A lot of fun for an old school shooter
User Rating: 8.1 | Battlezone II: Combat Commander PC
I read the reviews posted here and elsewhere about Battlezone 2 and most of the reviews seem to be based on the comparison to the original. I never played the original, so this review is based solely on Combat Commander. I played this game when it originally came out and again here recently (03/2006) when the developers released the 1.3 patch adding a ton of great updates to the game. This is a fun, old school FPS/RTS game. You play the role of a new soldier in an interplanetary war between yourself (the army that employes you) and the alien inhabitants of Pluto (?), the planet you have landed on. The team that previously tried to establish an outpost has all but been wiped out and it's up to you to find out why and battle the inhabitants of the planet. The bulk of your time is spent in various vehicles (tank, ship, etc) that hovers over the terrain of the planet. You also have the ability to jump out of the vehicle which shows you as the soldier you are, complete with weapon. There are very few times when you really need to exit your vehicle, save acquiring another one or interacting with other teammates or accessing base terminals. The game, in the beginning, sends you on small missions, guarding various pieces of equipment that the alien enemy is trying to steal. You advance by doing escort missions and eventually scouting missions with other teammates. You never feel like the 'lone soldier' as your com-link always has chatter from your superiors giving you heads up on current situations and objectives. The RTS part of the game has you gathering resources to use for building new ships, bases and ammo for the various ships you'll be piloting. The MP side of the game is equally fun by teaming with others to complete similar goals. As old as this game is, it's not easy to find many online games to join, but as cheap as it is, it's pretty simple to get your hands on a copy (ebay, amazon) and have a fun lan party playtime with your friends. The new 1.3 patch adds some 100 new maps to the game as well as support for higher end resolutions, better textures, new in-game menus and better setup in audio/video. The graphics are somewhat dated, but still decent compared to today's advancements. For an engulfing and challenging single player game, this one is a blast. If you are able to find the crew for a multiplayer game, it's equally as much fun.
Edit: After having played again for a bit, i'd forgotten something about the game. You have two main view optiions, 3rd and 1st person. The 3rd person view, to me, is somewhat worthless because when shooting at enemies, the crosshairs tend to float oddly and make it a bit difficult to actually keep them on the enemy. The enemy tends to jump around a lot and make it tough to keep focus on them. The best view is the 1st person view. The problem with this is that it's induced some motion sickness and is making it difficult to really play for any length of time. I don't get motion sick with any FPS, but this one is giving me headaches and making me naseaus. It's unfortunate, because i really enjoy this game. I've slightly adjusted the score because of this problem. 
