Koei's second installment in WinBack falls short on a lot of fronts.. (contains spoilers)
We'll start with the gameplay. Generally speaking, WinBack 2 is basically a clone of first game's engine - you run, take cover by pressing against a box or wall, peek out and shoot your enemies or laser boxes (boy, you'll be shooting plenty of those). Difference is, now you can actually target areas on the terrorists to..lets say... disarm them, or immobilize them by shooting their arm or leg. Ontop of that, if you get close to the enemies, you can perform "Close Quarter Battle" (erm... a big rip off of Metal Gear Solid 3's "CQC") in which you slam them onto the floor and score an automatic kill. You get a small amount of weapons ranging from silenced & un-silenced handguns, assault rifles, machine guns, and bazookas.. as well as grenades and C4
There is a multiplayer, but its just a basic deathmatch styled game, so it's not really entertaining. You do the basic things you do in single player, minus the melee attacks.
Project Poseidon makes the player to control two characters per mission so you can see the stage from two perspectives seperated into routes called "A" & "B". What you do in A, such as unlocking doors or killing enemies, effects what happens in B. Also, depending on how fast you do things also effects route B. Its a cool concept, but it gets boring fast as it just repeats over and over again... Also, you are timed on every single stage.
A plus that I can give to WinBack 2 is the targeting system. For the most part, the auto-targetting does the job real good with only a flaw here and there once in awhile. About 85% of the time your character will target and hit what you want, the other 15% he doesn't... but thats only if the enemy is either A: really too close, in which you should just melee him or B: too far away. Either way, you can always manual aim your guns.
On thing I feel compelled to point out is that Koei & Cavia Inc. really ripped off Hideo Kojima's "Metal Gear Solid" series in a lot of ways. To start, if anyone remembers the first Metal Gear Solid game, you find yourself running up a spiral tower while fighting off hordes of enemies to reach a helipad on the top.. In WB2 you are doing the same thing. In Poseidon you fight guys who sound AND look like Raven, Grey Fox (in Ninja form), Sniper Wolf and Liquid Snake.... so sad. Also, the way the game is told is through a flashback... can anyway say "rip off of Black by Criterion Games?"
But thats about as good as this review is going to get. Graphically speaking, Project Poseidon is only a slight step above the first game - and with the amount of time in between the games, and the amount of technology that has been out - that isn't a good thing. The levels are dull and boring, and near the end of the game, just repeat. For instance, you will fight in a mansion in the 3rd stage... in the 10th stage your fighting in a mansion that looks almost exactly like the 3rd level's mansion. Understand? The character models don't necassarily look terrible, but they aren't all that realistic looking either. Not to mention Nick Bruno's nose is massive.
The voice acting is horrendous to say the least. The main characters (ie: Bruno, Contrell and Mia) don't really sound too (once again) realistic and sound without personality. The enemies, oh god, the enemies.. they say the exact same things over and over and over and over in all 30 missions of this game. You will be called a "Piiiiiiiiiiiiig" so many times that you will literally feel fat, obese, and insulted in the real world. To me, it seems that the voice actors were given $5 and a sandwhich to do the voice acting... so sad.
The music sounds kinda like it did in WB1, but with more guitars to give you a boost in adrenaline.. however, it doesn't work. Imagine a techno-rock-jazz band playing in a shootout in a circus and you have how the music affects the atmosphere. In otherwords, it just doesn't work. However, the sound effects like guns shooting and what not, sound good.
If you think or though WinBack: Covert Operations was a long game, you'll find that this game can be long with a whoopin' 30 missions. However, each stage & route only last a handful of minutes, so you will beat the game in roughly (give or take) 10 hours. The endings will really dissapoint you, thats a fact. There are two endings with the first being you kill Ross AND Dr. Schneider as Contrell, and basically are all emotional over it as you fly away. The second is you only kill Markus, and you carry Schneider away.... yeah, lame.
To end this, with all the hype and awesomeness that the trailer made players believe that WinBack 2 was going to be a diesel game, I feel cheated and ripped off. With no connection to the first game, I can't even reccommend this game to die-hard fans of WinBack 1. However, if you like the idea of running, hiding, shooting, more hiding, more shooting, more running..ergh..oh and saving hostages while shooting laser boxes, then I say rent this game, you PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG!!!!!!!
......maybe next time WinBack, maybe next time.