A very silly one-mission "campaign" and too quick and easy to be very interesting; but it's got its moments. Once you cut away the first and last parts there's a mildly entertaining little quickie mission in the middle. Certainly there's nothing actually offensive about it, except for an aspect of the premise which is easy enough to ignore.

Situation:

The waters of a Norwegian fjord. Or perhaps a bjuick. Two ships at anchor, one large and one smallish. Night, and cloudy, though you can see amazingly well under the surface.

Plant explosive charges on the bottoms of the two ships. Get aboard the smaller one and steal the secret coding machine from the captain's cabin. Do this without raising any alarm.

You only need three men to do this job. Two of these can be literally anybody; they only have to perform a single idiot-simple job, at no risk whatever, and swim away. Only one man will be doing anything and you'll be controlling him so his skills are irrelevant. Mallory is a good one for this, as his stupidity and shit reflexes don't figure in, and his amazing endurance comes in handy.

Even more than the first campaign, this is clear outside any possible function of the World War II SAS. Such a mission would be strictly Royal Navy, or just possibly Royal Marines. For this reason none of the men from the other SAS or Commando missions should be used, if you want to maintain even the faintest internal credibility. This is a good chance to use some of the men you never would use otherwise.

That's easy. Your three men each get an underwater breathing device and an explosive charge apiece. Actually I wouldn't be surprised if one man could carry two charges, in which case you'd only need two men, but I've never tried it. Each man could carry a compass if you wanted, but it's just as easy to navigate by the map.

Your viewpoint character will also need a silenced Sten and a couple of clips, and a small first aid kit if you must. That's it. The other two men don't need weapons at all. The setup menu will question you about this, when you hit Continue, but just say yes and proceed.

As I say, this is a silly mission; but the first part is by far the silliest. Number one, you're planting these two little pissant charges - small enough to be carried by a free-swimming diver - in the hope of sinking or at least seriously damaging a battleship! I'm sure you'd do some ugly things to the paint job but nothing more. The smaller vessel might be somewhat more vulnerable; really, if they had to do this nonsense with the frogmen and the limpet mines, they should have simply omitted the battleship.

As for this being the Tirpitz, that's the one part that I do find offensive. The Tirpitz was indeed attacked by Royal Navy teams using midget submarines, at its anchorage in Alta Fjord - which this resembles about as closely as it does Long Island Sound - but that was a very different operation; the vehicles used were genuine submarines, with periscopes and quarters for the crew and everything, and the explosive charges employed were huge ones attached to the sides of the subs, and dropped to the bottom of the anchorage underneath the battleship.

It was an extremely dangerous mission by a group of incredibly heroic men, only a few of whom survived; and to identify this little farce with it in any way is an insult to their memory. This could have been avoided simply by giving the ship a different, fictitious name; or, better yet, by leaving out the battleship entirely. Since they didn't, I will refer to it only as "the big ship."

You can, by the way, rationalize the mission somewhat if you say that the code machine was the real purpose, and the limpet mines merely a diversion to obscure the real nature of the incursion.

The "minesweeper" is pretty well done as to exterior layout, certainly compared to the infamous Death Ship in the old HD. The captain's cabin is - oh ho ho - well, wait till you see it; let's just say somebody had a very unrealistic idea of the lifestyle and accommodations enjoyed by the commander of a small and unimportant German warship. Otherwise, the only real quibble would be that here's this ship obviously maintaining tight security - armed guards walking the deck and the passageways - yet they've got not one but two ladders dangling down to the water, without so much as a sentry nearby....

The first part is just nothing. Give a Follow Me and lead the other two men toward the big ship. Each of them in turn must swim along under the ship, watching the bottom, till he sees a red explosive marker. One is located about halfway along and the other back toward the stern.

Once these have been planted, one of the men gives the other a Follow Me and swims back the way they came. There is no tac map for this one, you'll have to swim them back by hand. Use the map for guidance. Once you get a reasonable distance away you can surface and swim the rest of the way normally if you like. The pickup boat is waiting in a little cove. It can't be boarded; just swim the two men up to it and leave them there. For them the mission is over.

Now back to your number one man, still waiting by the big ship. Swim him over to the smaller one and find the red explosive marker under her hull - it's under the after part - and set it.

You should save at this point so in case something goes wrong you won't have to go through all that boring shit again.

There are two ladders along the port side (the left side, landlubber) but you want the one closer to the stern; the other one puts you too close to the guards. Climb up it till you get close to the top and then stop and switch to third person, and use that to check out the situation up on deck. The area you need to watch is to your left, up on the superstructure; there's a guard walking a patrol. If you wait too long an officer will come out and light up a smoke and then stand there talking to the guard and you'll have quite a long wait before it's safe again. On the other hand if you get in too much of a hurry you'll be spotted, so look carefully and don't take any unnecessary risks.

When it's all clear, head on up that ladder fast. When you reach the deck take a right and dash, or waddle, over to the sheltered area between the superstructure and the aft turret. (Turret? Pretty heavy armament for a minesweeper, but never mind.) Have the silenced Sten ready. In a matter of seconds a guard will appear - if he's not there already - over on the starboard side. He'll be looking in your direction so shoot him immediately.

Ditch the breathing gear now, and go around the superstructure toward the other side. Lie down flat and crawl along the deck, staying close up against the superstructure. There are a couple of guards up ahead, one on the main deck and another up above, but just watch them and wait till the one up top is gone and the one on deck is walking away from you. Then move fast and you can get there before he turns around and sees you.

When you come abreast of a door - the first one you come to - make sure nobody's looking and stand up and open it. Get inside and close the door behind you. Wait a moment; if you were spotted there'll be an alarm, or they'll come after you, at which time you'll have to reload the mission and try again from the last save.

If everything stays quiet, then turn and go down the little passageway to the end and open the door. Step through quickly, facing to the left. At the end of the next passage either there will be a guard or one will appear in just a few seconds. Shoot him before he has a chance to do anything.

Go on down the short passageway toward the new cadaver. Turn left down the side passage and take the last door on your right. Go through it and then through another door and then, for God's sake, through another door. On the other side of the last door is the captain's quarters. You'll find him sitting behind a desk and you'll have to shoot him very quickly because he goes for his Luger when he sees you. This is the only time when you might need a first aid kit.

Pause a moment to look around. This is supposed to be the living quarters of the commander of a very minor German naval auxiliary in wartime? Captain Steubing didn't have this kind of accommodations aboard the Love Boat! This guy must have been Hitler's cousin or something to rate this kind of luxury.

The code machine is in another room, through the door to the rear and to your right. It's sitting on a desk and veterans of good old HD will recognize it immediately from a mission of execrated memory. Looks like a portable typewriter; pick it up and...I don't know where you're supposed to be carrying it, down the top of your jock or something. Whatever.

You've now accomplished all the mission goals but one, to wit getting your ass out of there without any new holes in it - and without setting off any alarms. That last might seem the hard part, but not if you do it right.

Go back out the way you came. Right at the intersection of those passageways, where you shot the guard, there's a door on your right. Actually there will be several doors; rather than try to tell you which one I'll just say keep trying till you find the right one, there's only a few and you'll know when you find it.

Because behind that door you'll find a small living-quarters-type room with a man asleep on a bunk, evidently drunk and passed out, snoring away. Wake him up by firing a few silenced rounds next to his head - careful, don't hit him; you may have to fire several shots before he wakes up.

When he does he'll instantly get to his feet and raise his hands in surrender. Capture him and take his outfit. Toss the Sten and any other incriminating stuff you've got with you; everything but the typewriter - sorry, "code machine" - and, if you're really the insecure type, the first aid kit. Let the disguise meter load and go back out the way you came.

When you get to the last door, the one opening out onto the deck, you might as well save. You shouldn't need any backup beyond this point, but every now and then the unexpected happens.

Now just open the door and step out onto the deck. Look around and see if there's a guard looking in your direction. If nobody's looking, just run on back toward the stern of the ship. Even if somebody is looking your way you can probably make it before the disguise runs out, but no use taking unnecessary chances; if you see a guard facing your way, pop back inside out of sight and give him a little time to get turned around away from you.

Once you make it back to where you left your frogman gear, just put it on and you're ready to go. Run quickly across the deck on the port (left) side of the ship and down the ladder where you came up. If you're using a man with a fairly high endurance rating you can just jump, but there will be some injury registered, I suppose from the impact of hitting the water.

Let us review the situation. You are now submerged in the freezing waters of an Arctic fjord, as you were before, except that now you don't have a nice rubber wet suit to keep you warm - you're wearing an ordinary German sailor's uniform, complete with a heavy fur-lined coat to drag you down. In real life the only question would be whether you die of hypothermia or drowning.

However, this is the wonderful world of VR shooter games, and if you wanted realism you came to the wrong place. As already noted, there's nothing remotely realistic about any aspect of this particular mission, so don't worry about it. You got the typewriter, you're OK, time to go.

Now there's nothing to do but swim back to the pickup boat, and the mission is done.

Oh yes - there are a couple of "submarines", really just submersible vehicles, waiting just under the surface out near the entrance to the fjord or tjoyota or whatever. They bear no resemblance to the Royal Navy's "X-boat" midgets; they bear a certain superficial similarity to the "Chariots" used by the Italians in the Mediterranean, but without the detachable warhead. Really they seem to be inspired by the modern submersibles which have indeed been used experimentally by the Special Boat Section in recent times.

Anyway there's no point in fooling with them. You're not required to use them or to bring them back; you can just swim to the pickup point and get the same mission credit. Unless you just want to play with one, you can ignore them.

So much for that. Kind of a trivial business, not to be taken seriously; a bit boring at times, mildly amusing at others.

Well, just wait till the next one. I guarantee you it's no laughs at all.