My Favorite Games: BattleZone (1998)

On the day I’m writing this, BlizzCon is going on, which means a lot of teasers, previews, and announcements for games that make me say, “Wait, are people really still playing that after all these years?” Yesterday morning, one of the first things I saw online was a post about the teaser for the new Starcraft, the successor to Blizzard’s seminal but long-dormant sci-fi real-time strategy series. The post simply had a few screenshots from the teaser trailer, with close-ups of a grim space marine, giant landing ships on an alien planet, and an impressive mech suit. The text said: “StarCraft announced (open world shooter) – Coming 2030”. I assumed it had to be a parody of whatever Blizzard had actually announced. Can you even imagine a company with the definitive real-time strategy franchise releasing a new entry and choosing to make it just another open world shooter? And announcing a game that won’t come out until 2030 has to be a gag, right? Four years is not a particularly long…