The Scoreboard #9

Battlezone

Adding revolutionary next-gen visual spunk such as “red” and “blue” to the standard green wireframe look of Battlezone didn’t exactly catch our fancy (or tickle the nostalgia bone, for that matter). The appeal of tanks kicking the crap out of other tanks is still cool, but with such a slow pace – forward, turn, shoot, repeat – only Achievements can save the day! Too bad Battlezone’s Achievements focus too much on playing the Classic (WHAT’S HAPPENING?!) and Throttle Monkey (extra fast for ADD gamers!) modes, and not enough of the kinda-fun four player online modes.

Best Achievement – Specialist (5 pts.) Destroy a Tank by piloting a Missile Multiplayer game - Ranked match Taking over the reins of a one-shot-kill rocket is cool, but more often than not you’ll smash in to a wall before you realize what’s happening. These things are quick, so be on your toes. It’s supremely satisfying when you smash this sucker in to some unaware chump who didn’t see you coming.

Worst Achievement – Maniac (10 pts.) Score 50000 Classic game - Throttle Monkey mode There is only one thing you could possibly add to the green-wireframe nonsense of Battlezone’s “classic” mode to make it less playable: triple speed. Okay, two things: triple speed, and a high score goal. No thanks.

Easiest Achievement – Sergeant (10 pts.) Win a game Multiplayer game - Ranked match This Achievement is as simple as running out the clock in a 1v1 match with a buddy. It works out to a point a minute, so kick back and crack open your latest issue of OXM in the meantime. If you want to add 25 more points to your name, don’t get killed in the process.

Hardest Achievement – General (30 pts.) Score 1000000 Classic game - Normal difficulty If we could comprehend what was going on in the Classic game, we’d gladly rack up a million points by slaughtering a legion of polygonal panzers. This would be easy if we could see what was happening in Battlezone, but we were busy taking eye drops of bleach in attempt to recover our vector-scarred vision to bother with this monster.

Time Investment  vs. Payoff – 4 (out of ten) If you weren’t a Battlezone master walking in, don’t needlessly waste time trying to hit the high scores. You’ll get the online Achievements at the cost of ten minutes or so of your time. Ironically, the sped up Throttle Monkey game will eat up most of your time, since spawning = immediate death.
 
Overall – 2 (out of ten) There are only a few worthwhile Achievements and a painful unlocking process, Battlezone is hard to recommend. If you aren’t already a god of this stop-and-pop, noob-hating tank sim, the only Achievement you’ll be unlocking is Cornea Corrosion.

*****

Another week gone, another load of Achievements unlocked. Good thing too, because starting next week we’re going to be drowning in the waters of Liberty City and, well, not much else. You can look forward TO OXM’s GTA IV review on the 29th, and it’ll get its time in the spotlight on The Scoreboard in due time – we want to make sure we’ve been educated more than enough to start talkin’ about the Achievements. If you’ve got your own review of a recent Xbox 360 Achievement-Disc, email it in and unlock your own Achievement: badass free goods.

Congratulations on reading an entire Scoreboard without reading the vilest word ever created! It’s true! Not once did we say the word shmup! Achievement Unl—ah, damn it.

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