I tracked down the guy who gave a negative review to Battlezone 98 Redux after playing for over 8,000 hours, and came away convinced he was right

If anyone is more interested in the review than the article, here's the text below. It seems like he was also making mods and patches for the game.

REVIEW: Important disclosure here: Prior to the release of BZ98R (and still to this day), I have been a player of the original game up until it's final unofficial patch version 1.5.2.27 U1. This game is entirely based on this community patch. People who have played 1.5 are going to feel differently about the game than people who last played it 20 years ago (1.3, 1.31, 1.4...). The same goes for people who had never played BZ98 in any form prior to purchasing this game. This review involves numerous statements of objective fact but it was still written by someone who was playing 1.5 for years prior to the release of this game. I understand that the release of this game was the first many many people heard of BZ98 being alive but the truth is that it never ceased living - it's good that it brought many back into the fold but it also basically killed the existing community surrounding it. When I heard that this was being made, I instantly experienced fear of what would happen to my beloved game... my fears were well-founded. What follows is my original review:

I've been intending to do this for a LONG time...

In nearly every way, BZ98R is inferior to the final version of BZ98 1.5 (1.5.2.27 U1) that came before it. If 1.5 had things like HUD scaling so I could play at high res and still be able to read text, I'd probably play it instead and advocate that others do so as well.

The graphics "upgrade" is hardly an upgrade when the most interesting feature of BZ1 was lost - destroyed ships flying into several pieces. There is a massive laundry list of SEVERE bugs that did not exist in 1.5 and I am not aware of any meaningful bug in 1.5 that was fixed by BZ98R.

jump sniping is bugged and exploitable
satellite reveals everything regardless of radar coverage
various DAMNING armory-related bugs
bug related to "perceivedTeam" that has wide-reaching consequences including mildly messing up a campaign mission
the porting of The Red Odyssey was sloppy and a few missions are meaningfully bugged --- If you look on the workshop you will see several LUA patches made by me that deal with many of these problems; I strong encourage people who want to enjoy campaign to subscribe and activate them.
no "all nations" switch
no "cloak disabled" switch
bugged map list in MP (in Steam version, not GOG version)
very poor netcode performance compared to the old game --- I also have a somewhat successful patch for this problem on the workshop as well
no TCP/IP or LAN option for MP - once Rebellion closes down their BZRNET server, MP is no longer possible.
random crashes, mostly segfaults, occur at a very high rate
The mission type that is the backbone of class non-scripted Instant-Action missions is broken and the result is that the game WILL crash about 30% of the time when you try to load a save. I've found ways around this (reimplemented 'Inst4XMission' in LUA) but it requires missions to be patched.
The CLI argument parser is broken
heightmap smoothing that is enabled by default when porting old maps (and affects stock ported maps) is detrimental to the terrain in several ways though I know how to override it --- still not feasible to repair the mistake with regard to stock maps ...

If it weren't for the fact that this game's release AND Rebellion's policies KILLED 1.5, I wouldn't be likely to have played so many hours of this (I idle a lot, I swear!)

I'm going to stop right here for now. I mainly do not recommend this to people who care much about multiplayer.

24 comments

8k hours is a lot.
That's like PhD level, into a game I've never heard of before now.
Sure, It's trust their input.
- I've played osrs some 15000 hours but I suck at it.
  
  What's osrs?
  
  That is over 10 years at 4h a day every single day.
  
  Isn't OSR a bit "plodding to success" as you can always grind up your skills?
- Those are rookie numbers for strategy games.
  Competency starts around 1500 hours.
  
  Yup, I'm still a noob in EU4 after nearly 1000 hours. I'll get the hang of it eventually. 😅
  
  Can confirm, still suck at every PDX game despite a thousand or hundreds of hours in them.
I dont care what you say in your review, but if you clock 8000 hours in a game I'm pretty sure you liked it enough to keep playing, or you're actually just addicted and need to seek help.
I will die on this hill
- Well, could just have started the game, then went to get the doorbell, got hit by a car on his porch and was in a coma for a year before he could get back to close the game.
- I've got some serious time in games I gave bad reviews to. In part because I often get interrupted pause the game and don't get back to it until the next day.
  
  But did you spend 8.000 hours?
- "Game is lethally addictive. 1 star."
It sounds like in the end, he still really likes the core gameplay, but the community has been destroyed some unliked updates to the game, and he's pretty sure that the devs are inflating the steam numbers through private matches with all bots. It's wild how many hours that is, but he probably thinks the game is no longer worth it, amd has sour feelings towards the devs.
- If anyone is more interested in the review than the article, here's the text below. It seems like he was also making mods and patches for the game.
  REVIEW: Important disclosure here: Prior to the release of BZ98R (and still to this day), I have been a player of the original game up until it's final unofficial patch version 1.5.2.27 U1. This game is entirely based on this community patch. People who have played 1.5 are going to feel differently about the game than people who last played it 20 years ago (1.3, 1.31, 1.4...). The same goes for people who had never played BZ98 in any form prior to purchasing this game. This review involves numerous statements of objective fact but it was still written by someone who was playing 1.5 for years prior to the release of this game. I understand that the release of this game was the first many many people heard of BZ98 being alive but the truth is that it never ceased living - it's good that it brought many back into the fold but it also basically killed the existing community surrounding it. When I heard that this was being made, I instantly experienced fear of what would happen to my beloved game... my fears were well-founded. What follows is my original review:
  I've been intending to do this for a LONG time...
  In nearly every way, BZ98R is inferior to the final version of BZ98 1.5 (1.5.2.27 U1) that came before it. If 1.5 had things like HUD scaling so I could play at high res and still be able to read text, I'd probably play it instead and advocate that others do so as well.
  The graphics "upgrade" is hardly an upgrade when the most interesting feature of BZ1 was lost - destroyed ships flying into several pieces. There is a massive laundry list of SEVERE bugs that did not exist in 1.5 and I am not aware of any meaningful bug in 1.5 that was fixed by BZ98R.
  jump sniping is bugged and exploitable
  satellite reveals everything regardless of radar coverage
  various DAMNING armory-related bugs
  bug related to "perceivedTeam" that has wide-reaching consequences including mildly messing up a campaign mission
  the porting of The Red Odyssey was sloppy and a few missions are meaningfully bugged --- If you look on the workshop you will see several LUA patches made by me that deal with many of these problems; I strong encourage people who want to enjoy campaign to subscribe and activate them.
  no "all nations" switch
  no "cloak disabled" switch
  bugged map list in MP (in Steam version, not GOG version)
  very poor netcode performance compared to the old game --- I also have a somewhat successful patch for this problem on the workshop as well
  no TCP/IP or LAN option for MP - once Rebellion closes down their BZRNET server, MP is no longer possible.
  random crashes, mostly segfaults, occur at a very high rate
  The mission type that is the backbone of class non-scripted Instant-Action missions is broken and the result is that the game WILL crash about 30% of the time when you try to load a save. I've found ways around this (reimplemented 'Inst4XMission' in LUA) but it requires missions to be patched.
  The CLI argument parser is broken
  heightmap smoothing that is enabled by default when porting old maps (and affects stock ported maps) is detrimental to the terrain in several ways though I know how to override it --- still not feasible to repair the mistake with regard to stock maps ...
  If it weren't for the fact that this game's release AND Rebellion's policies KILLED 1.5, I wouldn't be likely to have played so many hours of this (I idle a lot, I swear!)
  I'm going to stop right here for now. I mainly do not recommend this to people who care much about multiplayer.