Hostage: Rescue Mission

The Good
Its difficult to wax on about this game, so I'll just say it this way - this was a terrifically fun 3D game in the era before Castle Wolfenstein 3D. The idea of switching between the various team members added a definite flavor to the game, and in the Atari ST version at least, leading the hostages to the safe room gave it a bit of a strategic flare.

The different skill levels really effected gameplay. At lower levels the enemy would walk in front of windows, allowing your snipers to pick them off before entering with the rest of your team. At higher levels, hostages also walked in front of the windows, so this simply didn't work any more. This greatly added to the replay value.

The Bad
There were a couple of things that bugged me, but the big one was that there was no action between the mini-phases. For instance, the game opens with you running snipers into position, a relatively simple task. Once that's done, its as if nothing happened, the terrorists didn't respond to this action. More obvious was the way you could just leave your men standing around while you controlled another one, while the terrorists could move about, they couldn't while you moved, so it was somewhat moot. The most egregious example was that when you fired, you could move your gun but there wasn't enough time left over for the computer to do anything else - so you just held down the trigger and fired and pulled the gun around in complete safety.

The Bottom Line
A retro gaming classic that everyone should try.