Lost Patrol, The

1990 SyksyThe Vietnam War: the massive war machine of a superpower could not defeat the Brave Guerrillas fighting for the Freedom of their Country and for International Communism (who, granted, had people killed with unrivalled efficiency, a fact that every Progressive and Solidarity-Minded person can nevertheless easily cover up with the flag of the Cause: Vietnam was so far away). Still, the United States' embarrassing recent history offers a fine subject for a game.

At the start of the game it isn't just the gum that drops out of your mouth: so does the chopper, out of the sky, and the Yanks fall off their chairs. The good news is that nobody got hurt too badly; the bad news is that it's a long way home. What lies ahead is a trek through VC-controlled jungle.

The Lost Patrol is Ocean's attempt to muscle in on Cinemaware's market, which means the game consists of flashy animation/graphics screens accompanied by sub-games. These "movie games" happen to be a type of game I actually hate, and I dread CD technology catching on, since it looks grim: the only ones to benefit will be the fans of this genre. The sole aim in these games seems to be staring at wicked graphics and waiting for the disk drive to stop spinning.

For the most part Lost Patrol plays out on a big map screen, where you set the direction and pace of march, the size of the food rations, the rest stops, and the booby-trapping to torment the guerrilla devils. Movement has been clumsily done by the eight main compass points (incomprehensibly slowly) instead of sensibly by pointing at a destination.

There are a whole five sub-games. If we start from the weakest end, the first is unarmed close combat, which you're forced into when you want to take out a sentry or when you bump into one of Charlie's scouts. I can see the scene in my mind's eye: the soldier stashes his rifle and his bayonet, approaches the guerrilla, who likewise obligingly chucks his rifle away (instead of shooting and raising the alarm), and then they smack each other in the chops till their ears ring. It's a very simple beat'em-up with two fighting moves.

Next you run into a C-grade OpWolf clone. VC soldiers who look just like cardboard cut-outs pop up out of the field with no animation, and if they manage to throw a grenade, hostilities end right there. Pah! A degree of innovation, though, is the option to pull back into cover behind a wall.

The remaining three sub-games are then extremely simple, but at least they fit the Vietnam scenario like a 120mm gun fits an Abrams. You get through the minefield by crawling and jabbing your knife into the ground (a big minus for the mines apparently always being in the same places). Taking out an MG nest with hand grenades is also simple, but feels realistic.

The best section, though, is terminating snipers with a scoped rifle. Through the scope, you see, the sniper shows up as a muzzle flash a few pixels in size when he fires, and where the fellow moves to after that is down to guesswork.

A sub-game of sorts is also the interrogation of the natives, from which the famous "rifle butt in the teeth" bit has been censored. You can, however, have a whole village's population killed, as was the Yanks' custom.

The worst shortcoming in Lost Patrol is its total abandonment of realism, the worst example of which is the food problem. The villages don't necessarily have any food at all, not even a sausage sandwich's worth, and the tough soldiers armed with M16 assault rifles can't catch a thing in a jungle teeming with life, not even fruit.

The Lost Patrol should have been stripped of its flashy but, ah! so unnecessary cut-scenes and animations, and the freed-up space used for more sub-games, forgetting the gaming world's worst cliches. As it is, the game's battle between the United States and North Vietnam ends up being entirely a battle between good ideas and stupid blunders, which the latter win by a whisker. That's a pity, since there was material for something considerably better.