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Cold Winter 
Release date: 11 May 2005
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Mygamer review
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Cold Winter
Andrew Sterling sits in a Chinese political prisoner camp awaiting execution. As an M16 agent, his government (surprisingly) refuses to acknowledge his existence. Fortunately Sterling’s made some friends along the way who help him escape prison and embark on one last adventure through the Cold Winter.
Because Cold Winter requires a ludicrous amount of space on your card—more than two and half megs - there’s a good chance you won’t be saving. If you don’t create a file, messages still appear informing you that checkpoints have been saved. This message is misleading; what it should say rather than “Saving Checkpoint” is “Checkpoint Reached” since you have to save here manually anyway. Each profile can save one checkpoint which can be loaded from the main menu. Any completed level can be loaded from the main menu and saving a checkpoint here overrides any checkpoints you already have saved. Of the nine control schemes available, I preferred 4 over the default (which used L3 to run, making it awkward to move and run at the same time). There are no sound options whatsoever.
As Sterling moves through the levels he acquires intelligence documents; some taped a bit conveniently to walls while others are hidden in drawers, appliances or cabinets. Intel may warn of dangerous areas or just add a few points of interest to gameplay. The ability to search everywhere also uncovers the pieces needed to assemble “Combine Items”; tools such as lock picks and explosives that are assembled on the menu screen similarly to the inventions found in Lemony Snicket’s: A Series of Unfortunate Events. Combine items help keep gameplay interesting, however as with Lemony Snicket, gameplay would have benefited from the manual assembly of the equipment. Also, notifications of new intel and combine items permanently clutter the screen until you press Select. The In-Game Pause Menu is where you access the combined items screen, displaying all of the items such as empty bottles, rags, wire cutters, metal, and fuel that you’ve collected, intelligence briefings, mission objectives and help messages that have recently appeared. What the menu lacks is a means of knowing the order in which these sub-menus are laid out.
Chairs, barrels and tables can be flipped, thrown or used for cover and this, along with running, uses up stamina. You rarely need to move objects and when you do they don’t always stay put - I even managed to push a large wagon through a wall where it remained, shaking uncontrollably. Jumping onto objects is trickier than it should be; you need a running start and even then, you usually end up taking a second hop and overshooting. When you do manipulate objects there is no animation of Sterling’s arm, and the objects frequently seem too far away to be reached. When Sterling’s arm is visible, as is with lock picking and window opening, these animations don’t occur anywhere near where they should be and contact is not guaranteed with locks or windows…and for some reason a lock pick can only be used once, contrary to the bottomless med kit that can be used an infinite number of times. If, for some strange reason, you run low on health the controller vibrates like a beating heart: creepy, but very cool.
A nice feature present in Cold Winter that most FPS’s lack, is the ability to backtrack to any point on a level and pick up items you may not have needed earlier on. This is also necessary for certain optional objectives such as accessing armories. Accomplishing the extra objectives doesn’t unlock any bonuses and your ranking is based almost entirely on shot accuracy, though I was impressed to see them included nonetheless. Another tiny but appreciable detail is that doors stay open until you decide to close them, making aiming and movement a bit easier at times. As you blast your way through Cold Winter, leaving behind permanently blood-stained walls and fly-infested corpses that eventually vaporize, you can search bodies for bits of armor. Dead civilians can also be searched though you’re not likely to find anything. Still, it’s nice for a game to come along and allow for the slaughter of innocent bystanders without having to suffer any consequences except for their voices sticking around even after their bodies magically vanish.
Heads will roll…
Opening or destroying crates yields ammo for your weapons, of which you can carry two at a time, unfortunately though, without the duel-wielding goodness of games such as Halo 2. Many weapons, including the AK47, shred people quite nicely, and grenades tossed into second story windows may send corpses for a ride back to the ground. You can even leave behind bloody footprints when walking over dead bodies - nice.
Both online and offline multiplayer modes offer 32 characters to choose from and six types of matches including last man standing, death match, domination and head match (like flag tag except with a severed head). Gameplay not only supports up to 4 player split screen, but up to 3 bots can be used (an often overlooked commodity) if friends are in short supply. When customizing a game you can use any 5 of 31 weapons and any 3 of 10 items including armor and mines. Cold Winter’s weapon selection is great, however multiplayer is in desperate need of an infinite stamina option to speed up the gameplay. You also can’t pick up armor from dead players or turn off the player or navigational point indicators. There are numerous options for the announcer’s voice, though you can’t hear what any of them sound like until actually entering gameplay.
Your arsenal includes pistols, machine guns, pump and semi-automatic shotguns along with assorted explosives. Even a flamethrower is available, though people don’t seem to actually catch fire from it. Clicking R3 allows you to zoom in with any weapon, but unfortunately most guns kick too much, making accurate shots difficult. Also, when zoomed in with the sniper rifles it would have been nice to see the numbers in the scope change as the gun moves. It is worth mentioning that not all fire is dangerous; touching a flaming barrel is bad but standing on a burning car seems ok.
Even the audio is a bit underdone, and gunfire doesn’t sound different in enclosed spaces from how it sounds out in the open and helicopters may become nearly inaudible depending on which direction Sterling faces. Overall, Cold Winter is a fun game with a large assortment of weapons and an immersive story, however once you complete the story there isn’t much left to do unless you have a network adapter, and it is certainly not worth erasing more than 1/3rd of your files just to fit it on your card.
Review by Dave Kaplan on 5 Jun 2005
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