The dream of inserting the player in a tank has existed for decades. Battletanx, World of Tanks, Tank! Tank! Tank!, a quarter of the Atari Jaguar’s library — a platform practically won’t pass muster until it’s blessed with some sort of (fictional or otherwise) tank simulator. Battlezone VR, a revival of Atari’s 1980 vector-based arcade game, is Rebellion’s submission for the newest platform available, PlayStation VR.
Sitting inside one of Battlezone VR’s hovering tanks feels amazing. It’s brightly lit, surprisingly spacious, the integrated user interface makes it easy to see ammunition counts, shield information, and a radar display. I wanted to reach out and push buttons and pull levers even though I knew it was impossible. Sitting in a tank in virtual reality and being able to turn around and see my surroundings transformed mundane into extraordinary. The novelty of VR is at play, and this certainly accounts for a large percentage of Battlezone VR’s immediate admiration, but it’s no less stunning in practice. If Battlezone VR’s only measure of quality was how well it simulated controlling the inside of a hulking neon tank, it would receive a perfect score.
Battlezone VR, of course, has to operate as more than an intoxicating pseudo simulation. While its core retains the purity of tank-on-tank violence, it’s all wrapped in an extrinsic campaign. A hex-based grid positions your starting point on one side and the enemy base on the other. To claim a hexagram and proceed, you must complete the randomly assigned mission on the procedurally generated field. Battlezone VR incorporates concepts from modern roguelikes, leading to the end of your campaign if all of your lives are lost. This sounds harsh, but it works in the spirit of Battlezone VR’s campaign; every mission is conceivably different and the order of progression should feel different every time.
There are a handful of twists inside Battlezone VR’s campaign map. Supply points allow the player to buy new weapons with acquired currency. Shield generators might be out of the way, but allow the player to weaken the final conflict. Nemesis tanks, Battlezone VR’s approximation of minibosses, appear on set points on the map every time the enemy’s power level rises by three. The actual missions offer familiar branching points; escorting friendlies, blowing up an enemy strongpoint, defending your base, hacking by proximity, and simply killing everything. Really most of Battlezone VR boils down to simple annihilation, but the ways in which this is achieved is slightly remixed.
Logic would dictate that overtaking extraneous points on the map, finding more weapon blueprints, and generating a ton of money (to buy new weapons from those blueprints) would create an easier path to victory. I am not sure this is the case. Every time a mission is finished, the enemy’s power level increases. In a game where I frequently felt overmatched and outgunned, it didn’t make sense to do anything above the bare minimum (especially when you take your limited amount of lives, which increase in cost each time you buy an additional one, into account).
Battlezone VR attempts to cover diversity with difficulty. While there are a ton of crafts to set your sites on—flying drones, sentry towers, different classes of tanks, suicide trucks, UFO’s, bases with circumnavigating weak points—their means of operation isn’t subject to the same sort of variance. If you’re in their sights, you’re fired upon with remarkable efficiency. They’re not smart, there don’t appear to be any sort of tactics at play, but if you’re in a certain range they meekly descend upon your tank and unload everything they’ve got.
This shouldn’t be as hard as it feels. Your hover tank is actually quite nimble, and doubly so when you choose to employ the turbo boost. It is not so fast, however, to properly evade incoming enemy fire. When playing Battlezone VR solo, it’s more effective to cover behind walls, make sure you’re not surrounded, and sporadically step out to fire off a few potshots. Retreat and repeat. It didn’t see, to matter how much I upgraded my tank’s shield points, my demise was always subject to unanticipated bursts of the opposing force.
This is kind of a shame! Controlling Battlezone VR’s different classes of tanks is genuinely fun. I don’t expect to be out there obliterating everything like a madman, but progress felt more like the result of me gaming the system rather than gaming the, well, game. Even on its easiest difficulty, Battlezone VR just amplifies its power without consideration for a shift in strategy. One could make the argument that Battlezone VR is supposed to improve through successive campaigns—blueprints remain unlocked across campaigns—but grinding feels incompatible in its model. Grinding is fine, but not when it’s artificially induced.
While the virtual reality aspect of Battlezone VR is largely positive, it can sometimes obscure vital information. For my first two campaign attempts I had no idea, for example, that holding square down would bring up a (peashooter) weapon with unlimited ammunition. This weapon will also generate ammo from downed enemies. It’s also not immediately clear that the boost button consumes your shields. I get that filtering that information through pop-ups inside your tank is cool and authentic to Battlezone VR’s experience, but it’s a mystery as to why it’s so obscured.
Playing Battlezone VR with up to three other friends mitigates some of its structural instability. The biggest benefit is the ability to heal each other, a facet of the game completely absent in single player. Your total number of lives are shared, but teammates can even be revived if you can get to them quickly enough. The AI responds by becoming more plentiful, though also slightly dumber as this increases their ability to drive into and occasionally get stuck in walls . Blasting things with friends, in practically any context, is better than going it alone. Battlezone VR isn’t one to break form.
It’s unfair to judge a game by what it doesn’t have, but Battlezone VR’s absence of competitive multiplayer is puzzling. It feels like all the pieces are there, and it seems like any style of play without the AI would be a load of fun. It also wouldn’t hurt to extend Battlezone VR’s basic portfolio, which currently stands as a $60 roguelike. It is a launch game, however, which generally excuses sacrifices that may have been necessary to get it out the door.
While its architecture is modest, there’s no deny Battlezone VR looks and sounds exactly as it should. The neon highlights and smooth surfaces of each level look like a computer trying to simulate organic textures, inspiration that is obviously borrowed from Tron but perfectly in sync with Battlezone VR’s aesthetic. The diversity of color and contrast against the enemy crafts is also appreciated. On the audio side, an electronically composed soundtrack is consistent (if not generic), and a chatty AI companion is quick to remind you of anticipated shortcomings. Battlezone VR may have been built on a budget, but it didn’t come at the cost of clarity or style.
Battlezone VR made me feel like I was driving a giant neon tank inside of a laser-sharpened area. Every other game in existence, of course, has made me feel like I was playing a videogame. This is the advantage (and the novelty) of virtual reality, and Rebellion understood this in their construction of Battlezone VR. It didn’t have to be intricately detailed or feature a genuine campaign, but it needed something to explore and extend its arcade foundation. If Battlezone VR runs unopposed, it could endure as the premier tank/action game for the hardware. If met with drive and competence, however, Battlezone VR will fade under the light of its uncontested launch.
