Undercover Operation Wintersun

Wintersun from Lighthouse Interactive is a point & click adventure game in the old style. Using the traditional 3rd person camera, you play through a storyline taking place during WW2.  Since, with an adventure game the story is so important to deciding if you want to play, Wintersun comes with a detailed one. In 1943, Hitler’s Germany is researching nuclear fission to produce energy and weapons. You play as a British scientist hired by MI6 sent to Germany to stop the Nazis. What this really means is you must infiltrate buildings and complete puzzles to gather information and progress.  Through the game, there are a number of cinematics giving the storyline. These are of a very good overall quality and do help the game. While you are stuck with the static camera angle for every scene as expected in a point & click game, the fact that all points of interest are always on screen does help the player.  The location graphics are also nice and detailed. Plus it is of note that all characters are mouse driven 3d real-time. The sound is also nice with all dialogue spoken and not just subtitles. The storyline works out better due to this.  Wintersun’s only problem is its difficulty. While it can be assumed that an adventure game would be difficult, to make it last longer, progressing from one scene to the next is extremely difficult. A good example of this is near the beginning when you need to distract some guards to get into a building. You have to do it covertly and it requires gathering and using half a dozen different things to progress. Without a good indication of what you are supposed to do or use, it can take a while to figure out, which will alienate novice players. So if you have anything but the patience of a saint you shouldn’t consider Wintersun as a first adventure title, otherwise buyer’s remorse will come into play, and on PC most places don’t give refunds anymore. So be sure if you buy.  While the game looks and sounds great for an adventure game, the game play would be too difficult to make it enjoyable to novices. It is to such a level of slow progression that if you want to get through at any kind of pace you would have to use a guide, thus removing any game and the point of playing.