Beat on Hard on PSP. It could be downloaded free on pc for a better experience but I stuck with console, which did make it somewhat frustrating. It played a lot like Command and Conquer, with the same 4 control groups based on the face buttons. The tutorial level did a good job teaching the controls and mechanics but I still had to look up some controls later. L1 cycled between the 4 control groups but it moved the camera to them so I did not like it. L1 + face selected the control groups but the buttons had to be pressed very deliberately or only L1 would register. This was so damn annoying, as was the slow scroll speed. It was like scrolling had momentum, where it would start slow then have to pull back to compensate when it failed to stop where I wanted. Pressing on the mini map could move the camera towards that spot but not instantly. I only used it by accident, which was annoying. I found moving the view, selecting stuff, and controlling units to be very clunky. There did not seem to be a way to add units to an existing selection without drawing a new box, and I often messed up the controls. 0 opened a radual menu for building, unit design, research and other stuff instead of canceling. Square was cancel but was also select all units with similar weapons when pressed with cursor over a unit. The game had some interesting mechanics. There were 3 campaigns in different locations against different enemies played in linear sequence. The early enemies were Scavengers using infantry and civilian vehicles that were easily shredded with the weakest machine gun, but soon the enemies got proper military vehicles that were on par with what you could build. Most missions in a campaign took place on the same map so whatever buildings, units and research were done on previous missions carried over to the next. Even unit hp, xp and control groups carried over. This was a cool design choice that was more immersive with long term planning compared to the usual new map per mission in other RTS. The downside was that the map soon became bigger than the mini map could show, making it even more difficult to tell what was going on. The coloring of the mini map already made it tough to use. Also almost every mission had a time limit. I absolutely hated this. Time limits have no place in video games. It did limit how much you could tech up and stockpile money but for the most part the times were very generous. The final mission of the last campaign had no limit. Missions were either conquering the map, defending against massive attack, or sending units to a different map on non base missions. You could bring builder units to make buildings, and most non base missions allowed you to fly in reinforcements from the home base, plus you could still assign research and unit production. The other major mechanic was the unit creator. Rather than have fixed unit types the game allowed you to mix and match components to nearly the same complexity as Alpha Centauri. Though some options were clearly meant to go obsolete. It started with chassis type between light, medium and heavy. This affected speed and durability. The 3 enemy factions had their own set of 3 chassis so that made 12 base options. I liked how the colors of the enemy chassis carried over so you could design units of different colors to more easily tell them apart. The standard types were balanced, the yellow Paradigm had higher speed lower defense, the blue Collective had lower speed higher defense, and the last black Nexus type was super elite with high everything, including cost and build time. Next you chose the propulsion type. Wheels were fast low armor while tracks were the opposite. Half tracks were in between, hover was wheels but better, and vtol made dedicated air units. Last you chose the weapon type. Support options included builder, sensor, repair, commander, vtol strike, counter battery, and counter vtol. Resources came from oil wells built on specific resource nodes so there was no harvester or peon equivalent. Commanders were weird in that they could act as a new unit relay point and have units assigned to them. I could not figure out how to use them until experimenting after beating the game. Building units from the assigned factory or telling units to move attached them to the commander, which made them follow it and focus on its targets. Kind of like having a control group without using a slot. Unfortunately the command links were broken if the commander retreated using the auto retreat when damaged settings, which happened a lot if the commander lead the way. So better off using the full control group. One plus was units that auto retreated automatically returned to the commander after repaired. I did not find commanders worth using, nor the later unlocked support types. Artillery units could be attached to sensor units and towers for extra range, but it only lasted until they next moved. I could not get counter battery to work, probably because of lack of range, and I saw no point for the vtol stuff. It all seemed like added complexity for no real benefit. Maybe if you could put a sensor, CB and a weapon on the same unit, because heavy artillery that could shoot back against artillery structures would have been useful.

The weapons were overwhelmingly complicated with many different types unlocked as the game progressed. I read a few guides online to get a better idea but the time limits did not allow for much experimenting. They generally fell into a few different categories with there being a linear progression towards superior weapons, making older ones obsolete. The starting machine gun went to twin, then heavy. This type did consistent damage that shredded low armor units, could hit air, and did very little against armor. It was good against infantry, which became a new chassis type as cyborgs. They didn't seem worth using over vehicles but the enemy used a lot of them. Guns were also half decent against the low armor hover and artillery or anti tank units the AI liked to use. Later the assault gun replaced this type for a long time until late game introduced energy weapons that filled the same role. Flashlight then pulse laser. Flamethrower had poor range with good damage against everything except hardpoint defenses. I used 1 flame tank during the final mission of campaign 1 and not sure how worthwhile it was. It did not solo bunkers well but seemed to kill them faster with help than without a flame. The low range meant it often took the brunt of fire and ended up dying though, so I gave up using them. Late game upgraded to inferno but I never tried it. Cannons were solid jack of all weapons with slow rate of fire and poor effect vs infantry. Weapons also affected the speed and durability of a unit, with cannons giving the tankiest slowest units. This went from light, medium, heavy, needle, rail and gausse, which was found in the final mission and never used. There was also assault cannon, which did less damage than heavy while having faster rate of fire, and hyper velocity which traded damage for ability to hit air. These 2 didn't seem useful. Anti tank rockets made tank destroyer types that countered armor but were worse against everything else. They could not shoot while moving and were noticeably faster and less durable than cannon tanks. They went rocket pod, lancer, tank killer and scourge. Not sure how good the basic rocket pod was but the later ones were important for killing tracked tanks at the mid game. End game vehicles were all hover with the best body types. Anti air units could not attack ground at all but were useful for shooting down enemy air. It went cyclone, whirlwind for cannon range flak type, then avenger and vindicator SAM. I only used SAM during the final mission and it was tough to tell which was better on a vehicle. For structures, flak could shoot down air before it could bomb its target, provided there were a few flak concentrated. My air units kept getting killed by enemy SAM because once the missiles locked on they would follow the bomber all the way across the map with no way to shake them. There was quite a variety of artillery with different ranges and functions. Mini rocket had no better range than other weapons. I never used but I guess it was only good for splash damage. Mortars out ranged non artillery defense structures but did not do great damage units. There were a lot of them, going to bombard, pepperpot, howitzer, hell storm, ground shaker. Then the angel and archangel missiles with the longest range.

With only 4 control groups I did not see the point in making too many different types of units. Even though you could recycle units for money and to transfer their xp, I instead used obsolete units until they died. Reading guides after it was better to recycle xp into stronger units and farm xp by killing walls. The game started simple with light wheeled machine guns, which eventually upgraded to half track medium, then full tracked heavy with more weapons being unlocked. I had 2 control groups of mixed heavy tanks (mostly cannon with a few gun and AT, then later AA) so they could alternate being repaired. I had light wheel repair units and later switched them to hover. Then I had a group of light wheeled mortars and later switched them to scorpion (med yellow) hover bombards with a scout and bunker busters mixed in. Bunker busters were an odd kind of cannon that 1 shot bunkers and hard points but did terrible damage vs units. Their range was no better than other cannons so mine kept being killed because I grouped them with artillery. They would need to be specialist anti structure tanks, but I put them on air to incredible effect. I failed some missions. One where I had to build 2nd base but they did not specify exactly what buildings were needed (it was every big building except research), and more enemies spawned when the timer hit a few seconds left. I thought I just had to survive with the base until the limit but you had to build everything then kill all enemy units before the time limit. The game needed an objective screen with clearly stated win and fail goals. Another non base required very quickly intercepting an enemy, which took several attempts to figure out. And I ran out of time on the last mission of campaign 1; 2hr limit to slowly pick off heavily defended narrow approaches while fending off constant attacks. I really needed to already know the map layout and where to prevent their spawns beforehand to beat the timer. Having to redo a 2hr mission was ridiculous so I checked out cheat mode. There was no cheat to turn off the timer but I could reveal the map, make my units do extreme damage or level skip. Good things to have in reserve next time it looks like I will not beat the timer. I did beat the level legit with better focus on destroying enemy spawn points.

Campaign 2 was actually easier for a while with way more time than I needed. I also finally unlocked defense structures better than the basic machine gun tower so I built solid base defenses, and defenses for the further away oil derricks. I had performance issues on the mission to get flight tech as my units often did not respond to commands. It could have been too many units and buildings on the map, or maybe too much impassible terrain that bogged down the pathing. This was very frustrating. On top of that enemy air and mortar structures kept killing my artillery and repair units, so I had to rely more on tanks. I did a few more non base missions using my usual ground force + repair units strategy, until a non base mission that had heavy air bombing. I had to bring a truck to build AA and hold out there until most enemy air was destroyed. Soon I began using my own air units to easily wipe out defenses and factories. The final mission for this campaign was evacuation before a nuke wiped out the area. I lost most buildings and all but 1 outpost but killed every enemy, and all my units escaped. It was definitely worth spending so much time building defenses that I hit the building limit. Campaign 3 had a lot of gimmicks and featured mostly cyborg and elite vehicles. I built up what defenses I could but I lost almost 2hrs of time to do stuff by completing missions early when I did not know what would trigger victory. There was a non base mission that changed into fleeing from a nuke. Flying reinforcements in was disabled once the nuke timer began and I barely survived with only 4 or 5 vehicles while making a run to the victory point. The enemies hit hard. Then was a mission where the enemy mind controlled my units and buildings. I failed because I did not realize the goal was to research tech to counter the mind control, so next time I made sure to re build my buildings and put down extra research center and factory as decoys. Then was a mission to link up with a base to the south, which I technically failed due to running out of time but instead put on cheat mode for level skip. I only failed by a few minutes as the enemy was down to some cyborgs and a few defenses. I ran out of time because I relied mostly on air units and my slow tanks died way too easily, possibly from lack of xp. The next mission I beat with super units cheat on by accident. I actually beat the final mission before I realized the cheat was on. The 2nd last mission was mostly about eating a ton of orbital laser strikes, as I focused on repair and replacing killed trucks. Then I re did the final mission making sure cheats were off. I made retribution medium units with a mixed ground force and many bunker buster and heap air units. Heap was one of a few bomb type weapons unique to air units and was good against all ground units but had less speed and range. There were also fire based bombs that did damage over time. I had 3 control groups of air to split them up and destroy more than 1 SAM each sortie, since I very often lost 1 each time. For the final base I tried angel and archangel tanks and structures but the range was not enough to be useful. I could have easily bombed the base but instead used my ground force. This suffered fewer losses but took longer than air. I played the mission a 3rd time to try out commander and counter battery. This mission had such mountainous terrain and packed long range defenses that I really needed air units, especially to destroy factories that would otherwise pump units to intercept my ground force.

Warzone was a fun game but deeply flawed, especially with clunky console controls. It really needed the ability to slow down or stop game speed while still being able to issue commands, assign production and etc. The unit creator and persistent nature of the campaign stood out as good novel features, but the overwhelming amount of options for designing units was a flaw. It was also difficult to tell units apart, though different color bodies and certain large weapons like missiles and rail gun did stand out. There were almost as many different defensive structures as unit weapons, and it could be fun designing turrets, walls and spike blockades, but it was difficult to tell what was what on the build menu. The order of stuff in the menus seemed to be inconsistent too. All this lack of readability to be able to instantly identify things was probably the game's biggest flaw. Unit pathing was not good as they frequently blocked each other and even got stuck grinding against each other. And the story presentation was incredibly lame. Briefings were mostly a monotone female voice showing a map of the area. Occasionally you would hear soldiers or see an animation. The enemy interactions were even worse, with only an icon and robotic voice. No personality. Show me the people, what they stand for and how they live. It was such a far cry from the live action videos of Command and Conquer, and similar not live action of Starcraft. The units here didn't even have voices. It got a little better in the final campaign because the villain actually had personality, but he was just an AI face.

6.5/10