Battlezone 2

****

Activision

PC

$99.95

G 8+

Review: Peter Eley

The original Battlezone plot revolved around a secret war between the United States and Russia to control galactic supplies of bio-metal, an element that could be fused to human flesh to create a "super-soldier" cyborg.

Things went badly wrong, and the cyborgs rebelled against their creator, MIT scientist Armond Braddock.

He combined the American and Russian forces into the International Space Defence Force (ISDF) and managed to push the cyborgs back to edge of the solar system.

Just when it seemed they had been beaten, a mysterious alien race called the Scion wiped out the ISDF base on Pluto, sparking a new space war.

This sets the scene for Battlezone 2, a real-time strategy game with a first-person perspective.

Battlezone was a sort of cult game, great fun but one that appealed to a small audience, most probably because it was quite hard.

Battlezone 2 has been designed to have a broader appeal, and is much easier in terms of its interface and gameplay.

The graphics are sharper than the original too, but need a grunty Pentium, a 3D accelerator and 64mb of ram.

Perhaps bearing in mind the difficulty of the first game, Battlezone 2 leads you into the game with a series of easy, step-by-step missions. While that may make the game more accessible, it is a bit boring and it isn't until about mission 10 that you can start building advanced bases and units.

Much more interesting are the quick play and multiplayer modes, where you can dive straight in and take advantage of the game's features.

The first-person perspective sets Battlezone apart from many other real-time strategy games and makes combat much more interesting than map-based warfare.

Commanders move around in amoured units, but can jump out and navigate or fight on foot. Distant bases are controlled by accessing satellite view, and units can be built, grouped or given orders in this mode.

Watch out for some flaky AI, though. Units blast away regardless of who's in the line of fire, and pathfinding takes the shortest route, even if it's a road to oblivion through enemy forcs.

Like all real-time strategy games, the key to victory is raw material, and the most important part of Battlezone 2 is making sure you have plenty of Scavenger units hunting for supplies of bio-metal.

Peter Eley e-mail: peter_eley&herald.co.nz