Here’s another game that I found at Abandonware. An FPS game about being French legionnaire. It’s Viva La France-em-up game: Attic Games’ Last Stand at Fort Bagarre (2005)
Nice shading effect on the title. Although, the coloring sets in wrong way. Coloring on French flag should be in vertical configuration. The horizontal configuration coloring belongs to Netherland flag although both national flags use same 3 colors: red, white, and blue. You probably ask why I know Netherland flag color configuration? Because it’s simple. If you rip off the blue part of Netherland flag, you got Indonesia Flag. That’s basically what happened in Yamato Hotel Incident in 19 September 1945, at Surabaya. Some of our heroic folks break into Yamato Hotel (which is Majapahit Hotel now), lower the Netherland flag, rip the blue part, and raise the flag again. This happened because some arrogant scumbags refuse to acknowledge Indonesia sovereignty, in our very land! Curse them! Anyway, let’s get into the game.
Here's the main menu. I don’t like “Play the game” option is in the middle. It’s supposed to be on top menu for God’s sake! There should be the name of the game on the top of the screen but instead it’s the synopsis of the game. Unusual but helpful, I think. The help menu shows us the control and credits. I like the severed hand as pointer in this game although Warcraft 2 and Warcraft 3 do it better.
I did some fact check about this Fort Bagarre. The first thing that appear in my browser is this very game itself and no real history on my browser. Not even a bit. Plus, the fact that Bagarre is just French word for “Fight”, I assume the plot is not historically accurate. You may correct me in this one, though.
KnightUnitAttack1.wav. The situation is immediately dire. I should get into the action ASAP.
Lucky that my rifle is near my bed. It feels very weird to hold right mouse button to walk forward although I can use arrow keys to walk and turn but I forget. I’m accustomed with W, A, S, and D to move so playing this game feels awkward. To enter/exit pointing mode, I press space bar. During pointing mode, I can pick my rifle and also comment on interactable objects. Oh-la-la! Some picture of show girl. War is stressful, you know. So, it's pretty common that soldiers put some sexy girl picture on their room. It’s useful to relieve stress and…MNF Foch gives me dirty look while licking knife. I should shut up and move on from talking about the show girl picture.
I don’t know why absinthe sounds like relative of turpentine. I don’t know much about liquor. Then I look at the comment about those playing cards. It said “There’s no time for that. You hear the bugle?” I believe I don’t hear any bugle but fine! I shall be on my way to report to the sergeant, immediately.
That bloke doesn’t wear legionnaire uniform and he shoots me with his pistol. So, I can assume he’s our enemy: the insurgent. If the enemy already within few steps of our dorm, then we have large breach in our premise! Luckily, 2 bullets from my rifle defeat the bloke over there.
As I turn right from previous spot, another enemy shows up and try hack me with scimitar. In this very close combat situation, a sword is better weapon than long range rifle. I wish I have melee weapon.
The enemies also taken over our battlement! I was very lucky that they don’t have a chance to kill me when I’m sleeping.
I find the sergeant. He’s in one of the towers along with my friends who shooting at our enemies on the other tower. They’re so busy shooting at enemies that they don’t notice there’s fallen comrade besides them. Soldier_negativevocalization01.wav
Even then, they don’t do good job hitting those enemies there. Fine, I waste some bullets to kill one of them and I will be on my way to communication room.
I’m curious about the other tower. So, I open the door on the tower and there’s new type of bloke shoots at me. But my curiosity paid off as I found pistol on top of barrel behind that enemy.
I return to ground level and see 2 enemy cavalries behind the broken main door. Not going to deal with them! I will just continue to search the communication room within the fort.
I find a room with 2 enemies. One with handgun and other with scimitar. I wish I could strafe so I can deal with them better.
Inside that room, I found ammo pouch for the rifle and first aid kit. Also, this key that most likely important. The message says I pick up Commander’s room.
Oh, pardon. I mean Le Commandant’s room. Commandant is French word for commander, you see? Anyway, to open the door, I have to bring the pointer and then press left mouse button on the door. Luckily once I open the door, I’m immediately in FPS mode. It’s useful because there’s an enemy behind the door immediately. By the way, I don’t like how my rifle is clipped through everything. Door, wall, my sergeant, you name it.
The commander is dead and he left this letter that presumably from girl show from French.
There’s this comment as I point at the commander’s cap. Vous éles un poilu ordinaire? Can you tell me what this means, Foch?
Thanks, Foch. I’m not sure what’s the relation between comment about ordinary hair with legionnaire commander’s cap. Do I need to have afro or pompadour hair to be legionnaire commander? But I don’t care. I’m happy as I can be.
There’s no commentary on commander’s gramophone but I got code book and some pistol bullets! Engineer_mvm_loot_common02.wav
If you’re curious how the gunplay in motion, this gif can answer it. I barely remember if there’s spark coming out of gun in this game. There’s some blood paint if you manage to hit enemy which is terrible but it’s useful to let you know that you hit the mark. I don’t think headshot deal significant damage to enemies. I don’t know why this guy shoot at the opposite direction from my location. War is terrible, indeed. If I follow this corridor, I will return to the dorm. I’m circling the fort but still can’t find the damn communication room.
After 1 – 2 laps of fort interior later…
I think I find the communication room, which is located in the tower where my sergeant is located! I knew that the tower should have a space for room but I just didn’t listen to myself. The problem is: this room is locked! Where the heck is this guard room? Isn’t it the room where I found the commander’s room key? It looks like guard room to me.
I still can’t find the key to that room so I blast this guy that keep staring at the wall near the main door, for fun. Getting lost is boring, you know? Spy_DominationSoldier03
Hey, cavalry guy. This is not Age of Empires 2. You can’t destroy our fort with just your horse kick. The guy behind the horse is content to just squat. I’m fine with that because he carries Lewis Light Machine Gun. Consider myself lucky that he doesn’t want to riddle me with light machine gun bullets. Yet.
After getting lost for 20 minutes and restart the game (because I thought the game has bug that can be solved by restarting the game) …
Once again, I’m proven to be a dolt. Turns out the communication room key is inside the tower that has been occupied by the enemies. The same room where I found the pistol. So, all of my objectives are near from the sergeant afterall! To be fair, there’s no plate that said this room is guard room. Is it only commander’s room that deserved to have plate? I mean it sounds ok but extra name plate on door will be nice to prevent some not bright legionnaire from getting lost for 30 minutes!
The locked room is actually the communication room. Hey, don’t sleep in this emergency situation! You lazy git!
Oh, I see. This bloke murdered the radio operator. I see some pattern here. There’s always dead ally and an enemy inside the locked door. How the enemy gets inside the locked door? Or is he the one that locked the door to give me hard time to my objective? Or the commander/radio operator is the one that locked the door for security but fail regardless because he is killed by 1 intruder that somehow manage to get inside? Either way, it’s a great sin to lock the door thus forcing me to find the damn key to unlock it.
Once I interact with the morse code machine, the game tells me I need to find the code book first before able to send help signal. I know where do I get the code book. It’s in the commander’s room. I just need to do easy backtracking for it.
After some relatively fast backtracking…
There you go help signal sent. However, I have to rescue Mille. Brigitte LaTusche. Who the heck she is? Is she the showgirl who sent that letter in Commander’s room? *Groan* Why she is so important? Can we just wait for the reinforcement to rescue her instead? Fine! Let’s find the fair lady.
There I kill the horse rider near the entrance. Then I kill the light machine gunner too. He takes so many bullets to defeat.
Look at this sneaky git. He thinks I can’t see him while he walks slowly behind the tree. He’s completely wrong!
I’m reluctant to leave the safety of my fort. Where the heck is that lady, anyway? Maybe I can see her from height of our battlement. Given that we have “defend the fort” situation, I thought I can use the cannon there but no. It’s just decoration. Being unable to use finely placed cannon on battlement, is huge disgrace. Demoman_jeers01.wav
Hellooooo! Do any of you know where the showgirl is? The game told me it’s you guys who take her as hostage. It’s no use. They’re busy either staring at our majestic fort or horsing around. The sergeant is no help either. He keeps ordering me to send help signal which I already did 12 minutes ago!
After searching for the damn lady inside the fort for 10 minutes…
It seems I have to go outside. Suddenly, 2 horse rider actually use rifle to shoot me this time. I know my health is not good but I’m curious what happen if I get game over.
I drop sideway and this message appears. That’s it for game over sequence, huh? Kind of minimalist. If I don’t decide to restart within 10 seconds, the game quits by itself. What’s the matter, game? Are you too scared by yourself? How irony. I won’t quit just yet. I made quick save and I will load it.
I did another fact check to see if Sahara Desert is somewhere around Morocco. According to Google Map, there’s just small bit Sahara Desert that’s within Morocco territory. But I consider the game over message is valid enough Topographically.
A quick load later…
This time I’m more careful. Or the horse riders are clumsier than before. Before you fans of animal horse send hate mail to me, I like to clarify that I only shoot at the rider 2 times and the horse also die for no reason. In fact, shooting the horse won’t register as a hit, so you have to shoot at the rider accurately.
Then 2 enemy riflemen appear. Here’s the problem when I fight outside the fort. It’s very essential problem. The problem is: where the HECK is my crosshair gone???? It seems my aim is at the center of the screen but it’s easier said than done to adjust my aim without the crosshair.
I manage to kill those 2 blokes. As I don’t want to take risk to walk straight ahead, I decide to circle around the fort. It’s my fort after all. I found 2 ladders next to the wall of our fort. So, they use obsolete trick to infiltrate our fort. Using ladder as mean to infiltrate fort or castle, dates back at medieval age. I was shaking my head, why my friends can be deceived with such old trick. It goes without saying that our security is very terrible, moreover with the useless cannon.
There’s another dead body of my fellow with first aid kit next to him. So, was I right to be here? Look at that squatting Lewis Gun guy! I’m going to kill him. Sniper_battlecry01.wav
Man. That guy is tough to crack. I need to empty all of my ammo reserve to kill this guy but I get double KO’ed. Sniper_jeers01.wav
After another quick load…
Finally, I manage to defeat him while I still survive. My health is low but don’t worry. I still keep that first aid behind me. However, my ammo is low and there’s incoming horse rider. I wish I can use the dead bastard light machine gun. That would be very helpful. In fact, there’s no loot on dead enemies. I can’t even loot dead body of my friend. Also, I can’t even pick up ammo from dozens of unused rifles back at the fort! Because the ammo is scarce, I consider this game a survival genre.
There’s another dead legionnaire next to a Lewis Gun that I can use besides a first aid kit and some round magazine for the light machine gun! This American light machine gun is heaven sent. It’s devastating against anyone who dare against me. Including that bloke with Vickers machine gun. Soldier_mvm_loot_godlike03.wav
There you go. I also kill the horse keeper. Those tents look suspicious. Maybe the show girl is being held there.
I must applaud your idiocy to fight me with just a sword against while I have Light Machine Gun. Also, why he lit the brazier in the middle of the day? Isn’t this desert not hot enough for you?
There she is! She looks unusually calm for some show girl to see a man getting barraged by bullets. But then again, she doesn’t like her captor. Anyway, point and click her. And we’re done! Viva La France!
Attic Games’ Last Stand at Fort Bagarre (2005) is weird indie FPS game. I won’t compare it to Battlefield 1 because that’s very unfair to me. I think the game is not meant to be taken seriously because rescuing a showgirl is not so important in my opinion. Why she takes high risk to go to some desolated fort in Morocco? Real showgirl won’t do that. Maybe, she’s driven by high nationalism to entertain the legionnaires. Sure, whatever. The control is weird yet simple. The hit detection is terrible. The blood mark on enemies may indicate that you hit them. It is probably help with your aim. Then there’s missing crosshair when you go outside and it’s horrible thing to happen because the combat at outside is the hardest one. What’s with the light machine gunner and the horse riders. Luckily enemies often facing the wrong way. But when they do point at you, their aim is pinpoint accurate. The objects in outside are ugly. They’re a level above generic cardboard cut like object but still bad nonetheless. The oasis water looks terrible. It more resembles a layer of aluminum foil rather than refreshing body of water. I don’t like the white outline on the palm trees. It makes the tree look even faker. The fort itself is pretty fine though. The difficulty is closely related to ammo and health supply that you can find. Inside the fort, the difficulty curve is quite fair and linear. But when you go outside for the first time, it becomes quadratic curve because enemies seem nigh infinite plus there’s the bloke with Lewis gun that can take lots of hits. Carrying the American light machine gun, makes the wearer durable apparently. Once you get your hand on the almighty Lewis gun, the difficulty curve becomes flat low because how good the gun is. For the love of God. Please don’t shoot the enemies on the tower like I did because you just waste your ammo considerably. I can’t use any of mounted weapon like Vicker machine gun and cannon. Also, I don’t have melee weapon even. So, the combat is quite horrible in my book plus you can’t loot ammo from dead bodies. The sound effect is mildly bad. Same goes for the music. The intro music is fine. As for the music inside the game, I think it’s supposed to be tense action music. But I feel like it’s scary music, making the game feels like those indie scary game with janky graphic.
Last Stand at Fort Bagarre (2005) is janky bad FPS game. Luckily, the game only last for 20 minutes or so if you know where the objectives unlike me who’s clueless. However, I might push my luck very hard to say that: I want to see Attic games make more FPS with the engine they use for this game. With better level and more weapon. Or maybe with useful allies but that sounds impossible. We all know that the true way of legionnaire is to fight alone against all of the enemies and save damsel in distress. Voila! Fin!
