Winback 2: Project Poseidon
- April 25, 2006 13:45 PM PST
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Despite it's unique take on tactical action, Winback 2: Project Poseidon seems only good at shooting itself in the foot.
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You Remember Winback, Right?
Naturally, Winback 2: Project Poseidon is the sequel to KOEI's Winback: Covert Ops. In the game you play as special agent Craig Cantreel, as well as his two allies Nick Bruno and Mia Cabrerra. The game is unique in the fact that you'll play each level from the perspective of two different agents at once. You'll first play through a portion of a level with one character, and then switch to the other to perform some real-time support. It's a pretty neat system, but one that isn't really utilized to its fullest. In most cases you'll just use one character to open a door or flip a switch so another character can progress further in a level, which gets pretty repetitive.
Your characters, being the highly trained agents that they are, are pretty adept with firearms and other weapons, although the variety of which are quite limited. Each character will usually tote around a silenced handgun and a machine gun, although most of the time you'll have an extremely limited amount of ammo for each. I don't know when special anti-terrorists military squads went in to the field with a single clip of ammo, but you'll more than likely find yourself hurting for bullets most of the game. To combat this problem, you can take down enemies with some close-quarters melee attacks, but doing so usually means taking a few rounds to the body in the process.
To encourage smart play, the game uses a special CRT system that rewards you for efficient takedowns. Enemies can be targeted on numerous points of their body. A headshot will kill the enemy instantly, although your main goal is to actually arrest enemies instead. Shooting them in the arms or legs a couple times will cause them to give up, and the more arrests you make, the more CRT points you'll gain for things like health recovery. CRT points carry over from one character to another, so if you do poorly one the first half of a level, the second half can be extremely difficult to complete, considering that character will start off with a severe health handicap. It's a confusing system and one that really doesn't add much to the over all game. In fact, it ends up hindering the gameplay experience by setting up some tremendously difficult situations where you'll find yourself playing level sections over and over again just in an attempt to carry over enough health from one character to another.
Visually Winback 2: Project Poseidon manages to deliver some nice visuals, particularly when it comes to character models. Characters are nicely detailed and show a pretty surprising degree of personality. Enemy characters don't get quite the same amount of attention, although some of the bosses have a nice visual punch. The real tragedy is the fact that the levels in the game are wholly generic and uninspired. You'll experience a great deal of "grey wall syndrome," which is a shame considering the unique gameplay you'll be experiencing.
The game's sound is probably the most disappointing aspect of the game, with music becoming repetitive quickly and the voiceover work bordering on nauseating. The latter is made even more painful by the inclusion of a special bonus video that details the folks who actually had to record the audio detritus that's featured in the game. The dialogue is cliche and poorly delivered, resulting in more embarrassment than entertainment.
Overall Winback 2: Project Poseidon has some neat things going for it. The cool two-character branching level system is fun to mess around with, as are the included multiplayer modes that let you and some friends play through some varied match types (alas, no online functionality). But, the generic levels, poor audio, and sometimes downright confusing level objectives and bizarre CRT system become a little worse for wear. While diehard fans of the Winback series may find some worth in taking on this assignment, other gamers will probably be best to avoid it all together.
