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The Great Escape
 When you think of The Great Escape, you think of Steve McQueen and the boys, jumping over things on motorbikes and proving that when it comes to standing up to those bad Nazis, you are always going to come out second-best - thanks to their indomitable spirit against the foe, they got killed. Good show, chaps. Pip-pip! That is, all apart from Steve McQueen. Oh, you can't kill the American! It won't sell!
That's what you think of. Me? I think of my youth, wandering around in a disorientated fashion, ALWAYS trying to pick up that Red Cross Parcel and yet never EVER being able to. I think of the green flag, suddenly turning red. I think of the passage of time, in a never-ending cycle of dawn and of dusk, standing on that one spot in solitary for all eternity. I think of The Great Escape computer game from Ocean.
Standing stock still was a major part of the game and had I known the first few bars of the theme tune to The Great Escape in my rose-tinted youth, they would have served me well; for I could have joined my electronic comrade in some standing-still action, repeating over and over again those notes as a symbol and constant reminder of the Nazi regime spiritually crushing our hero: I would sympathetically imprison and torture myself as a way of expressing one measly tenth of the pain that he felt.
How do we know he had feelings? "Morale Is Zero" is the confirmation of our hero's despair. "Another Day Dawns" must have compounded it.
 The Great Escape was a masterpiece of the time. It's unique incarceration-based gameplay still hasn't been bested to this day. Even the brief moments that you were free (relatively speaking) to do what you liked had hidden depths - I only found out how to pick up that damnable Red Cross Parcel today, and better still, the resulting development that I may actually find out what the hell the point was in picking it up is extraordinarily exciting. As you can imagine, it is a rare and validating moment.
It is the feel-good and feel-bad game of the last century. The highs of knowing that you might be able to accomplish something, tinged with the demoralising touch of the Nazis. You owe it to yourself to download this; experience first hand the full weight of despondancy on your shoulders.
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