Battlezone: Rise of the Black Dogs

Gameplay

Battlezone: Rise of the Black Dogs offers three modes of single-player play in addition to a comprehensive set of training missions. Arcade mode harkens back to the original Battlezone, and consists of destroying every other vehicle on the map. Pilot and Commander modes follow the campaign, the difference being that in Commander mode, the player is responsible for constructing a base and can issue orders to fellow units.

Compared to the PC version released a year earlier, the game's multiplayer is very limited. The game features a standard Deathmatch mode where up to four players combat each other and a number of computer-controlled bots, a race mode where the objective is to navigate from one beacon to another for a set number of laps, and a strategy mode in which players choose three computer-controlled bots to assist them and simply attempt to eliminate all other players.

Factions

Three rival factions come to play in the game: The United States, the Soviet Union, and an elite team of mercenaries known as the Black Dogs. The game takes place in an alternate version of the 1960s in which the United States and the Soviet Union use alien technology to wage a secret war across the solar system, fighting for control of the rare resource bio-metal.

Plot

The game begins during the Cold War with the Americans and the Soviets discovering a substance called bio-metal in some meteorites, which can be used to build vehicles with previously impossible abilities. They use this new substance to start a war that is fought throughout the solar system.

During the war, the Americans and Soviets discover an artifact and a weapons factory on Mars built by the same race of aliens that created the bio-metal. It is revealed that this race of aliens once occupied a planet sharing an orbit with the asteroid belt. They fought a civil war that raged throughout the solar system, until one side built an ultimate weapon to destroy the other side. The Americans and Soviets begin to look for this weapon.

The Americans find a piece of it on Jupiter’s moon, Io. However, while the Americans are transporting it, the Soviets capture it. By the time the Americans find where the Soviets took the piece, the Soviets have already built a prototype of the weapon, called a Fury, and have begun mass production. When the Americans arrive at the Soviet base on Titan, where the Furies are being kept, they discover that the Furies have turned on the Soviets and destroyed their base. The Americans and Soviets agree to join forces against the Furies.

The Furies escape the coalition forces and set up a new base on a moon of Uranus. The coalition forces engage the Furies on the moon, which results in the destruction of the Furies and the moon.