A first-person tank war with a commander's seat
Battlezone: Combat Commander is a remaster of Battlezone II, and it keeps the mix that made the original unusual: you fight in first person from inside a tank, and at the same time you run the war around you like an RTS. The setting is the solar system under alien attack, with the US and Russia setting aside their space race to form the International Space Defence Force, which recruits you to lead the resistance. Across 24 missions you move through over 6 worlds, and the loop on the ground is simple to grasp: kill what's in front of you, scavenge bio-metal from the battlefield, and spend it on the units and structures you need next. Bio-metal is the resource that turns a wreck into a walker, a defense tower, or a facility, so fighting and economy are the same activity rather than two separate screens.
Fighting and commanding at once
You have control of over 30 unit types, ranging from tanks and ground units to walkers and air support. You can jump into any of them in first person, or stay back and issue orders to the battalion as a whole. The AI is built to make that battalion feel alive: units gain combat experience, and experienced ones fight noticeably better than fresh recruits. They strafe, pick weapons that suit the situation, and retreat when the fight has gone bad, so a veteran squad is worth keeping alive rather than throwing away. The remaster brings a DX11 renderer with shader-based rendering and retextured, upscaled terrain, so the older game reads much more clearly now.
Playing it with friends
Multiplayer is cross-play, and there are two ways to bring your group in. Deathmatch is the classic head-to-head mode for when your group wants a straight fight. The co-operative mode, MPI, is the one that suits a group that wants to work as a unit: players have to coordinate offence, defence, and scrap collection to win, which means someone is always pushing forward while others hold ground and keep the resource flow going. Remote Play Together is also supported, so one person can host and others can join in from their own machines.
Before you start
Expect a game that asks you to switch constantly between aiming down sights and reading the map, and expect to lose units you were fond of — the experience system rewards keeping survivors, but the enemy AI will punish a static defense. Steam Workshop support is there, along with mod support covering new singleplayer and multiplayer maps, vehicles, HUDs, assets, and custom scripts, so the content keeps growing beyond the 24 campaign missions. There are new achievements to chase as well. If your group likes shooters where someone ends up as the logistics person instead of the trigger-puller, MPI is where that dynamic shows up best.