them and simply attempt to eliminate all other players.

Last patch for the PC version was 1.4 released in November 1998. In 2002 the multiplayer support ended and Activision shut down its servers but released the source code of the multiplayer library "Anet" under GNU Lesser Public License to the community.

In July 2013, Rebellion Developments bought the rights to Battlezone from Atari, and in 2016 Rebellion unveiled Battlezone 98 Redux, a re mastered version of the 1998 game. It was released on April 18 on the Steam platform and on June 8 on the GOG. com platform in that time. A remastered version of The Red Odyssey was later released in July, and the expansion was later bundled with the game for its release to the Apple App Store the next year.

The American market research firm PC Data reported that Battlezone sold 48,000 copies between March and November 1998. Sales in the United States totaled 65,716 copies during 1998, which accounted for $2.45 million in revenue. This number had risen 73,324 copies by April 1999, while global sales totaled 200,000 copies by June. Pandemic head Andrew Goldman said that the game "did not do as well as we would have liked at retail", which the company's Josh Resnick blamed on its branding, marketing and unusual design. Reception of Battlezone was overwhelmingly positive. The game scored 89 out of 100 on GameRankings. Most reviewers were impressed with the way Battlezone combined two genres: real time strategy and first person shooter. Reviewers were also impressed with the game's interface, calling it innovative and simple to use. Game Revolution praised graphics and addictive gameplay. Battlezone was nominated for GameSpot's 1998 Strategy Game of the Year award. Battlezone won Computer Gaming Worlds award for the best action game of 1998. The editors wrote that it "really broke new ground", and summarized: "The graphics were drop dead gorgeous, the multiplayer game was a blast, and the game sported a beautifully designed interface that made commanding your forces an intuitive breeze". PC Gamer US nominated Battlezone as 1998's best action game, best strategy game and overall game of the year, but it lost these three categories to Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, StarCraft and Half Life, respectively. The editors called Battlezone "a who would have thought it possible melding of first person action and real time strategy that also boasted some of the year's best presentation and interface design". In 1998, PC Gamer declared it the 16th best computer game ever released, and the editors called it "one of the most refreshing games of 1998 [ ] so much deeper than just a graphic reworking of its twenty year old namesake". In 1999, Next Generation listed Battlezone as number 38 on their "Top 50 Games of All Time", commenting that "using a brilliant 3D map interface, the developers [ ] managed to seamlessly marry a great realtime strategy game with a hardcore action engine. The end result is one of the most compelling PC games ever released".

Activision released a sequel late in December 1999, Battlezone II: Combat Commander, which involved a war resulting from the incursion of a new faction known as the Scions. Members of the Black Dogs broke away and merged with the biometal, becoming Scions. Battlezone II introduced a split single player campaign, allowing the player to switch sides at one point and join the enemy. The sequel received generally positive reviews, but notably less so than its predecessor.