26 years ago today, PC gamers played a shooter-strategy hybrid called Battlezone II: Combat Commander and fought in tanks against the alien race of Cthonians.
Before the team at Pandemic Studios rose to fame with games like Star Wars: Battlefront, Mercenaries and Destroy All Humans, they learned important lessons in 1999 with their debut game called Battlezone II: Combat Commander. It was a sequel to Activision’s hybrid first-person shooter and strategy game, set in the alternate 1990s.
The game presented us with the classic conflict between the United States of America and the Soviet Union, but in an alternate history, the two sides clashed over the so-called bio-metals which came to earth by the fall of a meteor. As bio-metal was an invention of the alien race Cthonians, an inter-racial conflict quickly arose and the USA and the USSR joined forces and formed the ISDF coalition to defeat the aliens.
Battlezone II: Combat Commander was played primarily with the view from the cockpit of aircraft and tanks. It had spacious 3D his letter in which you could occasionally get out of the vehicle and, also in the first person, walk around the grounds. It was possible also switch to the strategic camera and issue commands in that way, and the radar in the lower left corner of the screen was also used for navigation.
The game was designed as something that would merge two different genres into one ambitious hybrid. However, despite the decent ratings, it was accepted by only a small part of the players. It didn’t help that it was once very demanding on hardware. Ultimately, this was the last installment of the Battlezone series, although, although in 2018 an unexpected remaster (without the double in the name) thanks to the Rebellion Developments team that took over the rights to this series from Activision.