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| Impressive environments and lighting can be seen throughout the game | Adventuring with the most boring man alive!! |
A quick disclaimer before we begin: if you’re one of the many Vista owners out there, then the FMV’s are meant to be choppy and you’re not meant to see what’s going on. Ok, that’s not strictly true but Lighthouse Interactive are aware of the problem and a troubleshooting guide can be found on their official forums.
Anyway, why is the game so disappointing? I’ll start at the top: Your character, the British nuclear Physicist, Dr. John Russell is as wet and as monosyllabic as they come. I want you to imagine that I am talking to you very slowly and clearly without any intonation in my voice similar to the kind you hear on cheap translation tapes that you have lying around and have only listened to how to ask for sausage and eggs in German as you’ve fallen asleep due to the hypnotic nothingness of the narrator. Phew! That was a long sentence but that’s how it feels listening to Dr. Russell converse with the other characters and narrates his various thought and feelings to you.
What doesn’t help either is during these scenes where the eminent doctor is asking someone why they won’t help him, seems as though the characters’ scripted movements are very limited indeed. The amount of times our protagonist raises his hand twitchily up to his glasses and shuffles his feet is like watching Mohammed Ali playing statues, it doesn’t look good. There is also noticeable tearing during these scenes but they could be the aforementioned video issues with Vista, so I’ll reserve judgment on that one. That said, the environments are beautifully detailed and the lighting superb but not detailed that you have to go pixel hunting to find the bottle cap that is the vital component for your jet-propelled motor car or something like that.
However, sometimes it would be nice if your character didn’t stand over the item that you wanted to explore or interact with: I’m looking at you radiator on the lorry outside the museum! He simply stands with his back to you, covering the item that you want to be able to see in order use one of your objects with. Very strange design choice indeed.
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| Is that a bayonet in his hand or is he just pleased to see us? | This puzzle’s a real head scratcher. Took me ages |
Which then brings us nicely along to your inventory. One of the most frustrating things about any adventure game is have to sift through two dozen items when you’re baffled and can’t proceed. What’s even more frustrating is when those items are located by dragging you mouse over the bottom part of the screen and then have to use arrows on either side access them like looking for an old phone number in a rolodex. Also the speed with which the items scroll is much too cumbersome and clunky for my taste and the controls seem unresponsive when trying to pick up an item and combine it with another. Again, that could be another Windows Vista issue but I can only say what I see unfortunately.
The story is a quite a convoluted one and is actually very well written. You’re back in 1943 and our favourite oxymoron, The British Intelligence Community uncovers some secret plans alluding to some research by the Nazi’s into nuclear weapons is at an advanced stage. You’re unwittingly called in by MI6 to perform what you think is a simple task of validating the threat as some early plans have been leaked and lo and behold, the WMD threat this time is real and you’re (very reluctantly) shipped off to Germany with a British Spy in order to stop the bomb. All good stuff.
The problem with the behaviour of Dr. Russell is that he says one thing and does another. He argues and pleads not to go to Naziland but as soon as he’s there, you meet with a German spy who says you need to break into the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and instead of looking across at your tough, uncompromising escort you walk into the middle of the road, in full view of the armed German Guards and say, “I wonder if I can distract them?” This literally seconds after begging for someone else to go in your place. Something doesn’t quite fit.
The sum of an adventure game’s parts however is equal to that of the quality of the puzzles. Operation Wintersun gives us a mixed bag indeed. In fact, I’d go as far to say that if you don’t play with a pen and paper handy and this is your first adventure game, don’t do it. Some of them are real killers and can really slow you down in what is already a very slow game indeed. I would like to walk you through some but I don’t want to reveal any spoilers so all I’ll say is this, working out that “l: O Z O and r: O O Z” are actually the way desk-drawers should be open and closed simply isn’t fair.
I think the overall lackadaisical feel of the game is down to the fact there’s almost no noticeable musical score. It feels like you’re in an empty, ornate world with one of the most boring people imaginable. Some rousing, dark, broody music would have really added to the sense of exploration to the James Bond-but-in-WW2 like espionage things that you get up along the way.
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| Our accidental hero in the War Room! | Beautiful level design and amazing depth. If only it translated to characters also |
All the points listed above have one thing in common: they all prevent Undercover: Operation Wintersun from being a very solid, enjoyable adventure game. There’s nothing more annoying as a reviewer and as a fan of a genre when you see some bad design decisions having such a profound impact on your gaming experience. This won’t put me off future Lighthouse Interactive releases however and nor should it you. It’s clear they know what they’re doing and a few extra touches could result in a cracking adventure next time round, just not this time, however.
Top game moment:
TOP GAME MOMENT
Cracking the safe in the secret room in the Director’s Office. Unbelievably difficult!
