10 Tough-As-Nails Strategy Game Missions That Made You Wave The White Flag
4. Church Of The New Epoch, Bangkok - Syndicate Wars
Syndicate Wars hails from a time when tutorial levels didn’t exist. If you wanted to learn how to play you studied a manual. So, gamers of the era expected a challenge, but privately would not have minded just a teensy bit of hand-holding with this monster of a level.
The objective is to ‘persuade’ an enemy soldier to accompany your agents to the mission starting point. Simple enough, except the soldier is billeted within a heavily guarded compound and to get to him you must first fight your way through a city crawling with thugs and littered with invisible mines that kill your agents instantly.
If that wasn’t bad enough, in order to persuade the soldier you must first ‘persuade’ fifteen civilians. Problem is, the city is under constant bombardment by an orbital weapons system that, along with the inevitable mayhem left behind as you battled your way through to be base, could leave you with less than the fifteen required.
Oh, and did I mention you’re on a timer? Take too long and the soldier will be shot.
Difficulty is one thing, but this was an exercise in patience, long-suffering and dogged persistence all rolled into one.