Developer: Sensible Software

Publisher: Virgin

Release Date: March 24, 1993

System: PC

ESRB Rating: N/A

Good Old Games Web site

0:00 A few friends recommended this as one to check out when I came in possession of a few freebie downloads from Good Old Games. The old-school action looks right up my alley.

0:01 A helicopter flies over the jungle in an overly round, stereotypically early-'90s 3-D animation. "This is Tumba, on approach to flight zone," says the pilot over the radio. They touch down in the jungle and shuffle off, to calls of "OK, go go go, move move, come on ... oh you lousy bunch of..." from the commander. The chopper flies off and crashes in the distance. Crusher, Slice, Ice, Bambi and Daisy are the pith-helmeted guys left behind. The credits play immediately ... did I win already?

0:02 The title screen pops up with retro-tastic SoundBlaster 16 synthesizer and a confusing picture of a flower. Grainy black-and-white digital pictures of the team scroll by with jokey credits: JOOLS as James Dean, STOO as Elvis, etc.

0:04 More team credits scroll by. OK, this stopped seeming cute and started seeming a little self-obsessed. "A Virgin Publication." Publication?

0:05 I click and a bunch of pixilated, Lemming-like figures walk down a hilly path. The left side of the screen is cut off, for some reason, but some monitor-level adjustment fixes that.

0:06 I click on the screen trying to adjust the makeup of my team of two soldiers, but instead the game starts! "Mission 1: Phase 1 of 1 -- It's a Jungle Out There." The objective? "With 2 soldiers you must KILL ALL ENEMY [sic]. 13 recruits remaining ... GO FOR IT." OK, so no tutorial then?

0:08 A heavily pixilated, overhead, real-time strategy-style view. Click anywhere and my troops move there. We run into some enemies ... oh no, wait, maybe they're good guys, because they're not shooting. Oh wait, now they're shooting. I instinctively right-click to fire back in their direction, but it's too late ... I already lost one guy. The only sound besides the gunfire is an occasional bird that flies by, cawing loudly.

0:09 I shoot the one remaining enemy hiding behind a clump of trees and it's "Mission Complete." A dramatic header declares: "LOST IN SERVICE: JOOLS." Reminds me of the "In Memoriam" segment in "This Week" a bit. Also: "HEROES IN VICTORY: JOPS." If they're going to name every soldier I'm just going to have to not let them die, aren't I?

0:10 Back to that hilly path. More recruits walk in, forming a long winding line, but only STOO and RJ are invited in to the squad. I save my progress and move on to "Mission 2: Onward Virgin Soldiers - Bridge over the River Pie." Man, they're laying the puns on THICK! It's another "KILL ALL ENEMY" mission, but this time with three guys.

0:12 PHASE COMPLETE. Tinny victory music as my soldiers jump up and down happily. This map had water and enemies that could swim across it, slowly. It's still not very hard ... they let us walk right up to them real close, then just aim and right-click to kill 'em. The deaths are surprisingly gruesome, given the tiny, pixilated graphics. Lots of red splatter, and awful screaming sound effects. The way the camera constantly sways with my mouse movement is making me a little nauseous.

0:15 Mission 3 starts with my team traversing a narrow coastline alongside a longish river, with forest clumped in the middle of the landmass. I find I can swim in the river if I want, but very slowly and without the ability to shoot.

0:17 I come to a house with oil drums all around it. Surprisingly, the oil drums don't explode when I shoot them. Enemies keep coming from the house. It's pretty obvious I have to destroy this thing, but how?

0:19 I pick up a box and my "Grenade Count" in the corner of the screen goes up. So how do I throw grenades? I click around on the left-side status menu, trying to activate grenade-throwing mode. Instead I accidentally split my team into two autonomous teams. Some more fiddling, and I figure out that clicking the left and right buttons at the same time throws the grenade. In the time it took to figure that out, though, I lost one of my guys. Boo.

0:21 For some reason, I'm repeating the mission I just completed. I'm starting to get annoyed with my units' brain-dead pathfinding. They walk straight towards the map point I click on, even if that means walking ineffectually into a big clump of trees. I have to carefully guide them around any and all obstacles. Bleh.

0:24 Apparently I still haven't figured out grenade controls, because my guys just ran toward the house firing their guns instead of throwing their grenades like I wanted. Oh, wait, now one of them threw a grenade when I didn't click anything. He blew up the house ... and a soldier named Ubik. What? Plus, the mission's not over. Did I miss an enemy in the forest or something?

0:27 Yup, apparently I missed a lone guy back near where I started. The game's limited color palette, plus the low resolution, makes his camouflage very effective. That said, why didn't he attack when I passed right by him? Would have saved me a lot of trouble if he HAD attacked. Mission over ... my surviving soldiers get extra bars on their uniforms.

0:28 Whoa. The hilly path of recruits is dotted with grave markers now. Heavy. At the top, I notice a score: "Home: 114; Away: 5." Well, as long as we're winning, I guess. I get a new squad of four for "Antarctic Adventure -- Blast It's Cold" This time I have to: "DESTROY ALL ENEMY" and "DESTROY ENEMY BUILDING." Have these guys never heard of plurals?

0:31 It's a bit harder to move in the snowy map. I can drop down from ridges, but I have to find specific paths to climb back up. The high grounds doesn't seem to give much advantage against the increasing throngs of enemies, but they're still pretty easy to dispatch. I pick up a few boxes of grenades and try throwing one at another enemy-generating house. It works, eventually, but my guy got too close and exploded himself. Grumble.

0:32 So I accidentally split my team into two different teams, and now I have no idea how to reintegrate them into a whole unit. Grumble.

0:33 Shooting the box of grenades near a house is much easier than actually throwing the grenades, it seems.

0:35 I leave Chris to fend for himself as my other two soldiers go off to find the remaining safe houses. They run into a clump of 10 enemies accumulated near one house. This is actually a pretty fair fight, since the enemy soldiers barely fire back.

0:36 I try to throw my grenades, but before I do my soldiers walk towards the house, for some reason. So, of course, when the grenades go off, so do my soldiers. ARGH! I guess it's up to Chris, now.

0:37 Chris lays down some covering fire for himself as he approaches the final cabin. He's a one-man killing machine! I rapidly click both mouse buttons to grenade the place ... he walks forward a bit, then throws it when he gets close enough. Oh, was I just out of range before? That might explain it...

0:38 Mission 4 is "Super Smashing Namtastic -- Beachy Head." Groan. "Four soldiers go off to "DESTROY ENEMY BUILDING. GO FOR IT."

0:40 OK, I don't get this. I threw a grenade at the first house no problem, easy peasy. At the second house I do exactly the same thing and get ... no grenade. Just gunshots. I'm at my wits' end here.

0:45 I spent the last five minutes looking up a FAQ to try and explain this game's controls to me. The first one I find simply says I should "Left+Right Click [to] launch grenades/rockets." WELL THAT IS NOT HELPFUL!

0:48 I head over to GOG.com to download the official manual. Of course that means I have to log in, which means I have to reset my password which I can't remember for some reason.

0:50 A-HA! From the manual: "Press and hold the right-hand mouse button then press the left-hand mouse button to make the troop leader throw a grenade or fire his bazooka at the centre of the crosshair." [Emphasis added] Well, that's a horribly stupid control system, but at least I know how it works now. OK, back to the game...

0:53 Hector's the only one with grenades left, so he has to go it alone to take out the remaining buildings (I still don't know how to reintegrate my teams, and I'm tired of reading manuals). Now that I know the grenade-throwing controls, though, it's easy to take out the enemies and bomb a house. I'm all out of grenades, however, which is going to make the last house hard to destroy, I think.

0:54 I swim across to the opposite shore as a bunch of slow-swimming soldiers come after me. They swim straight into my wall of bullets after I reach dry land. Dumb enemies...

@@

0:55 Wow ... I just hit escape, because that's usually the button you hit to bring up menus and maps and stuff, right? Nope. Instead, I apparently just quit the mission, because my soldiers are saluting and the screen says "Try Again." So much for the videogame convention...

0:59 I blaze through the phase this time, since I know where the enemy huts are and I know how to throw grenades.

Would I play this game for more than an hour? Yes.


Why? Seems way too simple and easy so far, but I wasted most of my hour just learning the controls and didn't get very far in the game. I'd give it another chance to redeem itself, but I hope it starts to require more strategy soonish.

This column is based on a retail copy of the game downloaded from GOG.com.



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