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Puni/Void
22nd December 2006, 15:45
The Lost Patrol is a classic game for the Amiga. The game is set to the Vietnam War, and your mission is to guide a small company of soldiers to safety. You must travel through thick jungles infested with soldiers of the Vietcong and be aware of mines, lack of sleep and food. It is a great game, but it is just so awfully hard to complete. I've never managed it.

Therefore my question is, did any of you manage to complete this game? If not, what do you think of the game? Did you hate it or like it when it was released?

Harrison
22nd December 2006, 15:49
This was a great game, but like you I never completed it as it was so hard.

I liked it's different approach to the idea of Vietnam as most before it had been some sort of Shoot em up or quite boring map based strategy. This added a lot more atmosphere and ideas to the game , and gave more of an idea of being trapped in a jungle surrounded by enemies.

Teho
22nd December 2006, 16:01
Me too, I played it and was really impressed by it. Very well made. But could never complete it. I never even got any sort of distance into it. Way too hard, but definitely an excellent and atmospheric title.

Puni/Void
8th January 2007, 14:00
I might give it a try once more in the near future. Let's see if I can manage to complete it, even if I have my doubts. There is just so much to watch out for. First, food. You have to make sure that all of your troops have enough to eat. Also, they get tired after moving for hours and hours through the jungle (completely understandable). If one decides to rest, you can be sure some VC troops will ambush you or something. It is very hard, I think I've never heard anyone managing to complete this game.

You guys remember the black and white in-game video clips? Those were pretty amazing back then.

Harrison
8th January 2007, 14:35
Yeah, I remember the video clips. They were quite impressive at the time.

Any "live" video in a game was very impressive in the early Amiga days. Some other video clips I thought were cool at the time were the Xenon 1 level intro clips with the Bitmap Bros developer saying "Sector 1". Very primative by today's standards but quite cutting edge at the time.

Teho
8th January 2007, 15:10
Terminator 2 (not the arcade shooter) also had short clips from the movie introducing each stage. Small size but going at full or near-full framerate. I remember I thought that was pretty cool.

Sharingan
4th July 2007, 18:23
I realize this is an ancient topic, but there's something I simply must know.

I've tried playing this game several times, but on each and every playthrough, there would be an inevitable point where my team members start to mutiny, NO MATTER WHAT THE FLIP I DID to please the suckers. Extra rest, extra rations, nothing seemed to help. Every time I'd end up with a bayonet between my ribs, followed by the Game Over screen.

What gives?

Was there a traitor in the team that turned my team members against me? Was there something specific I had to do somewhere in the game?

Help me solve this mystery, which has been plagueing me half my life!

Puni/Void
5th July 2007, 06:53
I can't really help you with that, Sharingan, as I've struggled a lot with this game myself. Strange though that extra rations and rest didn't help, as those are the main way to avoid mutiny. Maybe we can find out by searching for guides and walkthroughs via Google?

Anyway, Lost Patrol is an incredibly hard game. I'm still waiting to here about someone that has managed to complete this game.

Sharingan
5th July 2007, 08:03
Aye ... the mystery must be solved, one way or the other.

I found the game to be a lot of fun, but to have my progress c#@kblocked in such a lame and artificial way was frustrating. It's fine to face a 'game over' if it was due to a mistake of my own, but this is just lazy game design.

Harrison
5th July 2007, 08:51
It is always bad when you get defeated by a game for now easy or obvious reason. I've encountered a few games over the years that do this and it can get very infuriating. As you say it is lazy game design.

Sharingan
5th July 2007, 09:29
While browsing through a Lost Patrol fansite, I found a snippet of information which may be the explanation to my woes.



Hi!

I got real problems playing the game. Every time I get to the mountains and the map scrolls one page to the right, my men die away and put grenades in my bag and all that, so I lose the game. Before the scrolling everything is fine - no dead, no injured, morale around 85, health too.. what's happening? Would be nice if you mailed me some ideas. Oh, I get there around 12 o clock of day 2.


Seems like there are some players who encountered the exact same problem I did, yet the majority of people didn't. The reason for this is that there were actually two versions of the game in circulation - a pre-release version, and a final (working) version. The pre-release version appeared to contain several bugs, some of which may have been crippling enough to prevent completion of the game. The above-mentioned bug was one of them.

Whether there's a way around this, I don't know, but at least it's shed some light on the matter.

Harrison
5th July 2007, 09:36
That's interesting. Do you have both versions of the game so you can try the final working version of the game to see if it then works correctly?

Sharingan
5th July 2007, 09:42
I only have the (supposedly) buggy version on disk. I might try an emulated version on WinUAE to see if the bug can be reproduced.

For everyone who has experienced trouble completing the game, at least you know now that it may have been due to this problem.

Puni/Void
5th July 2007, 16:25
Good to hear that you found at what the problem was, Sharingan. I've never had that particular problem myself though, so I guess my version of The Lost Patrol must have been ok.

Demon Cleaner
5th July 2007, 19:22
I have now also added screenshots for Lost Patrol, have a look. I don't know if they are any good and represent the games' atmosphere well, as I have never played it so far.

Only thing is, I can't get a title screen of it, there's only the one from OCEAN, and then the game starts immediately. If someone has a title screenshot, please add it.

v85rawdeal
5th July 2007, 19:25
I used to have the game, but now only have the music as a ringtone on my phone.

Mind you, I found out I still have my original Gauntlet II for the Atari ST...

AlexJ
5th July 2007, 19:47
I have now also added screenshots for Lost Patrol, have a look. I don't know if they are any good and represent the games' atmosphere well, as I have never played it so far.

Only thing is, I can't get a title screen of it, there's only the one from OCEAN, and then the game starts immediately. If someone has a title screenshot, please add it.

I notice you used the pre-release version to take the screenshots (the time bar at the top is coloured white - it's green in the final version) perhaps there's a title screen in the final release version.

Submeg
6th July 2007, 15:48
Wow, that is quite an annoying bug! Geez, as if that would even get released...

Demon Cleaner
6th July 2007, 16:52
I have 2 versions, one called Lost Patrol, and one called Lost Patrol v1.0, I suppose latter is the original release.

I now tested v1.0 and it's exactly the same, hasn't a title screen either.