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Undercover
Operation Wintersun
Developer:Sproing Interactive Media
Publisher:Lighthouse Interactive
Platform:PC
Genre:Adventure
Release Date:Sept 2007
Article Posted:Sept 2007
Grade:75/100
System Requirements


According to the introduction in the game manual you are “Dr John Russell, a shy but highly intelligent professor. You must go undercover with agent MI6 to prevent the Nazis from executing their lethal plan to detonate ‘the’ bomb. You will need your keen observation, stealth and puzzle solving skills to survive a series of perilous situations. Brute force is not an option. The fate of the world rests on your shoulders.” So, no pressure then!

War games and shoot ‘em ups are not generally my thing, being a soft and gentle girlie who much prefers fluffy bunnies… (yeah right!!). But the idea of ‘observation, stealth and puzzle solving’ caught my attention straight away. “Ah”, I thought to myself in my usual smug way, “its like another ‘Stolen’ only set in Nazi Germany”… I couldn’t have been more wrong….

It installed easily on my XP driven machine, claims to run as low as W98SE and installed in less time than a Windows update. It needs 2 GB of hard drive space. An option to run the movies from the CD might have reduced that, but the added speed of having the movies on the hard drive is well worth the extra space.

I love this kind of game – plenty of time to work out the puzzle and no ‘bad guy’ sneaking up on you when you least expect it. (Can you tell I’m speaking from experience?) To those familiar with the genre it leans heavily on forerunners like Broken Sword or Black Mirror with a similar almost ‘cartoon’ graphic style. This gives you an immediate feeling of comfort and the ability to jump immediately into the game without spending time working out the controls is a definite advantage.

Speaking of controls, Undercover is your standard point and click adventure. But, it does deviate from the norm with the right mouse button controlling interaction and the left for examining…takes a bit to get used to. Inventory sits at the bottom of the screen and can be scrolled through. Combining items can be done with a right-click and a drag. Running is activated by a double click which is always appreciated.

Speaking of controls, Undercover is your standard point and click adventure. But, it does deviate from the norm with the right mouse button controlling interaction and the left for examining…takes a bit to get used to. Inventory sits at the bottom of the screen and can be scrolled through. Combining items can be done with a right-click and a drag. Running is activated by a double click which is always appreciated.

As for puzzles, there are a lot of them. The ever so bright professor handles everything from homemade chemistry experiments, breaking codes, cracking safes to devising various diversions. It’s a varied mix of mechanical, logical and inventory puzzles. When it comes to inventory puzzles, the professor is an adventure game specialist……meaning he takes everything that’s not nailed down. And, you won’t even use everything you take…..what a waste. It makes it more difficult too. Most of the puzzles make sense. But, there are a couple that will have you scrunching up your face at their illogical nature.

The game itself is a confusing mixture of fast and slow moving gameplay. The move from MI6 headquarters to the street outside the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (KWI) passes by as a line on a map, whilst moving around inside the buildings is fraught with difficulty as you might expect. I can’t help feeling that it might have provided a little more continuity of revelation if travel between locations were also part of the game – maybe some sort of map puzzle

Perhaps the game feels slow in portions due to the animated transition cutscenes. For example, if you move from one node to the next, you may have to wait for John, the professor, to walk to the current location. And, let me tell you, he’s not built for speed. At times, it can be a bit torturous. You want to give him a kick in the bum to move him along. It happens at other times as well. These types of transitions could have been handles with a fade. It felt like it was done that way to add length to the game.

On the flip side, there are quite a few little stealthy puzzles to deal with -- Stealth in the way of ducking into shadowy areas to avoid being seen. One such puzzle involves getting from one end of a library/archive room to the other without being seen by 2 guards patrolling. To do this, you need to turn on the lights in one section and immediately turn off the lights in another section. Ann will take the path through the unlit sections. There can’t be 2 lights turned off at the same time. Timing is of the essence here. You need to keep an eye on the movements of the guards, proceed at the correct time and get the correct lights off and on. If they see you, you’re caught. No worries about any detrimental outcomes. The game will immediately re-start where you left off.

The storyline is not, in itself, particularly unbelievable, though some of the dialogue would have benefited from some decent inflection… and maybe even a better script writer… Having said that, it is amusing, (in a Mr Cholmondley-Warner kind of way) rather than annoying and really doesn’t detract from the game play. The professor, in particular, really takes his time speaking. Sometimes you’ll wish he’d just spit it out already. In each location, you’ll solve puzzles to get to some vital piece of information which will lead you to your next location and advance the story.

Don’t worry about going it alone. You will have trusty agents Ann and Peter to accompany you. But, don’t expect them to help out too much. They pretty much leave all the hard stuff to you. It seems kind of odd to put a mere professor up to things that a skilled professional would handle, but, it wouldn’t be much of a game for you if the agents did it all themselves. Unless, of course, you get to play as each of them during the game. That would’ve been fun. There are a couple of other characters throughout the game that you’ll get brief interaction with.

All of the locations are quite dark. You’ll spend a lot of time sneaking around in the dark. But, each location is nicely detailed, but perhaps a little generic to the genre. In one of the rooms, the floor is highly waxed and you can see yourself and everyone else in the reflection. Nice touches with the use of shadows and streaming sunlight through the darkness.

All in all I wasn’t that impressed. I enjoyed the game and technically it is extremely typical of Lighthouse – well put together, brilliant backgrounds, and quality sound; but there was just something about the way it was put together that made me think ‘not quite’. Speeding up the some of the gameplay and transitions would have helped a lot.

If espionage thrillers are your scene, or if you are a WW2 aficionado then you will probably like this game a whole lot more than me. It’s not a bad game, just not for this reviewer. If you are looking for something to while away the winter nights that are fast approaching then I’d say go and buy it – if nothing else it will keep your gaming/puzzling mind ticking over.

      


PC System Requirements:
Windows® 98SE/XP
1 Ghz Intel Pentium Processor
256 MB RAM
64 MB DirectX 9 video card
4x CD-ROM Drive
Hard Drive space of 2 GB
Direct X compatible sound card
Mouse, Keyboard and Speakers