| Operation Winback Back against the wall and wait for the enemy to fire at you, now its your turn jump out from behind your cover and pump the enemy full of lead, now move on and repeat. Yes Koei's new strategic PS2 action game, Operation winback may be rather simplistic, but action fans will be drooling just at the sight of this action packed game. Winback is much more strategic then most other games released in the action genre for PS2 so far, as you can't just sprint through the stages with your trigger finger spraying bullets, instead you must take a safer and much more realistic approach and hide, yes it sounds cowardly and rather MGS like but trust me, this is completely different, as said before Winback is an action game at heart and not stealth like Konami's game, pressing against walls and ducking behind objects are valuable moves in the heat of Winbacks gun battles as you evade gunfire and return your own hoping to take down the enemies, it sure is a change to the run, shoot and hope type of games that have been around for many years. Winback was first released for the N64 a couple of years ago with success and obviously the PS2 version has had an improvement in the visuals department, less pop up and more polygons but not quite the graphical leap we would expect from Sony's machine but still things such as the character detail and smoke effects are especially incredible. The voice-acting certainly deserves a mention and not because it�s good, it�s bad; in fact it�s awful. Most of the characters talk as if its a normal day in their life and the hero Jean Luc talks in an excitable tone with no other emotion then that in his voice. You can also gather family members or friends together to battle it out in death matches or other modes of play, but sadly in my opinion Winback doesn't work too well as a multiplayer game as I'm used to death matches in the style of games such as timesplitters where cover isn't such an important thing and that�s the problem with Winback, diving in and out of cover doesn't seem to work so well in multiplayer as it does in the single player game. To some Winback may turn out to be a repetitive experience, but if you love your big guns (I do), like your explosions big (I do) and don't mind samey gameplay (I don't) then Winback is your partner for life! Simon Wigham 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Opinions Round-Up "Brilliant and stylish shooting-action, cover is your friend and in some cases your enemy, will last the average gamer for ages, but people who prefer their in your face blasting action steer well clear, this is the thinking mans shooter"Chris Wigham |