an action/shooter gamer with strategy or a strategy player with action tends to force them outside their genre "comfort zone" and requires a steeper learning curve. My pithiest, if somewhat unfair, summation is this: 'FPS players don't want to think; RTS players don't want to die.'" Reception When Battlezone II was released to the public in late December 1999 (after many delays that put the ship date beyond Christmas) the game received favourable reviews according to the review aggregation website GameRankings. However, it quickly began receiving negative views because of out-of-the-box bug issues and over the top requirements to run the game for its time, with a multiplayer that was broken and not fixed until patch 1.1 - as a result, the game received a lot of negative publicity while it was on the shelf. Nick Smith of AllGame gave it four stars out of five, saying that it was "highly recommended both for fans of the original and new players to the space genre. But do play this on a PC with a fast processor and a good 8MB minimum, 3D enhanced graphics card to get the full effect of the experience." Aaron Reed of GameZone similarly gave it eight out of ten, saying, "If you are looking for a fun game to play single player and you want to follow a great campaign story line – this is not the place for you. While the storyline is actually pretty good, the missions themselves tend to take you away from the game's strong points. However, the graphics and sound are spectacular and if you want a good game to bang with your buddies or to just play a you-vs-cpu game every now and then, this game is a great one." Jim Preston of NextGen called the game "A fun and beautiful single-player experience for users with a high-end machine, but the multiplayer elements are still quite iffy." In an interview Nathan Mates, a programmer that worked on Battlezone II, attempted to explain why, after the first game, BZ2 did not fare well on the market, in an interview with Battlezone Magazine: "Despite things not being a huge success at retail, there's a definite, but smaller, portion of the population that likes the FPS+RTS genre. Their options are somewhat limited. So they stick with what they know and love. As I said above [about why Battlezone III was never made],