Two teammates, working in concert but from different entry points. One must finish his or her assignment before the other can begin.

While the concept has some intriguing ideas, unfortunately in Winback 2: Project Poseidon, the gameplay is staggered to produce a less-than-thrilling title. This third-person shooter stumbles in several areas, but that will be revealed in a moment.

Developer Cavia and KOEI are behind Winback 2: Project Poseidon, a third-person shooter that unfolds segment by segment in tandem missions. The game begins with a great cinematic flair, grandly displaying the three central heroes, and then drops into an arcade shooter that is level-based, with a scoring system that grades players out on three levels.

The game traces the operations of a unit of special agents, individually known as Craig Cantreel, Nick Bruno and Mia Cabrerra. The game starts out with both Craig and Nick trying to remove terrorists from a section of a subway. You begin the game as Craig, and work from one end.

The game has the typical wall-hug abilities, crouch, and lean-and-shoot moves. As Craig moves through the first level, Nick is moving from the other direction and is hung up by terrorists – which conveniently come into your range just as your path (in this particular scenario) is blocked. Craig clears the terrorist pinning down Nick and Nick finishes the mission.

Of course, the mission is timed, and if you cut it close, you will hear Nick (or Mia, or Craig – depending on which character you play as first) telling you that you should try to do it faster next time. Ostensibly, this is likely what is considered adding to the replay value of the game. The only problem appeared to be that the enemy was, more or less, exactly in the same locations when you play a level again.

After Craig clears the path, Nick’s portion of the mission takes over and he moves through. Clear the terrorists and your boss pops up in the menu interface screen and grades out your performance.

One of the problems, though, is that each time you enter a mission, you are going in with limited ammunition. You need to find it throughout the level. This often appears as floating icons randomly scattered throughout the mission. The terrorists seem capable of firing off shot after shot, but you have to watch how much ammo you use. Go figure.

Also, if you stumble several times in the first half of the mission, the character that is central to the second half of that same mission will be handicapped.

A nice touch, though, is that you can target specific areas of the body for different results. If you go leg and arm, you can immobilize and ‘arrest’ the suspects (are they really suspects if they are shooting at you, or have they gone beyond the suspects definition and straight to enemy-to-be-disposed-of status); a head shot and you will not be talking to them later (figuratively speaking, there is no interrogation of prisoners). Each time you shoot, there is another arcade pop-up to assess the shot, from good to great and so on. Arresting the targets earns CRT points (also a scoring category) that rolls over from part one of the mission to the second part. Go for all headshots and your second character will suffer.

Abdullah Qalzai is the leader behind the terrorists hitting up the subway and financial institutions as the game begins. If this all sounds a little stereotypical … well, it is. And that pretty much rolls over to the dialogue, which is both trite and cliché.

The game’s graphics, though, are solid – for the most part. There is a sameness to the levels, but the character models are well done and the physics are decent. The arcade monster rears up though early in the game. The task is to rescue hostages and lead them to safety. You approach a hostage, have a brief dialogue and they disappear. When you get to the end, they magically reappear and run out.

Winback 2: Project Poseidon seems like a game that started off with grand third-person shooter aspirations and then made a wrong turn and fell from the ranks of potentially good to merely average, at best. The storyline is predictable, and the missions bear a sameness after a bit.

If you are looking for an average arcade-like shooter, this may be worth checking out, but if you want an intense shooter experience, bypass this title.

Gameplay: 6.0
The levels are short, and while the game mechanics are solid, the sameness and cliché-driven story do not give this title the edge-of-your-seat feeling that compels you to play. 

Graphics: 7.0
The character models are very good, but the environments are a bit generic and repetitive.

Sound: 4.7
The music can become repetitive and the voice acting pounds on stereotypes and can, at times, be rather silly.

Difficulty: Easy
The game is linear and has several difficulty levels to add more targets as you go through the zones.

Concept: 5.0
The game is not all that deep, despite the fact that it does have a few ideas that may have been nice if fleshed out a bit more.

Multiplayer: 6.0
Nothing unique here, typical matches and no online component.

Overall: 5.0
Winback 2: Project Poseidon has several major stumbles that overwhelm the more interesting ideas of the game. Though the graphics are generally solid, this still comes in as an average third-person shooter title that cannot stand up to the competition.