Lost Patrol

aka: The Lost Patrol
Moby ID: 6257
Amiga Specs
Buy on Windows
$5.99 new on Steam

Description official description

You and your squad are on their way back from R&R in Saigon to your operations base when Viet Cong guerillas force your helicopter to crash land in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. It's now your responsibility to lead the remaining survivors to the nearest U.S. base, evading or facing an elusive and dangerous enemy on his own grounds.

Most of the time, you'll see a map of the country on the screen and navigate your men through the country. It's important to watch your men's health and morale by getting them food, water, ammo and letting them rest, etc. When reaching certain spots on the map, e.g. a native village, the game presents the current situation in a nice graphic scene. Sometimes you'll run into V.C. snipers, patrols, whole ambushes or encounter minefields. Then the game offers some small arcade sequences like firing your guns or fighting it out in desperate hand-to-hand combat. The progress of your party is accompanied by video sequences from the Vietnam War.

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Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Amiga version)

17 People (14 developers, 3 thanks)

Programming
Design
Graphics
FX/Music
Additional Coding
Special Thanks to
Digitised Sequences Done Using
  • Vidi-Amiga
Quality Control
Produced by

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 66% (based on 13 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 26 ratings with 1 reviews)

Very atmospheric, but unfortunately short-lived

The Good
Maybe you were into all those Vietnam movies and TV series? I definitely was. Remember "Platoon", "Apocalypse now", and the TV show "Tour of Duty"? It looks like Ocean had a Vietnam movie marathon in their office and tried to capture the feel of those movies into a computer game.

And I have to say they did a pretty good job.

Just look at the screenshots and you'll have a fairly good impression on what the game looks like: While technically all you do most of the time is move your troops on a map, the movement itself is depicted by wonderfully drawn images, accompanied by a very good MOD. You can almost feel how weary your wounded soldiers are as they drag themselves through the jungle.

Worse than the soldiers' fatigue are the events that happen on their way: They're pinned down by snipers, encounter random patrols or have to make their way through minefields, each event played in a sub-game, and in a very unforgiving way, your soldiers quickly die one by die until your unit has been decimated.

The Bad
The game is a lot of fun - at first. But after a while, you've seen all the images, and you've seen them many times. The individual sub-games are very simple and cannot compare to other games that focus on that genre. An encounter with a lone soldier for example results in a streetfighter-like brawl - only that it is so much more simplistic than any pure streefighter-style fighting game.

And there's just not much to do. You move your troops, enjoy the pictures, get into one of the weak sub-games that you'll eventually grow tired of, and that's it. Unfortunately, that doesn't last that long.

The Bottom Line
I don't regret playing this game. I was dragged into it at first and it kept me playing for a while. However, you just lose the motivation soon, and since you can't save the game, you'll always end up playing the same thing again and again. The game is very hard (which I personally like - it makes the soldiers' situation more desperate), and you simply lose interest after some time.

Amiga · by EboMike (3094) · 2003

Discussion

Subject By Date
Description mistake... Somebody bring me Sisko! (8) Jan 19, 2008
Nice fanpage ... 80 (6478) Nov 26, 2007

Trivia

German index

On March 31, 1992, Lost Patrol was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS. For more information about what this means and to see a list of games sharing the same fate, take a look here: BPjS/BPjM indexed games.

Analytics

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  • MobyGames ID: 6257
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Alexander Schaefer.

Windows added by firefang9212. Atari ST added by 80. Amiga added by MAT.

Additional contributors: Xoleras, Yearman, Patrick Bregger, Jo ST.

Game added May 4, 2002. Last modified February 6, 2024.