Battle Tech

There is so much going for this game. Battle Tech is authored by Alex Drelick, but the style is so remarkably like his brother's that one has to wonder who was the genius. Perhaps they both were.

Battle Tech is a Duky Inc game from 1997. It's 4 files long, and take quite a while to play. One of the few games on the archive I hasten to call "epic". Much like its predecessor: Overflow.

The storytelling is nothing spectacular, but it has its moments. The real hook this game has is it's graphics and gameplay. The author has a distinct architectural mindset, and uses combines a strict use of symmetry with random spatterings of simple shapes and patterns to please the eye. Everything is in vivid colour and each board gives the eye something new to look at. There is a vast world to explore with lush forests, artic wastelands, mechanical nightmares, and everything in between. Hordes of monsters stand in your path and bosses fight you fiercely, many with their overwhelming visage looming overhead. The first two files are simple distractions from the plot, simply to test your mettle. The last two files alone could easily have been two seperate games.

What's that you say? Don't fancy fighting prefab enemies? If you are not like me and don't really care for the classic ZZT enemies, you'll still be pulled onward to discover what lies beyond that next passage. What spectacle will you behold next? The destruction of a moon prehaps? The alien mastermind? The adventure never stops, and the action never lets up.

Only a few flaws seperate this game from being perfect. But in the end it still stands as a feast for your itchy trigger finger, and candy for your eyes. A fantastic game that has not yeilded in power to the newer, more complex games.

Play it now.

I don't know how long this game has been here, but I think it deserves a review.

Battle Tech is divided in four part, so I'll give it four small reviews.

Part 1: This is a movie that tells you the beginning of the story. The graphics are very good.

Part 2: Start of the real game. You're trapped in a dugeon, from witch you have to escape. Most of the opponents you have to fight are creatures, and bosses. The graphics are nicely done, and the story was good enough for me.

Part 3: In this sequel you'll have to travel to a moon and to get here you have to go to a lab complex. Here you'll have to fight with objects instead of creatures. The bosses have to be fought differently than usual.

Part 4: Final part, this part shows some points of imperfection. I found some bugs in the game. Objects who weren't locked, so if you touch them again, you'd have to wait till it finishes again, and a few powerups that did't do anything. But like all other parts, very good graphics.

Despite the bugs I still could finish this game, and I didn't regred downloading it.