Rogue Warrior video game

Somehow I missed this... They developed a home video game based on the life and fiction of Dick Marcinko, the Rogue Warrior. In a nutshell, Dick Marcinko was a Navy SEAL officer who fought in Vietnam, was involved in the staff planning for the Iranian Hostage Rescue Mission in 1980, and based on the after-action reviews of that, was commissioned to stand-up a Navy SEAL counterterrorist unit. He stepped on a lot of toes during his career, and earned a lot of nicknames -- not all of them flattering -- hence, the "Rogue Warrior." His career ended in a conviction for receiving kickbacks while purchasing flashbang hand grenades.



He wrote an autobiography (with some help from a ghost writer), and then turned the series into fiction "based on" his exploits. The series sold pretty well in the early to mid-1990's, then petered out, although I think it's still going.



So somebody released a video game in the vein of Metal Gear Solid, or Splinter Cell, in which the player controls Dick Marcinko himself trapped behind the lines in North Korea. And nothing is as dangerous as a trapped wild animal...

"Neat!" I thought. Of course, I actually met Mr. Marcinko about ten years ago. While he's still not someone I'd want to piss off for real, he's no longer in the prime condition necessary to conduct covert SEAL missions. Forced retirement seems to appeal to him, and he's enjoying the opportunity to drink lots of gin and eat well. Still, this guy really was trained to kill a man with everything from a backpack nuclear device to a swizzle stick...

So I went looking for some information about the game, and found a short write-up on Wikipedia with some snippets from game reviews. This one, from Andrew Renner of Game Informer, amused me: "With the quality of the gunplay being as bad as it is, and the story coming across as a six-year-old's interpretation of Cold War events, the only fun comes from the possibility of stepping into the shoes of a blatently homoerotic Rambo." Oh boy. Mr. Renner, I hope you never wake up in the middle of the night with a slightly paunchy, over-the-hill former SEAL commando in your bedroom...

err... Nevermind...