Terrorists have taken over an embassy! Oh no! What are we to do? Send in six lightly armed operatives, several of whom are fairly incompetent at their jobs, and place them under the leadership of someone who doesn’t know what he is doing.
That’s (kind of) the premise behind Hostages, a well-regarded French game for Atari ST that demonstrates nicely what French games for 16-bit home computers were all about: gorgeous presentation coupled with often interesting and obtuse game mechanics. At least I can finish the training mission now, though, which is more than I could do in my childhood!
It’s back to “A” again for the Atari ST series, and it’s another technically impressive title from Infogrames.
Alcatraz is the sequel to Hostages (or The Embassy Mission as it’s known in some territories on some platforms) and is very much a game built around two-player cooperative gameplay. So much so, in fact, that they didn’t really bother to make a proper single-player mode — when playing solo you have to take control of both “players” yourself!
It’s a cool-looking, atmospheric game… but if you’re going to give it a go for yourself I strongly recommend bringing a friend!
