WinBack: Covert Operations

It's no surprise that Goldeneye, having appeared from the evergreen loins of Rare, sent shock waves through the shoot-'em-up fraternity. It was, and remains, the greatest four-player deathmatch experience to date. Even gunning down wave upon wave of enemy grunts on your lonesome was an unforgettable experience. The same can be said for Konami's smash hit tactical espionage thriller, Metal Gear Solid, on PlayStation. This one-player, genre-busting game quite literally blew the roof off with its gritty meld of stealth and gun-play.

So what does WinBack: Covert Operations have to do with all this banner waving? Well, more than we imagined, actually. For starters, the plot is pure Bond. A terrorist organisation calling themselves the Crying Lions has taken control of a high-tech military satellite orbiting the earth. Their leader, one Kenneth Coleman (who sounds more like a door-to-door salesman than a megalomaniac) has no intention of bargaining with the Department Of Defence, spouting some nonsense about freeing their homeland, Zarozcia.

Bravo Two Zero

Safe within the belly of the GULF Strategic Weapons System, a top secret nuke-proof mountain base, he intends to take his frustration out on the rest of the world. Just to prove he's a little bit wound-up, the cad's already levelled the Centre For Space Development. Desperate and entirely vulnerable, the DOD commissions the only gang capable of digging out this unstable nutter – the Strategic Covert Actions Team, or SCAT (we're not kidding) for short. If a job stinks, SCAT will sort it out!

Players fill the sturdy boots of Jean-Luc Cougar, the unit's top operative and all-round good guy. He's the sort of all-American cheeseball who'd bring a distraught puppy out of a burning building and still have time for home-baked apple pie. Sickening isn't it?

WinBack is an intriguing hybrid of the aforementioned classics and takes full advantage of our craving for stealth warfare action simulations. It's been a rocky road to completion, however, having suffered an extremely long gestation period. Originally, it was earmarked to land on our beaches last Christmas! Developer Koei has laboured intensely to hone its unique camera system, which propels the third-person action along.

Lethal Weapon

Initial impressions left us a tad concerned about the very hands-on approach required to get the most out of it, and although it seems to have a mind of its own in certain situations, early fears at the E3 show in Atlanta have been partially allayed. Having said that, you still feel like you're involved in a full-on wrestling match grappling with a system that just won't be tamed. But as with the rest of the controls, a bit of quality time spent mastering their initial intricacies reaps enormous rewards. What starts as a finger fumbling nightmare suddenly transforms into a logical joy to play – there are so many character actions to master that it takes a couple of hours before you feel comfortable, but once mastered you have at your disposal a lean, mean killing machine with more tricks up his sleeve than The Great Suprendo.

Jean-Luc walks, runs and squats like any regular soldier, but the most insanely satisfying move is the 'Swing Out – Swing Back' surprise attack system. To pull it off our hero needs to be standing (or crouching) near a wall. Next you need to press the A button and as if by magic he presses his back against the wall.

Napalm Death

From this hidden position he can shuffle along to the edge, target a hapless goon, dart around the corner, give him a lead enema and return to his initial position almost instantaneously. Compelling stuff. It's so beautifully executed that you never tire of targeting and killing. The ingenious bit is that if you can see the enemy, even if Jean-Luc can't, all visible bad guys can be targeted from the safety of cover.

Boxes, vehicles, bunkers and other convenient means of hiding from the enemy are strewn throughout every level, but sooner or later you have to break into open ground. This is where the forward tumble comes into its own. By pressing A while moving in a crouch, Jean-Luc performs a perfect combat roll. More impressive is the way he can reload or change weapons simultaneously, adding immeasurably to the excitement and tension. The manual camera system, as we mentioned earlier, is awkward at best, but learning to use it to your advantage is crucial. It's the only way to pick out potential targets and maintain constant vigilance. This is made brutally evident on later levels when enemy soldiers appear from all kinds of hidden areas.

Snipe

Another disappointing aspect of WinBack is the paltry weapon count. Other than the default pistol, shotgun and automatic rifle, the only additional pick-ups are C4 explosives, a silenced pistol and a rocket launcher – this hardly competes with likes of GoldenEye 007 or Metal Gear Solid. The game itself is pretty huge though, consisting of four reasonably detailed regions, which are split into various sub-levels. Things tend to look a little muddy in places, but the character animations more than re-dress the balance.

Rounding off WinBack is the fairly engaging two, three and four-player deathmatch mode. Unfortunately the game engine doesn't suit the frantic demands of a deathmatch – all that hiding behind stuff doesn't really work when all you want to do is blast everyone around you!

WinBack strips away all the intricacies of Metal Gear Solid and lowers the weapons count from Goldeneye, but what remains is a slightly flawed, but eminently playable tactical espionage shoot-'em-up. Lock 'n' load!

There's nothing quite like running around, hiding behind a crate and then jumping out '70s cop-show style to take down an enemy with a few shots from your pistol. Winback is filled to the rim with strangely satisfying stuff like this. To give you a little history lesson, Winback was supposed to come out well over a year ago. Right before its original release, Nintendo took interest and suggested it be taken back to the drawing board for some tweaks. They saw something special in Omega Force's game, and now that we've had some in-depth playing time we feel the same way. It will provide a great deal of fun--both in the action movie-esque one-player mode, and to a lesser extent in the variety of multiplayer modes. You control Jean-Luc who must stop a group of terrorists from using a satellite to blow up stuff around the world. And although the story line is a bit shaky in parts, it's very entertaining. As you make your way through the game's 30 or so stages, there's a lot of leaning against walls waiting for the right opportunity to jump out and start shooting. This sort of thing just never gets old. Characters are animated flawlessly, levels are designed extremely well (although the multiplayer ones tend to be on the small side) and the graphics are very pleasing to the eye. The game is filled with tons of action in the form of flying bullets and lots of tumbling and scripted cinematics which explain the story through cheesy but informative dialogue (character development in these parts is often cut short by an untimely shooting of one of your team members though). There's also a bunch of simple but effective puzzles to keep things interesting. Sure, Winback has some problems--like its flaky camera, fairly easy bosses, lack of weapon types, and Al that can be a little slow at times--but overall it's put together well, and definitely one to purchase.

N64 OWNERS looking to put some Metal Gear in their gaming diet will find Winback to be just what the doctor ordered. You play as a member of a commando group sent to stop a band of terrorists who are threatening the world with nuclear annihilation. Instead of requiring you to use runn-gun trigger-finger reflexes. Winback makes you choose your targets carefully and wait for the right moment to strike: if you try and take all your enemies head-on. you won't last long. Why the deliberate pace? The enemy A.I. is amazing: Your foes duck for cover, call for reinforcements, and even get tagged by their own friendly fire.

To aid you during your mission are several collectible weapons, including a shotgun, machine gun. rocket launcher, and plastic explosives. Even in preview form. Winback was an intense gaming experience. The controls were easy to master--after a few test runs, that is--but the camera angles needed some tuning. The graphics featured vibrant colors and engaging gunfire, but at times they were obscured by excessive fog. Hopefully, the game's sore spots will be addressed before Win-back's October release.