Battlezone
April 28th, 2008
Battlezone, the vector graphics arcade game of tank warfare from 1980 is the latest classic game to be ported to Xbox Live Arcade by
Stainless Games. As with all previous ports handled by this development studio it comes packaged with both Classic and Evolved game modes as-well as normal and the fantastically named Throttle Monkey difficulty levels.
For those not in the know, Battlezone was a bit of a rarity in its time using 3D vector graphics and presenting the player with a first person perspective of the game world. Nowadays of course the classic game looks quite dated but the developers have done a decent job with the look of the evolved version, retaining the vector based imagery of the original whilst sprucing up the graphics with some well placed visual effects. My only criticism of the evolved graphics however would be that I found it easier to identify which way an enemy tank was facing from a distance using the original graphics rather than the evolved visual update.
The gameplay is of course something that shouldn’t be altered too much when updating a classic, and the core mechanics of the the single player game remain the same. The aim is simply to hunt down any enemy tanks and UFO’s destroying them to score points whilst making sure you avoid any return fire from the tanks. The 3D landscape that you traverse through is littered with various geometric objects which can be used for cover, but apart from finding and destroying enemy tanks there really isn’t much more to the single player experience and may just be a bit too bland for the modern gamer.
The full game version features Xbox Live camera support and additional modes such as Deathmatch, Team Deathmath, and Capture the Flag, but unfortunately these modes cannot be played in the trial version of the game.
Battlezone is 37.64MB to download and costs 400 Microsoft Points.
