The Fourth Protocol - The Game.
The Fourth Protocol - The Game.
The Fourth Protocol takes us back in time, to the age when there was such a thing as a Cold War between the Western and the Eastern blocks. You are head of a top secret British government agency called C1(A) - and your mission is to investigate all sorts of suspicious activity within other governmental departments. Mostly, look for spies.
"Congratulations on your appointment as head of C1(A)".
They're hearty enough now, but what if you fail your assignment?
As it turns out, you get a real "hot potato" before you can really settle in. Someone has leaked critical top secret NATO
documents. You must find out who it is in time to avoid a total catastrophe.
If you've read the book you have a great advantage when playing this game.
This is the main screen for Part I - The NATO documents.
You have at your disposal: a filing cabinet (for your files and other informational files), a surveillance
unit for assigning watchers (the camera), a disk (loading and saving), a performance chart, a calendar,
a phone and three computers for surveillance reports, other reports and memos.
The game takes place in three parts, which are quite different from each other. The first part is staged in your office, where you must use the office resources to find out who is leaking the documents (as well as other issues). A main component in this searching is assigning watchers to "interesting subjects", to see what they do. Your watchers will report back to you if they find anything interesting, and you can often take action on those reports. The filing system is also a great source of information.
Now this is a shady-looking character...
This first part is, I think, the most interesting in the game. Nothing is really straight-forward, you have to do some thinking to get anywhere. The icon-driven system works very well, though it's not always easy to understand at first what different icons mean.
Very well, if you succeed in doing your job in Part I, you will be able to continue with Part II. This part is icon-driven much like the first, but has a more traditional "adventure-style", where you walk around, examine stuff and talk to people.
Part II - The Bomb:
There are icons for handling objects, talking, walking and examining stuff.
My memory fails me - I'm not sure exactly what the objective of this part is. I haven't yet been able to finish Part I, as I did when I was younger. But it involves a lot of investigation. This time, though, you are more active in the way that you can move about yourself and take real actions. In the first part you always really told others what to do.
This is you - John Preston. Good looking fella, if a bit unshaven.
Should you succeed in Part II, you get to move on to Part III - The SAS Assault. I haven't been able to even get into this part, so there are no screen shots. However, I do remember you had to defuse some bomb or so - and that's it. It's a very disappointing end to an otherwise excellent game. The first two parts are just amazing. In my opinion they make The Fourth Protocol the most captivating and enjoyable game to grace the C64. And that is saying a lot.
Download The Fourth Protocol (D64).
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