WinBack: Covert Operations

"I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this game to anyone."

WinBack: Covert Operations for Playstation 2 is a game that is sorely lacking. It is a third-person shooter with a story mode, a challenge mode, and a multi-player versus mode. There is also a trial mode and a max-power mode that can be unlocked.

The Big Scoop:
The background is that a terrorist group of the fictional country Sarcozia has captured a U.S. military installation giving them access to the U.S. top-secret star wars satellite which lets them attack ground targets with relative impunity. The satellite’s first target is the space research base where conveniently enough, the only way to track the satellite is located, so the satellite can’t be shot down with missiles. Maybe its just me, but before the game even starts it is filling me with angst. First that there is only one control unit. What was the U.S. planning to do if terrorists ever got a hold of this one installation? Second, how hard is it possibly to point a radar dish up in the air. Anyone who buys DirectTV would be able to track the satellite. Terrorists have been doing just that for years. So has the U.S. military ever since Sputnik was launched. Anyway, without these two glaring errors of common sense, the game would not be possible, so we tread on.

The U.S. Department of Defense lacks the trust in the U.S. military to strike the military installation on time. So the military isn’t involved, even within their own jurisdiction. And while you give the terrorists a chance to attack if you wait, apparently mobilizing forces just in case your team fails its mission was never considered an option. But I get ahead of myself.

It is at this juncture that you, the player are called in. You are Jean-Luc, part of an anti-terrorist team called S.C.A.T. How appropriate. The plan that is devised is that the team is to split into two forces. The first is to go through the main entrance into the facility while the second team goes in the back way in case the first team doesn’t succeed. Very simplistic, but the plan was made very quickly and under incredible pressure, so it might be forgivable to someone with the tactical knowledge to outwit a turnip. While you and your team are flying to the target, the helicopter experiences some technical difficulties forcing all to abandon ship. The team is separated, but all will follow through on their mission paramaters. Its this inability to adapt to a changing scenario that got the U.S.’s hostage rescue team in Iran into so much trouble back in the 1970’s.

So you start the game as a lone operative facing down the front door of a massive enemy encampment. Now, I’m no soldier, but if I’m behind enemy lines, and I am pretty certain that I want to accomplish the mission, I don’t do a full frontal assault. Especially since my only weapon is apparently a sidearm. What kind of assault team doesn’t use an assault rifle? Well, this one apparently. Wasn’t this supposed to be a covert operation? That is only true in that Dan Rather isn’t following you around.

Now your job as a player is to reconnect with any allies you might have and complete the mission by shutting down the satellite. Standard operating procedure would be to collect supplies, reconnect with teammates, and then follow through with the plan. Not the brave Jean-Luc. He will follow through with the plan and collect supplies and reconnect with allies if it suits his fancy. I don’t care how good you are in combat, someone like this is a death sentence for the entire team. Ah, but that’s reality sneaking into my observations again!

So as to not give any spoilers away, I’ll end my review of the game’s plot there. Only heed my warning, it does get far worse and easily predictable. If you can figure out what will happen in a Sesame Street episode by the first few minutes, you’ll be able to predict the course of this game.

Now the plot isn’t the end-all to any game. In fact, most games have bad plots. So the hope is that a bad plot can be covered up with a fun game. Unfortunately, this is not the case with WinBack.

WinBack’s playing features have some benefits that actually make the game interesting. For about 12 seconds. These features are crouching, hiding behind objects, and coming out from behind objects to fire and then returning quickly to the hiding spot. There is also the forward roll which is not entirely useful barring about three points in the game, but it is at least interesting that you can do a somersault.

Where this game lacks in other areas is that you can’t climb over obstacles even though there would clearly be an advantage to doing so. You cannot jump over object or obstacles. This lack of interaction with the environment is incredibly tiring throughout most of the game.

Next, most shooting games as this seems designed to be (rather than an espionage game that it is billed as) have a strafing feature. In WinBack you cannot even move while you shoot. It is incredibly distressing. On the other hand, most espionage type games and shooter games will have a sniper feature. Again WinBack lacks this powerful feature as well. While it does have a dim laser targeting system on all weapons, it lacks any real sniper capabilities. Further, the laser targeting system may not work so well. Whereas the fantastic graphic capabilities of the PS2 will allow you to see an enemy hiding, and you can point your laser target directly on that target, at several points in the game you still will be unable to hit that target. Curiously enough, while you are hanging out against a wall around a corner from the baddie, his bullets still might hit you.

OK, so the story and the game play clearly voids this game from being considered an espionage game. How does it function as a shooter? Well, in addition to the gripes I previously mentioned (no shooting while moving, no strafing, no sniper) the game lacks something that is included in most shooter games. That is guns. There are a total of 7 useable weapons in story mode. That really isn’t that many.

The first weapon is the pistol you start out with. There is nothing special about this pistol except the unlimited ammunition. Whereas that is a convenient feature, it is hardly realistic. Especially when compared to how limited the other ammunition that you can carry is. It makes a loud bang when you shoot, does little damage, and has very limited range. Carrying this as your primary weapon is like carrying a matchlock rifle. Still, its just a game, and to make the game competitive, its kind of understandable.

The second weapon you also start out with, and that is your hand to hand combat abilities. It consists of a kick if the enemy is aware of your presence, or a pistol whip if the enemy has not yet spotted you. Paradoxically, the hand to hand fighting skills are probably the strongest weapon you have in the game. If you can use them. Once you get close enough, you learn that your character is incredibly slow and the time it takes for you to launch an attack, you have been beaten by your enemies. On the other hand, enemies can attack you in hand to hand very readily, which takes about half your life bar per kick. It doesn’t take nearly that much when you get shot.

The next weapon you are likely to come across is the automatic rifle. This doesn’t do a lot of damage, but it fires rapidly, and coincidentally, has the best range of any weapon in the game. The clips don’t hold as much ammunition as most other assault rifles in common use today, but that’s part of the challenge of the game. You can also only hold a couple of clips at a time. While you can get ammo satchels that allow for carrying a greater number of clips (I think there is a maximum of about 6 or 7), it is hardly worthwhile. The main time you will use this gun is to acquire a target with its superior range, and then switch to another weapon that deals superior damage like the pistol or the shotgun.

So I guess that brings me to my next weapon, the shotgun. The shotgun has a good payload, does a great deal of damage, but has a very limited range. Very limited. The shotgun blast also scatters, but only to the sides, never up and down. So there are several times when the enemy is lined up where the shotgun comes in handy. However, the slow rate of fire, ultimately limited ammunition, and limited range makes the shotgun a poor choice of weapon overall.

The next weapon when cycling through your list is going to be the rocket launcher. What modern video game would be complete without some heavy artillery? But I’ve said too much which may get your hopes up. The rocket launcher is essentially useless except for about three or four parts in the game where the explosion is used to take out an enemy armored encampment. The rocket launcher is too slow to be used as an ordinary weapon. The launch comes about two seconds after you push the trigger. In the meantime, you are stuck at that location as moving and shooting is against the game rules. Unless you happen to be the computer. The blast radius also is not very impressive. Unless you are standing within the blast radius, most of the time it will not hurt the bad guys at all.

The sixth weapon is the silenced pistol. Personally, this is my favorite weapon of the game. Using this is what the game is advertised as being. Then you get to the detriments of limited range, low damage, and very limited ammunition. In fact, you can only carry one clip at a time with this gun. So you use about half a clip on the baddie before he discovers you. Hardly worthwhile.

The final weapon in the game is the C-4 packages you can randomly acquire. They don’t really do much except blow up specific things. Since the bad guys don’t really chase you, they don’t make good traps. Everything that the C-4 can blow up can be blown up by one of the pistols as well, so its hardly worthwhile using it in most cases unless you think it might be more fun to use it.

Now I talked a great deal about the range of weapons in this game, so I think that is something I should address. The game has a feature called the target lock. Different weapons can allow you to get a target lock at different ranges. The longest range of any weapon is the automatic rifle, and the shortest the shotgun (although I suppose you could say that the C-4 and the hand to hand fighting have even more limited ranges). Now the target lock is important because it locks the screen so that the enemy will always be visible, and when you fire your weapon, that is where you will aim. However, the enemy is invariably outside of the range of the target lock making it useless throughout most of the game. Second, the target lock will always seem to lock the most inconvenient angle limiting the player’s vision.

The enemies, however, will be able to hit you from nearly any range so find cover. The enemies will also detect you very quickly no matter what you do, so don’t expect to be able to sneak around them as would make sense. The enemy AI is not terribly advanced. They will not seek cover when under fire. They will not run away. They will shoot when surrounded by explosives and bring the whole game to an explosive finish if you are not careful. The enemies are also strategically placed so that way you cannot get a good camera angle to attack them with (or sometimes even detect their presence). The enemies have unlimited ammo for the type of weapon they carry, usually assault rifle or shotgun. However, by defeating them they do not leave powerups like clips, medkits, or anything else that would be useful. This necessitates the unlimited ammunition of the pistol because you have to clear out an army with this weapon almost exclusively.

Like traditional action/shooter games, WinBack has bosses that must be defeated to advance in the game. They have special, unique weapons that Jean-Luc cannot acquire. They can also sustain far more damage than the traditional hero or bad guy, unless you select them as a character in multiplayer modes. Typical. Nothing novel about this. I will say that many of the level bosses are more likeable than the main character and you are almost compelled to root for them to win.

I don’t want to talk too much about the team for fear of giving away some of the story elements, but I will say this, they are all useless. Not once do any of them ever help you out in the game. They are only plot devices for the story and nothing more. This is a one-player game in story mode.

So how about the multi-player mode? Your friends will hate you for unleashing this game upon them. Multi-player mode is nothing special, no real sense of accomplishment unless you are very competitive with your friends. The bonus of the multi-player mode is that you can unlock characters such as the level bosses, the bad guys, and other characters from the game.

The challenge mode is like the one-player version of multi-player, only everyone is out to get you. Challenge mode is difficult, but not challenging. What I mean is that they throw you into a room, you are surrounded by bad guys, and you have to defeat them all to move on. This is reminiscent of the survival modes in many fighting games where you just fight enemy after enemy with no real reason. Its half luck and half skill that brings you through this.

The game music is not compelling. In its favor, however, it is not distracting either. It is sublime so you almost ignore it. However, you will not feel that the music is somehow driving you on. You will not rush to the record store if WinBack: The Album ever hits the shelves.

The sound effects are pretty good. Not that diverse, but there isn’t much diversity to be found in this game.

The real sound problem in this game comes from the crummy voice actors. To hear Jean-Luc speak is to explore the depths of audible pain that is inflicted on you. Oh well, you’re probably not playing to hear them speak. In fact, once you hear them speak, you’ll wish they hadn’t.

Should you buy the game so you can play it again and again? No. You’ll have no desire to play through this game more than three times, tops. And that is only if you are so curious that you want to see all three endings that they claim to have in the instruction book.

So to sum this game up, it has:

Story (4/10) Worse than Wuthering Heights

Good guys (2/10) You will hate them all

Bad guys (4/10) You want to put them out of their misery for being involved in this game as well

Items (3/10) Largely useless.

Playing features (6/10) The only high point of this game, still not quite up to par as most other third-person shooters.

Sound (5/10) Failed, but not as horrible as it could have been.

Overall 4/10. I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this game to anyone. Keep in mind that this is only my opinion. I’ve heard others claim that this is the greatest game of all time. But others aren’t writing any reviews as to why.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 05/12/01, Updated 05/12/01