8,732
edits
Changes
→Thief
Young teens and children seemed most amused by Thief. During the testing stage, I found several roughly drawn floorplans fashioned by young hands littering the computer station. I take this to be a good sign.
'''— JK'''
=Khe Sanh=
<big>'''It's hard to beat the Viet Cong'''</big>
{{Infobox review
| title = Report Card Khe Sanh
| performance = A
| use = B
| documentation = B +
| value= B
| grade = B
-----
| cost = $18.00 (cassette)
| manufacturer = Not-Polyoptics, 13721 Lynn St., Suite 15, Woodbridge, VA 22191
| requirements = console, monitor or television, tape recorder
}}
Khe Sanh has been around for several years. Programmed in BASIC, the game concerns guerilla warfare during the 1968 Tet offensive in South Vietnam. Although it is an easy game to play, it is difficult to win. And, as with the Vietnam War itself, the longer the battle the less likely you will win.
==Performance==
All entry is through the keyboard in this strategy game. Before the game gets under way, you are asked how many "weeks" you'd like to play. The game starts by drawing the battlefield, which consists of several roads leading out from a base camp to the edges of the screen. There is also a village near the camp and an airstrip where a squadron of four helicopter gunships is based. You are in command of five platoons of troops.
Your mission is to search out two companies of North Vietnamese Regulars. You do this by sending your platoons out in hopes of encountering the enemy in the "jungle" and by using your helicopters to find and attack them. Whenever your troops have encountered the enemy, you will hear the sound of machine gun fire. When the enemy hits, principally by blowing up the road, you will hear explosions.
The platoons are represented by five letters: A-B-C-D-E. Though this is not visible, the screen is divided into 28 rows of 25 columns, or 700 squares. Each platoon moves one square at a time in any of eight directions using the arrow and other keys. Helicopters are used by using column x row coordinates. You input the row and column you want a chopper to fly to and it heads in that direction. If it happens to fly over the enemy it will automatically fire upon them.
The frustration of fighting against guerillas becomes apparent as the battle goes on. First, you must keep the roads in good repair lest convoys carrying supplies are destroyed trying to reach your base. Eventually, protecting the roads becomes a full-time job. The business of defeating the enemy then becomes a secondary goal, achieved only as you happen upon him in the course of defending
your lifelines, the roads.
Points are scored based on how many convoys are able to reach your base as well as the number of NVA companies you destroy. Enemy troop movement is essentially random with some non-random movement occurring after attacks.
The graphics used in this game are simple but adequate. The most interesting visual effect lies in the movement of the helicopters as they fly across the battlefield. A small truck occasionally drives down the roads with supplies. but that's about as realistic as it gets. The basecamp, village, airstrip and roads are represented by squares with varying symbols so that you won't confuse one with another.
==Ease of Use==
The program loads easily and the directions are easy to follow.
Documentation: Khe Sanh comes
with a six-page manual that adequately
explains how to play the game.
Value: Because it is programmed in
BASIC, the game is somewhat slow,
though this is not a problem. Once you
get into it. trying to develop a winning
strategy takes up most of your time
anyway. Playing Khe Sanh gets to be
frustrating after awhile, just as the
actual fighting of the Vietnam War
was a frustrating experience for individuals
and the country as a whole.
Eventually you learn that as long as
you try to protect something, in this
case the roads and airstrip, your hopes
of wir;ning the war will be realized·only
if the battles are short and few. I've
won several "five-week" wars, but
none that were longer.
If you are a patient sort who enjoys
the challenge of plugging away at an
impossible goal, you may enjoy this
game. I do. Joystick jockeys may want
to think twice about it. A shoot-em-up
this is not.
'''— JK'''
