The Great Escape

IT'S 1942 AND HALF-TIME IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR, WITH THE ALLIES AND AXIS POWERS LOCKED IN A BRUTAL CONFLICT. FOR YOU, THOUGH, THE WAR IS OVER. OR IS IT? JOIN RETRO GAMER AS WE DIG INTO OCEAN'S MAGNIFICENT WARTIME ADVENTURE, THE GREAT ESCAPE

- WORDS BY GRAEME MASON

Even wars have rules. First formed in the latter half of the Nineteenth century, the Geneva Conventions continue today to govern many aspects of military conflict. In 1931, it updated the earlier Hague Regulations directing the treatment of prisoners of war. Covering provisions, clothing, religious requirements and more, the 1931 Geneva Convention set down the rules as to how combatants on both sides were to treat prisoners during wartime, a prescient update with another devastating war breaking out eight years later. Sadly, it wasn't always obeyed during World War II.

In Ocean's The Great Escape, you're a captured soldier, sent to a high-security prisoner-of-war camp, an adapted castle and its grounds, overlooking the chilly North Sea. Your fellow POWs are veterans of the prison, and have given up, accepting their fate and ready to sit out the rest of the war. As a fresh arrival, you consider it your duty to try and get back to your colleagues, or even just disrupt the German war machine as it ruthlessly pummels Europe.

Based on the actual real-life wartime event (rather than the 1963 United Artists movie),