Battlezone: Gold Edition rolls onto PC, goggles optional
Get completely tanked
You wait forever for a Battlezone game, and suddenly two roll up at once. Mere weeks from the release of Battlezone: Combat Commander, Rebellion have the confusingly named Battlezone: Gold Edition lined up for launch on PC at the start of next month. Completely unrelated to the recently-remastered RTS/shooter hybrid series, this is a port of the PlayStation VR arcade tank shooter from last year, although our version will make the fancy space-age headgear optional.
As the title suggests, the upcoming PC release of the game comes with all the DLC from the original PS4 version of the game fully integrated, although that's not exactly much to write home about in this case. Battlezone's DLC was purely cosmetic, including paint-jobs for your tank plus a collection of Bobbleheads to decorate your cockpit with, many based on 2000ad properties that Rebellion now own, such as Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper.
Rebellion's take on Battlezone is a much more arcade-styled experience. After picking from three variants of future hover-tank (hence its ability to strafe and boost around), you're sent out into a procedurally generated map (either solo or with friends online) to shoot baddies, grab powerups and hold on as long as possible. There are some small strategy-lite aspects to it including allied bases needing defending, and enemy bases needing assaulting, but they're largely autonomous structures, churning out extra expendable goodies and baddies.
It's a nice enough looking game, in a pointedly retro, texture-lite Tron style. Given that the PS4 is hardly a VR muscle-machine, they had to shoot for something clean and simple in order to hit a nice slick framerate, and as such it should make for a nice lower-end VR title on PC, assuming the porting process turns out okay.
Battlezone: Gold Edition will be rumbling onto PC on May 1st, and while you can play it with a regular mouse and keyboard (or gamepad, for that matter), it will offer full suppport for both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets, and promises online cross-play between VR and regular monitor-bound players.