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Best Action: Battlezone
While our Game of the Year, Half-Life, most redefined the action niche, all our finalists brought something new to the table. Rainbow Six deftly mixed strategic planning with nail-biting action as it brought the world of counterterrorist operations to life. Heretic II proved that the Quake II engine could work in a third-person game and that a spell-casting, shirtless elf could actually kick ass. Next to the revolutionary Half-Life, Thief: The Dark Project most shook up the shooter genre, replacing traditional run-'n'-gun gameplay with a brain-busting, tense, first-person game that emphasized stealth and thinking over reflexes.
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But it was Activision's action/strategy hybrid Battlezone that really broke new ground. Taking place in an alternate past during which the Cold War was fought on distant planets, Battlezone put gamers inside a missile-spitting hovertank and then let them harvest resources, build defenses, and (best of all) create hordes of other tanks to help battle those godless Commies. The graphics were drop-dead gorgeous, the multiplayer game was a blast, and the game sported a beautifully designed interface that made commanding your forces an intuitive breeze.
By excelling in every aspect of design gameplay, Battlezone handily earned Action Game of the Year recognition.
Runner-up: Thief: The Dark Project, Eidos Interactive.
Other Finalists: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, Red Storm Entertainment; Heretic II, Activision
Next: Adventure Game of the Year
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