WinBack: Covert Operations
Positive reinforcement is what drives me. Thank you, Steve, I appreciate the recognition.
So I haven’t gotten much better at WinBack but I have defeated the first boss. Let me go into why this is so hard. This is one of the first attempts at a cover-system in an action shooter. To encourage use of this system, the developers have made Jean-Luc very vulnerable to gunshots. You’re about as vulnerable as any of the goons that fan out from the many warehouses and trucks that populate the levels. Health packs are sparsely spread out and you get a score penalty from using them. Checkpoints also feel spread out. Typically, I had to survive eight good minutes of fighting through various waves and layouts to meet a new one. The level design is also tricky since you have no radar to aide you in spotting the enemy. They can hide just as well as you can. I learned to wait for the gaps in the burst fire to take people out. I started counting the enemies shots to know when they would reload. Movement between cover became more and more useful.
I like the level design. The decoration is bare but the various situations stand out in my memory. There’s a park that is intersected by canals. You maneuver around the shrubbery on land and eventually climb down into the narrow waterways below. Another level contained large warehouses with conveyor belts carrying boxes, some breakable some not. It gels well with the gunplay as you are mostly constrained to three weapons: a pistol with unlimited ammo, a submachine gun with long range and quick fire, and a short-ranged, powerful shotgun. There’s just enough thought put in to make encounters feel tactical though I’m a bit worried that the bland settings might drag on across the 25 or so levels.
Incidentally, WinBack is the last game ω-Force made before they invented musou. They invented musou, didn’t they? That would explain why Cavia took the reins for the sequel. I’m very excited to see the genre grow over the course of the system’s life.