Most Broken Game: Stockholm Syndrome

The mission is a pretty simple one – a bunch of natives being used as slaves at a plantation deep in the jungle need rescuing. The place is guarded, but it’s no Fort Knox. The enemy are toting small arms, grenades; nothing too heavy. The real threat is the surrounding jungle, which is full of bees, snakes and jaguars who like to spend their spare time flying through the clouds; any body of water larger than a puddle probably has some piranhas in it.

I’m not too worried about the enemies though – they’ll fall easily to my Desert Eagle lookalike and its mysteriously small five round clip. If worst comes to worse I’ve got a big, square jeep which, though it handles like a hippo on an ice rink, I’m relying on to take me and the hostages to safety. No, what I’m really worried about is the bugs.

Any diary of the actual assault would end up reading like an Andy McNab novel that’s been used for toilet paper and it’s pointless to recall the details anyway. Suffice it to say that my first attempt to sneak into the base ended when a levitating jungle cat cut me off on my way to the base. The second go was much the same; my gun jammed inexplicably, so after the first bullet I was only able to defend myself with cusswords and fierce glares.
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On the third time I cut out the middle man and decided to drive my hefty looking jeep straight through to the target. Not so much subtlety here, but fewer bite marks. It turned out that the barrage of bullets was a lot less lethal than flying fauna – after exactly five shots and enough healing medication to revive an Egyptian mummy I had dispatched all the guards. The bandits, like the jaguars who couldn’t decide whether to crawl or soar, didn’t know whether to attack or commit suicide; most of them just threw grenades at their feet.

Finding the captives was easy enough at first – they were the only people I’d seen in hours who hadn’t shot me on sight, after all. All I had to do was try to get them out, and here, I found, the ultimate defensive measure; prisoners that don’t want to be released.

I try to talk to one of them, but they stare back glassy-eyed. I try walking up to and around them, searching for an event trigger, nothing. Eventually I pull my gun out and resort to terror tactics, firing at the ground a few times to spur them towards the jeep, but they just stand there like stoned cows. Frustrated, I shoot one in the leg, but he takes the pain with now trademark bovine stoicism as a physics glitch carries him silently over the horizon.


I’m tempted to just reload to an earlier point, but then I remember that Boiling Point randomly corrupts savegames – and I’m not desperate enough to risk that yet, so I bring the car around instead and park it in front of them, fruitlessly. I’m starting to think they don’t like me personally and, though I know it can’t possibly be something I’ve said, I try apologising to the screen anyway. Then I resort to swearing, loudly and repeatedly.

Eventually, there’s nothing for it. I’ve tried using my car to nudge them slowly out of the camp, but the prospect of having to bump each one gradually back to town makes me want to eat my own face. I managed to get one of them as far as the main road, but he was squished into red jelly by passing traffic when I went back to ‘save’ another prisoner. I spent five minutes just screaming at the inhumanity of the situation.

Things didn’t improve when, upon returning to the remaining slaves, I found they’d been killed by a passing bee swarm.

Wearily, I press ESC and fall back to the main menu. Goddamit, I think to myself; not again.

Boiling Point: Road to Hell was a FPS/RPG released in 2005 which is remembered here for both it's ambition and the bugginess of the original release.