Z (PC)

CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
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Overall score: 7.2 (3.5 stars)
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Gamespot editors' review

• Reviewed by: Chris Hudak
• Reviewed on: 08/08/1996
• Updated on: 05/02/2000
• Released on: 07/31/1996

For those of you who have always considered strategy games a trifle dry for your tastes, I give you Z, the alcoholic, head-banging, gap-toothed, punch-drunk, inbred cousin of Command & Conquer. Z's opening movie tells the sordid tale of two Bill-and-Ted robot supply ship pilots, late (again) for their scheduled delivery to a combat zone. The player is dropped without ceremony into said combat zone, which at first appears to fall within recognizable C & C operational parameters. After two or three miserable failures, the player realizes that this is not the case. Enemy territory is not captured in the meter-by-meter fashion of other real-time strategy games, but via a Capture the Flag scheme; the Z battlefield is, for some inadequately explored reason, divided into grids of territory, which may partially explain the wonky AI (see below). Z is a game that has what I euphemistically call "the personal touch." As the battle progresses, robotic grunts in the field make the expected reports ("Moving out!" "Let's get 'em!"), as well as the less-expected requests for support ("They're all over us!" "For Christ's sake, do something!"), and the still less-expected direct verbal abuse ("Moron!" "Asshole!") as your beleaguered installations get reduced to their component molecules.

While it is not possible to construct combat installations, structures such as robot factories and radar sites may be taken with chunks of territory. At set intervals, these installations will produce more combat robots or vehicles such as jeeps and tanks, while unattended installations, vehicles and/or packs of weapons are scattered about the battlefield, waiting to be captured or destroyed. Although the game is largely tactical in scale, these neutral pieces of - pardon the pun - Virgin territory add a strategic element, encouraging players to scramble for position and property before the destruction begins. This element is made even more important by the fact that the player who is in control of more territories will have factories that produce units at a higher speed. Players who can grab a lot of land in the first few minutes of the game, and then hang on to it, will have many more units than their opponents in a very short time.

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