WinBack: Covert Operations

"Extremely underrated, but it still has its flaws."

Winback: Covert Operations is one of the most underrated video games I have ever played. This action-packed thriller will disappoint you story-wise, but satisfy you with the endless mass of involving gunfights. And don't expect Doom-style gunplay here, folks. Jean-Luc Cougar's one original move in this game, which I'll tell you about in a second, is what half of Winback is based on.

I felt the need to talk about the gameplay first because it is so damn important in this game because of the terrible story that with bad gameplay, I would have given this game a three or so. Anyway, I want to tell you about the ''swing-out-and-shoot-a-few-times, then-move-back-under-cover'' move that many have seen in Metal Gear Solid 2. Even though Solid Snake's adventure has to be the greatest game ever made, Winback deserves credit on this: Hideo Kojima and the boys didn't think that one up, folks. This is where it came from.

Winback leads you through thirty-one stages that are usually longer then say, a Syphon Filter level, and have intense boss fights that can get quite annoying at times. Jean-Luc Cougar, the main character (French name) has a tiny arsenal, which is realistic but nevertheless annoying. You won't find anything here but a submachine gun, shotgun, rocket launcher, (how does he carry that?) unlimited ammo 45 caliber handgun, (ammo is scarce, forcing you to use this gun a lot) and a silenced pistol, which completely sucks when put next to the regular handgun. There's also a cool stationary high-powered machine gun that can be occasionally spotted around the complex, maybe in about four or five stages.

The gameplay is so fun that it single-handedly makes up for one of the two points that would've been removed due to the crappy story. It doesn't vary, but that's fine with me. Enemies will pop up, either in hallways or behind crates, and you'll be forced to find cover and blast them. It may seem repetitive, but you won't know just how absurdly entertaining it is until you try it. There are ten boss fights, and this is the only other bit of nitpicking I can do to the gameplay, because all the boss fights seem the same, except that the bosses will have different weapons. (One has an assault rifle, two has a shotgun, three has a submachine gun, four has a flamethrower, five has a minigun, (watch out) six has a rocket launcher, seven has a pair of submachine guns, eight has a high-powered pistol and little things the boss shoots that explode, and nine and ten, the two final bosses, have a high-powered handgun and a regular handgun respectively, but have incredible aim.) The game is divided into three different difficulty settings, easy, normal, and hard, and beating on normal and hard will unlock a pair of new modes to play, such as one-hit-kill for everybody, including you, and infinite ammo for all your weapons. A lot of the game's requirements are based around finding and destroying laser control units. Even though I wonder why he can't simply just step over the laser (you have to see it to believe it) this can be very challenging to do. I have beaten this game countless times, and after a couple of years, that number is high enough to tell me just how much I had with this game. Just fabulous replay value, at least in my opinion.

Now we move on to the cons of this game, and leading the pack is the heavily unoriginal story. You want to know the story: (no spoilers, of course, even though I doubt you'd care if I did spoil the plot) guys from a fictional foreign country take over a military base controlling a satellite that can destroy things because they want freedom for their country, and a top-secret band of operatives (SCAT) is dispatched to kill 'em all and winback (hence the name) control of the satellite. Gee, I wonder where the developers thought of that from? cough *Goldeneye* cough. If this story were put into a book, reading it would be about as entertaining as shoving a fork up my ***. There are many cutscenes (not Metal Gear Solid style many, but a bit less then Syphon Filter style many, since there aren't as many during levels), but Omega Force (the developer) failed in entertaining me with it. The final plot twist is so predictable I actually knew it after watching the game's opening cutscene (I'm not kidding, my friend called it as well) and I personally could have come up with a better one in about five minutes or so. Crappy story, great game.

Since the story's crappiness has been mostly countered by the great gameplay, why have I given this an seven? Well, I'll tell you why. There are two reasons, and one of them is the incredibly bland and undetailed graphics. The main office, where you spend nearly half the game, is painted mostly gray, white, and gray, (yes, I did that on purpose) with the exceptions being the brown crates, outside grass, red lasers, and the humans. Try and imagine that in your head without seeing a screenshot and then try not to blink repeatedly. I would've failed had I been a reader of this review and been told to do that. But since graphics, are such a minor part of the game, only one point is subtracted for the bad graphics.

The other point is gone because of multiplayer, which is fun for about fifteen minutes before becoming insanely repetitive and boring, even though there are ten fairly large arenas and you can play as the boss characters, and get their weapons with unlimited ammo (Gunt is really, REALLY cheap to be) Try and imagine Metal Gear Solid in multiplayer without the stealth, and you'll understand why. I'll be blunt: I haven't felt compelled to play multiplayer more then once or twice, and for good reason.

A thing about Winback that has been has insulted time and time over again is the camera, and so I'm going to devote a special section to it. I really don't have any problem with the camera, but I can see why some people do. The irritating camera is fond of swiveling around and switching angles on you right when you've found the perfect spot that you want. When you jump out from a wall and attempt to open fire, the camera might twist and turn, feeling like it's doing that just to annoy you, but in reality it's because of the way Cougar is pointed. The camera will do its best to stay directly behind Cougar, and that can be a problem. This game would've been better if it had utilized the transparency effect to neutralize some problems. But overall, the annoyances will likely be minor, and this particular aspect of the game isn't worth complaining about to me.

Fortunately, Winback controls like a dream. The odd part is that to shoot, you have to hold the right shoulder button down and push A, which can be difficult to get used to, but once you do, you'll have no problems. Because the gunfights of this game are so much more tactical then the the gunplay in, say, Syphon Filter, that is probably why they don't let you shoot while running. Cougar can also do a dive roll, which is EXTREMELY useful, probably more so then in any game I've ever played except the Syphon Filter Trilogy, because of the way it helps you avoid gunfire so well. The camera can be rotated (mostly) with the C buttons, even though it usually doesn't like where you set it, and the B button is reload. That's really it. It isn't complicated- because it doesn't need to be.

Winback is not all that easy of a game, but I can't really call it hard, because even on Sudden Death, the guards can be taken out in one shot so that mostly neutralizes the problems that occur for you in dying with one shot. You should be able to blast through the game in a couple days, and although you'll likely come back for more, its length leaves much to be desired.

This game does not have any voice acting, (it does in the PS2 version, but its so bad I'd rather have the text) so you'll have to watch letters flying across the screen instead of audio coming out of your speakers, which is okay, I guess. The music in this game is actually one of its strong points, even though there are few tracks. The closer to being dead you are, the more intense the music gets, and I actually like that, because the deader I am, the more the music keeps me alert and ready to kick some Sarcozian butt (that's the name of the fictional country.)

In conclusion, Winback is a game that you should buy immediately, because of its cheap price, but you shouldn't actually play it until you've conquered both of the Metal Gear Solids and the Syphon Filter Trilogy. They are better then this game, but even though this game has its flaws, it is very fun and does deserve a place on your shelf (even if you have to use the dust rag on your Nintendo 64 when taking it out of storage.)

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/22/01, Updated 12/22/01