Battlezone II: Combat Commander

Battlezone II: Combat Commander
Developer(s)	Pandemic Studios
Publisher(s)	Activision
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release	1999
Genre(s)	First-person shooter, Real-time strategy
Mode(s)	Single player, Multiplayer

Battlezone II: Combat Commander, often abbreviated to BZII or BZ2, is a 1999 computer game released by Pandemic Studios as a sequel to Activision's 1998 Battlezone. Like Activision's Battlezone, Battlezone II is a hybrid tank shooter, first-person shooter and real-time strategy game. The player pilots various futuristic vehicles, while using the function keys to select and command units and structures. Battlezone II features two races, the ISDF (humans) and the Scions (aliens).

Plot

The Battlezone series is set in alternate history. The first game was a comedically straight-faced depiction of 1950s Cold War gone interplanetary. Battlezone II is instead set in the 1990s and has a much more subdued alien invasion theme. Access to alien technology has necessitated the creation of an international peacekeeping force, the International Space Defense Force (ISDF), whose role is to oversee distribution of the rare bio-metal resource and mediate disputes between member nations.

The plot had also been changed somewhat comparing to the previous game. The Furies are, in fact, the Black Dog squadron, brought in for experimenting. General Armand Braddock, an M.I.T. graduate, conducts an experiment of fusing bio-metal with human flesh, called Project Pedigree, creating highly efficient killers fused with their vehicles. After some resounding victories, the Furies rebel. The National Space Defense Force and the Cosmo Colonist Army merge, creating the ISDF. Their combined power was enough to defeat the Furies, who flee towards the outer Solar System. To prevent the misuse of bio-metal, the AAN (Alliance of Awakened Nations) is created to oversee the even distribution of the resource between the countries.

After several years, Braddock starts to monitor the boundaries of the Solar System. He secretly builds a base on Pluto from diverted resources without the knowledge of the AAN. They also discover a new celestial body, dubbed "Dark Planet" because of its hidden nature. During these, they come in contact of an alien race who call themselves the "Scion Collective". Shortly after the loss of the Voyager-2 probe, contact with Cerberus Base on Pluto was lost. Braddock informs the AAN's leader, Ambassador Kossieh of the fiasco. A whole fleet of ISDF troops was dispatched to find out what happened.

The storyline follows the experience of Lieutenant John Cooke, who was in the fleet as a subordinate of Commander Yelena Shabayev. After landing, Cooke, Shabayev and Lieutenant Simms find the base in ruins (Simms: "For a scout outpost, this place sure was heavily armed."), and also meet with some unknown - later to be Scion - crafts, who shoot them on sight. Cooke finds a survivor, Major Manson, who requests a discussion with Braddock, but Shabayev notices that something is jamming their communications, prompting Manson to say "Then they already know you're here, pal. Your best bet is to call every squad who can hear you." Meanwhile, Simms is conducting a perimeter patrol and comes under attack. The other two save him, but they receive a distress call from another squad. As Simms is wounded, he is left at the base. Cooke goes out to save the squad and their service unit.

Shabayev and Cooke went out to the main section of the base, encountering a strange, bug-like vehicle, who surprisingly quickly erected a jamming device. After breaking through the Scion defenses, the duo reached the base. Shabayev's past experience with Constructor units came in handy, as she restored power to the bases. Cooke singlehandedly defended the base while she was away, receiving his trademark Sabre hovertank. After some skirmishes, Cooke planted a tracking device in a retreating Scion craft, enabling the fleet to follow them to the Dark Planet, presumably their home planet. After establishing an outpost, Manson requested Cooke's help is destroying an "alien" structure (a pilot noticed "This looks like one of ours."). Manson requested that Cooke not say anything to anyone and told Shabayev that Cooke had just wandered off-course (prompting her to argue with Cooke, though she knew that something wasn't right). The remains of Voyager-2 were found some distance from the base; analysis showing that it was destroyed by a Scion missile. After a decisive victory, the Scions retreated through an unknown phenomenon, speculated to be a wormhole. Braddock ordered the whole fleet to follow. It was later revealed that the Scions could not live under the conditions of the planet.

The fleet arrived in another system, thousands of light years from Earth. The system has three planets, Mire, Bane and Rend. After landing on Mire, Shabayev suffered an accident, calling Cooke for help. However, they were trapped in the jungle. Cooke made it back to the base on foot, prompting Manson to say "That was very impressive; the way you marched through that jungle... I must say I'm surprised you survived..." Cooke also brought back a chip, pinpointing the location of a Scion base with a large power signature. The signature turned out to be a large device, anchored into Mire's core, capable of harnessing the power of the entire planet to create a blast capable of destroying Earth in one shot. Although the machine was left intact, the power source was removed per Braddock's orders. Shabayev's team did their own investigation, concluding that the energy used by the device can be used for a number of purposes. The report is incomplete, as the team was removed from site.

The machine had been equipped with transmitters, showing that there were more of them. As all three planets are small, they could only support one device per planet. Bane was the next target. After eliminating a convoy, Cooke was sent through a cave to find the source of an unknown transmission. It was a transmitter, housed in a destroyed city of some sort and bearing the insignia of the Black Dog squadron. Braddock immediately ordered bombing of the building, nearly killing Cooke in the process ("I would relocate immediately if I were you, Cooke." Shabayev: "General, what are you- Wait until my men are out of there! Cooke, get the hell out of there and return to base!") However, the detonation caused the cave to collapse, cutting Cooke off from his ISDF base. Braddock eventually sent a dropship to pick him up but there was still tension from the incident in the air. To hide his blunder, Braddock promoted Cooke to Lieutenant Commander, claiming it's because of his "bravery."

Shabayev was extremely suspicious, however, and filed a report to the AAN about Braddock's actions. When they were dispatched to the next mission of demolishing a Scion base, both dropships were shot down. After helping a Recycler stranded in an ice field, Cooke found the wreckage of Shabayev's ship, but no sign of her. The attack was attributed to a Scion missile, although none of their ships were in the area when the attack occurred. The crash site of her dropship was cleared of wreckage and she was presumed dead.

Once Cooke was recovered, Braddock ordered him back out to shut down the weapon on Bane. Meanwhile, Manson and his base were coming under fire by the Scions. Braddock, not wanting to lose his foothold so close to the weapon, ordered Cooke to rescue the base. Afterwards, Cooke went and disassembled the power supply from the weapon. Unfortunately for Braddock, the transmitter they destroyed previously managed to send a message to Ambassador Kossieh. The leader of the Scions, Padishah Burns, requested a meeting for arranging peace. Kossieh accepted, suspending Braddock and preparing to send him home to be court-martialled. He navigated his carrier over Rend and sent a dropship for Burns. Manson and Cooke were to oversee Burns' boarding within a Scion base. However, the dropship exploded just as it reached the carrier's dock, blowing it out of the sky. After some major confusion, the Scion crafts opened fire. Manson was cut off, the other ISDF units began engaging the enemy, and Cooke was barely able to get out alive. Communications with the other units were lost, being presumably dead. Braddock thought something bad like this would happen so he had a Recycler waiting outside the Scion base and had Cooke set up shop. Cooke assaulted the Scion base and recovered the last power core, disarming the weapon.

With the death of Kossieh, Braddock was reinstated to lead the fleet. He promoted Cooke to Major and then sent him to the carrier's wreckage on Rend to search for survivors. Cooke caught sight of a Scion craft trying to haul away the vehicle of the, still living, Burns. Padishah was captured and being towed back to base when a Scion appeared saying it was Shabayev, ([her distorted, mechanic voice] "John... This is Shabayev...John...please...stop." [normal voice through radio] "John, it's me, Yelena! I'm on my way to you, stay there!"). She tried to reason with Cooke, while Braddock vehemently ordered him to fire on the Scion vehicle. The storyline now diverges into two lines:

ISDF Alternate Ending

John obeys his superior's command and destroys the Scion craft. Braddock informs him that Manson and his men survived, but they refused to obey, saying that he (Braddock) is a traitor to the AAN. Cooke inserts a small team under his lead and destroys the base. Manson's body was found at the outskirts of the base. They also find out that Burns has escaped.

Following Scion transmissions, they locate the heart of the Scion society: Core Planet. It is a medium sized planet presumed to be artificial. The whole planet bears a striking resemblance to the Dark Planet and is essentially a huge computer. After establishing an outpost, Cooke followed a convoy to a hole in the crust, leading to the planet's interior. He descended, and after dispatching numerous automated defenses, destroyed the central crystal, causing the planet to collapse and detonate. His monologue concludes that "The Scion threat is gone. With no Core Planet, the entire race will die off in a matter of days. [...] Why would they wanted to destroy Earth? Or they never wanted to destroy Earth at all? I guess we never know. The answer dies with them."

Scion Alternate Ending

Instead of shooting the Scion as commanded by Braddock, Cooke orders the Tug carrying Burns to follow the Scion. After leading him through an underground tunnel, the Scion confirms that she is Shabayev. She was found by the Scions on Bane after the crash. She explained that Braddock ordered the attack on the dropships to silence them. He had also ordered the Voyager to be shot down to prevent the AAN from detecting the ISDF base on the Dark Planet. She also revealed to John that the Scions were actually humans who had been fused together with bio-metal. At the core of the Collective were the Furies who were the former members of the Black Dog Squadron. After the destruction of the fictional moon around Uranus, Achilles, they had fled to the "Scion" home system and had found the Cthonian ruins on Mire and embraced their culture. Their ultimate goal is not to destroy Earth, but to bring the Cthonian culture back to humanity.

John was transformed into a Scion to better aid their cause ("I can do things. I can feel things I never felt before."). He was informed by Burns that the three machines that were disarmed were called alchemitors, and that they did not destroy planets but actually transform planets, making them habitable. The Core Planet was dying, as evidenced by a large number of dead Scions found on Pluto and Dark Planet before. They can only survive if they find a new Core, and the Dark Planet was the ideal candidate. A routine patrol had managed to steal one of the power crystals of the three machines. Shabayev asked John to escort the Hauler towing the power crystal to a nav point where it would be carried away by a Scion dropship. When the convoy arrived at the passage, a landslide occurred causing them to have to reroute the Hauler. Cooke investigated the otherside and saw a departing Scion vehicle. After the incident, Burns requested that John find and return the last two crystals. The second crystal was stolen from a base with a clever tactic: John lured the defenders into an ambush, then shut down the defenses with a surgical artillery strike on the power generators. When the third crystal was acquired, each was sent to their respective alchemitors. However, when he brought the final crystal to Rend, his team was ambushed by a much larger force of rebels who captured the crystal.

Burns received information that Manson's AAN loyalists (including himself) had defied Braddock and are under siege from his New Regimen troops. After breaking the siege, Cooke counterattacked with Manson's forces, destroying the NR base and even intercepting a rebel convoy carrying the crystal which they were willing to give to Braddock for bio-metal.

With the last crystal in his possession, Cooke landed on Rend for a final payback. Braddock personally defended the alchemitor with an Attila Combat Walker, but he was ultimately defeated and the crystal was placed. The three alchemitors were then activated, their combined beam was shot through a wormhole into the Solar System. The beam impacted into the Dark Planet, gradually transforming it into a new Core Planet at Earth's doorstep.

Gameplay

Pandemic Studios continued and expanded the concept of a RTS and FPS hybrid where the player drove the vehicle in the game, but using a mixture of the reticle and the space bar, select units and buildings to build and order units around the battle field. The F keys at the top of the keyboard were used to create groups of units for easy selection of the units presently on the battlefield when they were not in the range of the player to select via the spacebar.

The common consensus is that Battlezone II was not very popular as it tried to blend two groups together and both styles of players having trouble adapting to the other style they were unused to. Programmer Ken Miller said, "BZ2 was meant to do that at first [appeal to both genres], but headed in the opposite direction. The problem is that mixedgenre games only attract players that like BOTH genres (the intersection) as opposed to EITHER genre (the union). It mainly comes down to learning curve. Action/shooter gamers can pick up just about any action/shooter game on the market and play it in short order, as almost all of them use the same control scheme and feature similar gameplay conventions. Similarly, strategy gamers can pick up just about any strategy game on the market and play it, although strategy games tend to differ from each other more than action games. Confronting an action/shooter gamer with strategy or a strategy player with action tends to force them outside their genre "comfort zone" and requires a steeper learning curve. My pithiest, if somewhat unfair, summation is this: 'FPS players don't want to think; RTS players don't want to die.'"

Actors and actresses

Battlezone II sported some known voice actors in both the film and game worlds. These included:

• James Warwick as General Armond Braddock
• Peter Jessop as John Cooke
• Tasia Valenza as Yelena Shabayev
• Lance LeGault as Major Henry Manson
• Paul Eiding as Padishah Frank Burns
• Warren Burton as Ambassador Kossieh

Instant action

Instant Action mode allows the player to play a single player game against the computer. Pre version 1.3, certain maps forced the player to use certain races, but the ability to switch races was added in 1.3, as well as numerous additional maps.

Technical issues

Battlezone II was not made to be compatible with Windows 2000 and both its installation program and the main game executable will crash if run on that operating system. Battlezone II can be installed and run on Windows 2000 by using compatibility mode. The installation program \Setup\Setup.exe on the game CD must be run through a shortcut which is set to use compatibility mode with Windows 95 compatibility layer.

In Windows 2000, the Compatibility-mode technology is not exposed by default, and requires the Service Pack 2 or later. To enable it, click Start, then Run..., type: regsvr32 %systemroot%\appatch\slayerui.dll and click OK.

Additionally, a patch (v1.3) was released that not only improved the games stability, but made the game fully compatible with Windows 2000 and Windows XP, DirectX 8.1+, and added various new components to the gameplay. Although the 1.3 beta offers better technological support, most members of the Battlezone community feel that the gameplay has worsened due to a bug fix (the ability to fly to unlimited heights) and continue to play on version 1.2. Typically, those still using 1.2 are the only people who still play online.

June 2008 - the version 1.3 public beta patch has resolved most of the outstanding technical issues and added significant modification capabilities. The on-line community is very much alive and playing using the current public beta patch. Several user generated existing and new modifications have been updated to take advantage of the new features available in the v1.3 public beta patch.

On the Market

When Battlezone II was released to the public on January of 2000, the game was met with a lot of enthusiasum, but it quickly began receiving negative views because of out-of-the-box bug issues and an over the top requirements to run the game for it's time. With a multiplayer that was broken and not fixed until patch 1.1 the game recieved a lot of negative publicity while it was on the shelf.

In an interveiw Nathan Mates, A programmer that worked on Battlezone II attempted to explain why after the first game, BZ2 did not fare well on the market, in an interview with the Battlezone Magazine. "Despite things not being a huge success at retail,there's a definite, but smaller, portion of the population that likes the FPS+RTS genre. Their options are somewhat limited. So, they stick with what they know and love. As I said above,[About why Battlezone III was never made] this tenaciousness can really backfire and hurt things -- if the BZ1 fans hadn't bashed BZ2 for so long, then there might have been more people exposed to BZ2. I see this with different BZ2 versions -- there's an extreme amount of anger directed at anything that changes."

Modifications

Battlezone II was one of the first few games to begin supporting Modifications and was greatly expanded on the release of the unofficial 1.3 patch by Nathan Mates and Ken Miller, two employees of Pandemic Studio who had continued developing the game on their own time. It was believed that making the game moddable would keep a community together and an influx of players and new content. Carey Chico, Art Director on Battlezone II said, "Well, the goal of all our effort was to provide for a strong mod community to keep the game going. Seems like it's working."

Battlezone II was designed to be able to support player modifications and featured an in-game mapping tool. Existing vehicles can be modified and new vehicles can be created. Weapons, buildings and missions can also be edited. Below are some examples of player-made mods for Battlezone II.

Forgotten Enemies

Forgotten Enemies is an expansion pack created by members of the game's community with some technical support from two of the game's original developers. It takes place a good time after the events of BZII, and adds 2 new alien races, the Hadean Crown & the Cerberi Collective, to the game and features an entire new story. (The story however, follows the events of the 'Scion' plotline, rather than the 'ISDF' plotline, in which the Scions are destroyed.) In this expansion pack, the ISDF, looking to shed any association with the embarrassment suffered under General Armond Braddock, change their name to the EDF, or Earth Defense Force. They currently share an uneasy truce with the Scions who have not yet forgotten the wrath of Braddock. The Scions, while scouting in space, report a disturbance coming from a wormhole. This transmission is cut off, however, leaving the EDF to go on the defensive. The 'disturbance' turns out to be the Hadeans, another race, whose intentions are unclear. Later on, the player encounters the Cerberi, a race of mechanical beings whose motive is also uncertain.

FleshStorm

FleshStorm is an expansion pack created by Lizard which details the Black Dog Squadron after the events of Forgotten Enemies. This mod brings many new planets, three new alien races, and many other new features to life.

The planet of Gallus IV goes silent and the EDF is sent to investigate. On arrival, they discover that the once tropical world is now reduced to a barren wasteland, dotted with an unknown alien race that has been named the Swarm being the ones responsible for the destruction of Gallus IV.

FleshStorm features a completely new look, eight singleplayer missions, and the ability to play as the Swarm, the Phaer Rhan, or the EDF Black Dogs in multiplayer, in addition to the standard ISDF and Scions. The other race included in the expansion pack, the Mechana, are not available for play in multiplayer because they are quite unbalanced compared to the other races. However, the Mechana are available for play in one of the instant action maps included in the 1.2 patch for FleshStorm.

-New Races-

-Swarm- The Swarm are a race of completely bio-organic organisms that attack a planet, suck it dry of resources, then move on to others. They are incredibly hostile. Their tactics include using ships with very little health or armor, but in great numbers.

-Phaer Rhan- The Phaer Rhan are a race who were driven away from their planet after being attacked by the Swarm. The most notable feature of the Phaer Rhan is the fact that many of their buildings are vehicles, which after being created deploy to become the building. They then can be packed up by a Utility Drone or the Overlord.

-EDF Black Dogs- The Black Dogs are an elite squadron of EDF pilots. Their buildings and units are almost identical to their EDF counterparts, but with some differences. Notably, the inclusion the iconic Red Devil MkII, which is an updated model of the older Red Devil ships.

-Mechana Defense Network- The Mechana were simply drones serving in a civil war waging on their planet. After all of the living population was destroyed, the machines continued to wage war. After one side eventually won, the Machines went into dormancy, awakened again only recently by the coming of the Swarm. The Mechana are extremely powerful, and therefore not available in multiplayer matches.

External links

• Pandemic Studios official web site