The Lost Patrol

[Puni/Void]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.