Product Description

Cold Winter is an action FPS title set in a dark world of global espionage, full of international intrigue, action and suspense. This story of a disavowed secret agent unfolds through three different threads and takes place in eight distinct environments that are as gritty as they are beautiful. Thirteen single player missions are woven into the three story threads of the game; Cold Winter incorporates a variety of immersive environments, from the dank hopelessness of a Chinese prison, to the exotic beauty of cities such as Cairo and Hong Kong. It also utilises a unique combined items system where the player can create weapons, traps and tools by collecting and combining objects in the environment. Over 30 real-world weapons, multiplayer support for PlayStation 2 and Xbox, and an advanced character/team AI system are among its features.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3377 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Sierra
• Released on: 2005-06-03
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Platform: PlayStation2

Customer Reviews

Absorbing fun
Not being of the kind to be glued to the PS2, this has taken a couple of months to play. And it must be said, it is good fun, although I found it pretty easy. There are arrows to tell you where to go next; renewable health at no penalty, and body armour that takes a lot of punishment before putting you in trouble. It's certainly easier than Castle Wolfenstein, and far less complex than Deus Ex to play. There is no interaction with characters required as it is linear (other than killing most of them, of course), no bonus points to collect so no incentive to do extra tasks, and even the end is routine.
The point is though, that the game is what it claims. A story spread over several missions, and your job is to do various tasks while finding ways to delete the enemy. If you are looking for no more than that, it is perfect. And, for those who enjoy Tom Baker's acting, he is featured throughout.
All in all, this will keep you absorbed, but you may feel it could have been more challenging.

A Superb Story and an even better FPS
Being a big fan of FPS I thought i'd give this a try after reading pretty good reviews online. I must say that the story is one of the best around for a video game, well written and even more fun to play. The graphics are superb and the variety of weapons and gadgets make it fun to play. A must for anyone who loves great FPS games and great storylines in videogames.

The Cold Shoulder?
I'll admit, this game was more of an impulse buy than anything else and as pleased as I was to have brought it Cold Winter annoyed me from the word "go".

Having put the disc in my PS2 I was alarmed to discover that I had insufficient memory card space, despite the box claiming that the game required just over 2MB it actually requires 2,610KB (2.6MB) plus another 95KB if you want to go online - so that's 3.1MB ladies and gents, or just under half a memory cards worth of space!!! And what does the game use this space for... well, as far as I could work out, nothing special, it only saves the weapons and level you're on! Although it doesn't even do that very well... Through out the game "checkpoint saved" appears on the screen, so naturally you assume that the game is very kindly saving as you go along... Oh no, you actually have to save the game yourself every time you finish a level which while not much of a hardship in itself, does frustrate when you play through the first time thinking your progress is being saved only to load the game back up to find that it was all lies!

So having finally cleared out my memory card to actually play this game I got stuck in, the story is - to be fair - one of the better told plots for a game and does actually hold your attention, mainly thanks to the surprisingly good voice acting rather than the actual story itself.

The missions all seem to fit the story nicely with the believable plot dragging you through the levels and helping to conceal the run of the mill level design in places (the plot really does flesh this game out). This games downfall comes (like so many FPS) in the form of interiors - I don't know what it is but Cold Winter excels outside however, once inside a building all concept of design seems to disappear to leave stark corridors and boring textures.

This game does have some good points; the "rag doll" physics of the enemies the nicely designed later levels and the fantastic explosions... Shooting a barrel for the first time in this game made me hunt down another and do it again just to make sure that the first time I did it my eyes weren't deceiving me - that's how realistic the explosions in this game are.

The weapons too are nice although not all that varied and while there are one or two stand out weapons a lot of the guns etc. are rather "standard" FPS fare.

Cold Winter did surpass my expectations although it struggled (thanks to the memory usage mainly!) and for a relatively decent game it suffers from an inexcusably poor first few levels, they really are the most bland, poorly textured environments you're ever likely to be in.

Although in the middle of a fire-fight with a few nicely placed shots at a barrel resulting in a hefty explosion scattering enemies and debris everywhere Cold Winter shines.