Guerilla In Bolivia is a strategic simulation with action sequences. The game was inspired by the diaries of Che Guevara which were kept during the campaign commencing on November the 7th 1966 in Camiri.

The simulation takes place across the whole of Bolivia - you have six detailed maps as used by Che himself. You will have to deal with ambushes, clashes with militia, sort out the food and provisions for your men, train any new recruits and run a Guerrilla campaign. You start with fifteen fighting men, the core of the Che Guevara's operational unit.

Guerilla In Bolivia is two games in one, a sophisticated strategic simulation and an exciting adventure.

(c) 1991 CCS Simulations Ltd.

Er, oops. Actually, the back of the packaging to this war game has both solved my uncomfortable dilemma of how to begin this review and explained what the game entails in one rather convenient swoop, leaving me shaking and sweating with panic considerably less than when I usually sit down to write a review.

The game in this review, incidentally, has been written by those people at CCS, veterans of the war game since the Spectrum, who this time have mercilessly opted for the text and lists style of gameplay without even a flashing square in sight.

The addition of digitised backdrops helps to make the thing look quite Amigary but, well, you know what I'm going to say now about it, don't you? You know that I'm going to say that the thing is hardly the revolutionary wargame we are all waiting with bated breath to see.

From the options screen you can advance or explore (by sending out two scouts) in any direction - once selected, and a digitised picture later, you are given any news there is of what's going on 'out there'. In between resting, training and rationing food out for individual troop member statistic altering purposes, the only remaining possibilities are to check out the maps, set up an ambush, defend or attack. The ambush option turns out to be a tacky Operation Wolf clone - in a war game? The true war gamer should also avoid this dismal offering from CCS at all costs - I can fail to see anything on offer here that hasn't been seen at least nine and a half million billion squillion trillion times better at least nine and a half million billion squillion trillion times before.

A lethally average war game ever offering absolutely zero to the average war gamer. Only undemanding absolute beginners need apply.