The plot in Winback 2 isn’t particularly interesting and is pretty generic. It has drug rings, terrorists, megalomaniacs – just all the usual stuff, really. It all serves as a basic backdrop to the game’s typical third-person shooter gameplay. In the game, players will take control of a crack-squad of anti-terrorist type operatives. Those operatives are Craig Contrell, Mia Cabrera and Nick Bruno, and they’ll do whatever it takes to stop any dastardly goings on. What’s interesting is how you must complete each level with two of the above characters, each using a different route.
A gun with a torch in it!? The Doom 3 marine must be pissed.
The first time through each level, you’ll have to complete route A with one of the characters. At various times during the levels, you’ll have to complete an objective which helps your partner out. Once route A is completed you can move on to route B with the other character, who will reap the benefits of the actions carried out in route A. This sounds like an excellent idea, but there just hasn’t been enough effort put into it. You’ll only ever have to do a few things throughout the game to help out your partner (usually to an annoying time limit), and they usually always consist of opening a door or killing some enemies. That’s it. Making matters worse is the lack of consequences of failing to carry out these actions fast enough. If you’re fast, great – you get an extra health point. If you’re slow you don’t fail the mission – you just lose a health point. Why isn’t the second player put under any pressure? Oh, and speaking of health bars, for some reason, the two characters in each mission share a health bar. Not only is this a ridiculous concept, it means there’s little room for error, as taking too many hits in route A will make route B impossible. Sigh.
Missions are generally broken up into three sub-missions, with the occasional uninspired boss battle afterward. The problem is that the level maps are TINY. It seems like each level has been designed to be as small as possible, with one or two corridors, and a few rooms at the end of him. Even on the first time through the game, you’ll be finishing some sub-missions in one or two minutes – hell, the game even acknowledges levels are short, with many having a (pointless) time limit of a whopping five minutes. On top of that, route A and route B never cover the same floor space, making the already tiny levels even smaller. Just as you’re getting into a rhythm, you’ve already finished the level. It’s a shame really, as some interesting levels could have made the game work regardless of the route system’s flaws.
Making the levels last longer are the constant interruptions from HQ and tiny, pointless cut scenes. For instance, walk into a room with a bright flashing light on a panel, and common sense will tell you it’s a switch. It is – but we jump to a brief cut scene, with explicit instructions telling you where the switch is, and to activate it. Thinking is NOT allowed. The puzzles in Project Poseidon are basic enough even without the constant interruptions – they’re basically all in the ‘shoot this switch on the wall to disable that laser beam’ mould – that such hand-holding is not only unnecessarily, but flat out irritating. The interruptions also manage to kill whatever tension the game has managed to build up, too.
Dance.
The controls, while generally solid, lack refinement. For instance, leaning up against a wall, before popping out to shoot enemies, is fine. However, get hit, and your character will stagger, lose all bearings, come off the wall, and stand in the open – probably to get hit again. Why don’t they jump back behind the wall? The left analog stick is also hardly analogue – players can either run or walk, with no in between. Very last-generation. Aiming is generally automatic. Hold L1 while an enemy is in sight, and the crosshair will lock on. Pressing R1 will shoot an enemy – hit them in the head, they die. Hit them in the body twice, and you’ll arrest them, usually picking up their ammo. How does this work? Who knows.
But, you’ll need to do it, because ammo is at an absolute premium in Winback 2. Apparently the budget for this special ops unit is tight, because operatives go into combat with ONE clip for their primary weapon, and ONE clip for their sidearm. It’s ridiculous and utterly unbelievable, and serves only to artificially make things harder. But, it’s not the first of the many lazy improvisations by the developers – information relating to the story is uncovered by walking into yellow ‘i’ icons in levels, bombs are disarmed by shooting two blinking lights so that they line up on the same colour, every terrorist looks the same, the artificial intelligence barely tries to test you by being aggressive – the list goes on.
At least Winback 2 looks OK, if not even remotely remarkable. The main characters look decent enough, and move at a consistently fluid rate. Level design is a bit uninspired – but that goes without saying, really. Your enemies generally all look the same, and nowhere near as good as the playable characters, unfortunately. There are some camera issues – often hitting L1 to aim will put a wall squarely in your face – but it’s actually fairly good for a game of this type. The sound, on the other hand, is terrible. TERRIBLE. Voice acting is clichéd and repetitive (finding an enemy that doesn’t say ‘you bastard’ at you is tough). Sounds are mediocre. But, what really brings a new definition to awful is the music. There don’t seem to be many samples in the game, and the ones they have are horrible (usually weird rock-synth numbers), short and really annoying. Making matters worse is that only one sample is looping during a level. Let’s just say by level end, you’ll be pining for some Slipknot.
He has to be a terrorist - he has a face mask!
There are plenty of missions to try in Winback 2 – but you won’t want to, because they’re the same thing over, and over, and over. A multiplayer mode is up for grabs, but it’s hard to see anyone wanting to actually play it for fun. You can get up to four friends together for some basic shooting action, but it doesn’t expand on the single player. Surprisingly, there’s no co-operative mode. You’d think the route A/B system is screaming out for one, but alas, it’s not to be.
Despite having oodles of potential, Winback 2: Project Poseidon falls flat at every turn. The multiple route idea is great – the execution uninspired, with miniscule levels, a lack of ideas to utilize the system and a non-existent multiplayer co-op mode. The lack of ideas is further accentuated by overly repetitive levels and generic storyline. The control system is still reasonable even after a few years since the first Winback – but lacks the necessary polish to successfully bring it in to 2006. Then there are the countless logic flaws (same health bar for two people, ridiculously finite ammo, etc). Are these problems due to laziness? Or is it because of the budget price point? Either way, Winback 2 should have been a lot better than it actually is.
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