Largo Winch: .//Commando SAR

 

Genre: Action	CDs: 1
Publisher: Ubi Soft Entertainment Software	Released: February 1, 2002
Developer: Rebellion Developments Ltd.	UPC: 0 08888 31028 0
Sony ID: SLUS-01441	PSRM: 023870
Players: 1 Player	Memory: 1 Block
Accessories: Analog, Vibration
ESRB: Teen – Violence
Box Copy: This Action Hero is Money Meet billionaire LARGO WINCH: smoother than smooth, tougher than tough, and bursting onto the international scene in this action-intrigue thriller. Take control of the jet-set superhero against a cabal of commandos – but can you infiltrate and destroy the conspiracy stacked against Largo’s financial empire? Explore the fascinating universe of Largo Winch: action, adventure, business, intrigue and glamour Exciting & Diverse: a combination of combat, suspense and mystery. Complete missions using stealth and hi-tech gadgets.

 

 

Variants

• There are no known variants.

 

 

Misprints

• There are no known misprints.

 

 

Review

Let me state for the record that I am an extremely fair reviewer and give every game a chance at showing me why it’s worthy of being on a shelf, regardless of how flawed it might be. Usually for a game to not meet the bare minimum  ‘average score” there has to be something fundamentally broken with it. Maybe it’s the graphics, maybe it’s the control. Perhaps the frame rate or even the cinematics. This may be the first time where it’s…everything.

Largo Winch is a stealth-heavy game based on a TV show that was in itself based on a comic book series. The story’s lead is essentially Bruce Wayne without Batman. A young adult loses his step-father and inherits a billion dollar company with its hands in pretty much everything. The difference here is that from everything I have read and watched for research doing this review, Largo only really protects…the business. His only concern is his own company, never really the common people.

There may be exceptions – as the TV episodes I watched involved the CIA and  a secret society, but when it comes to the PlayStation game, your villains are industrial espionage and hilariously randomized frame-rates.

Let’s rip this band aid off.

At the beginning of the game you can choose the training mode to get used to the controls. I would highly recommend this as Largo’s fairly clunky. Worse, the game’s missing a vital element to his very limited assault capabilities; an aiming function. When using the handgun or the knives, there is no way to aim other than turning like one is rotating a 2×4.

Otherwise, his preferred method of attack are kicks and punches. If buttons are pressed fast enough, he’ll perform a three-hit combo. There’s also a block button. In most fights as long as it’s one-on-one, simpy holding block till there’s an opening is the only skill the player needs.If it’s anything more than that, it’s usually time to press continue.

Other than his body, knife, and gun, Largo’s only other tool is a radar device. The gimmick here is that Largo can not use his radar device and attack at the same time. Billion dollar company with an actual espionage division – I’m not kidding – and no one thought to make it like a wrist watch, or thick glasses or something. By separating the two, sneaking and transitioning back to combat form is cumbersome and annoying. Thankfully I don’t think this hilarious limitation ever found its way into the scene ever again.

Once finished with training, the real game can be started. It turns out Largo and a reporter are kidnapped by the South American Redemption…SAR. Wait…THAT’S Commando SAR? I thought that was Search and Rescue…okay, okay little confusing but we’ll move on. So the hero boy and the reporter are tied up and…oh…Largo got himself free with no explanation. Ignoring that, here we get the feel for the standard levels.

Largo can interact with specific items like desks and search them for objects. He can also pick up a select few and use them on other items in the game. The first real stage is a simple quick fix of a fuse box, finding a radio, and then disarming a bomb. A nice simple approach so long as you understand the sneaking part of the game. With the bomb deactivated, we can go back and rescue Tania…why are we back at headquarters. We never went back to save…I’ll assume she’s fine and saved off camera.

The second stage sees Largo breaking and entering into the Search and Res….I mean South American Redemption headquarters. His excursion finds him hunting for information on the attack and more importantly, why SAR – led by a Ms. Fritz, wants to buy his newly opened facility so badly. This is where Largo Winch as a game puts itself on full display for the world to see, and it is a living testament to a great many things, none of them good.

We’ll start with the graphics – at first glance, they admittedly look pretty good. Characters are large, game areas seem properly scaled, and there’s a decent attempt at world building. Guards researching files, patrols along floors, very obvious office floors, and more. This is a corporate entity playing dirty and they clearly must be taken down. But then Largo starts moving around, and the magic is broken. There’s only about 8 textures to an area. Infinitely repeated. Sometimes to a hilarious degree.

Second on the chopping block is the overuse of backtracking. This stage specifically – you’ll start on the bottom floor to work your way up to the third floor, find out you need a passcode on the 2nd floor, then go back up to use said code. Then decide to xerox the found documents back on the second floor, then have to return them to the third floor, then escape out the first floor. I should point out that this is a strictly stealth mission – one sight of Largo and it’s back to the checkpoint for you.

This wouldn’t be so bad if the gamification of the mission wasn’t in play. You see, since the player isn’t supposed to be seen, the guards should have no idea that there’s any danger. Except every time you return to that blasted laser trap room, there’s another guard added each time. I know it’s there for a challenge angle, but it breaks the belief that they don’t know Largo is there.

Once free of that stage, everything else cruises along. Ride an escalator here, disarm a bomb here, run past the same section or room, wash, rinse and repeat. Things take an odd turn when Largo is captured and sent to rot in the prison cell of the SAR’s oil rig. Instead of, I don’t know, being murdered allowing them to easily just take the facility they’re after. A wayward guard decides he’ll do the deed, calamity ensues and Largo is once again back in the game. The oil rig is actually a well thought out stage – where stealth is optional but adamant, there are essentially puzzles to solve concerning blocked paths, and there’s even a little bit of humor. Turns out that news reporter we never went back for is still in Mrs. Fritz’s company and locked away here. Convenience!

Sadly technical issues which will be discussed later crop in, and if the player isn’t wrestling with those, they’ll be subdued by multiple guards if you make a simple mistake in the wrong spot. Once this stage is dealt with, it’s off to the races as you must quickly chase after the nefarious SAR leader and stop her from making a deal that would snatch your facility right out from underneath you.

It’s at this time that I would like to take a moment to appreciate the situation of this level – in the simplest, purest, non-motivated observation.This is a crazy haired man, frantically running through Amsterdam at midnight, potentially knifing and shooting people to get them out of his way, who then throws a knife at Mrs. Fritz, destroying her phone. Even if you were to somehow justify Largo’s actions as self-defense, his path up to this point includes multiple breaking and entering, trespassing, endangerment of a news reporter TWICE, assaulting airport staff, the potential of murder in several degrees based on your gameplay, and disturbing the peace here in the final act.

So what happens? Largo citizen arrests her, I’m assuming handing over the photocopies he took, with little repercussions. I…can’t even understand how this is possible, and my suspension of disbelief is god-tier.

That subject now covered, we need to go back to the technical problems because this is where the game truly, objectively, falls off the review scale. I’ll completely ignore the low hanging fruit in the hilariously choppy FMV, with their almost Muppet-like iterations of the actors and Game Boy Advance level font type.

There are not one, not two, but potentially three softlocks in the game, two of which I experienced personally, both in the first run of the game.

Starting at the airport – once the timer starts to count down, the player is meant to run as fast as possible to Gate 1 from Gate 2. The path is broken up into roughly three sections; Gate 2, the hallway, and then the intersection between Gates 1 and 2. The game’s engine treats crossing into one section from another a checkpoint. So if you were to die or run out of time, they would start you at the checkpoint with a predetermined amount of time left.

Our first softlock occurs where, if for any reason once the time starts, the player crosses from Gate 2 to the Hallway, and then back again, the timer never resets. Instead, on each respawn it gets shorter and shorter. To the point where it just infinitely loops from the dead timer to the Continue screen and back. The only solution is to reset the system and reload your save.

The second softlock is a bit more humorous.Back on the oil rig, if Largo is spotted by a guard, the entire floating platform goes into lockdown. Security lights activate and all elevator doors shut until the lockdown is over. If however, you happen to be IN the elevator when a guard sees you, one of two things will happen. You can wait it out and just let the door reopen and hope the guard is now facing the other way and walk out – or go up a floor and come back down with the same hope.

Or, as I found out – if you happen to have two guards spot you in the elevator, one straight ahead, and the other on patrol to the right, the elevator door gets stuck in a loop. It reacts first to the guard you can see, and then just as it begins to re-opens, it triggers the second guard seeing you. If the use of the elevator between floors does not reset them, Largo is permanently stuck inside. Reset and reload away.

This specific lock, where the game stacks the guard reactions in sequence rather than simultaneously, is an issue in the overall programing. If you need to continue, and press Cross more than once, when the game reloads, Largo will jump before you can control him. I’m sure there is some sort of hilarity one could do with that knowledge but I’m not the one to do that video.

The third known softlock I was not able to reproduce, but a writer on GameFAQs shared his tale. Again on the oil rig, if a sequence of events involving creating a distraction and finding files on a computer are done out of sequence, the game will not trigger a required event to happen. It’s not really worth it to try, either.

Largo Winch, as a whole, is one of the strangest oddities I have ever experienced in the PlayStation library, but mainly because it is self-defeating in so many ways. You could improve the graphics, but it means nothing for the clunky game play. You could try and improve the game play, but it would just make the game insanely easy. Changing anything else only glosses over the whole embarrassing experience.

I want to tell you that Largo Winch is a terrible game, to go off like a standard YouTuber and pronounce it THE WORST GAME I HAVE EVER PLAYED complete with yellow text and red arrow. But to call it that implies it at least succeeded at something – being a failure. But it goes beyond that. Even being a budget title can’t even eek out a sympathy point.

On the Library review scale, Largo Winch is our first, and hopefully last Broken score, bottoming out at 1 out of 10. When the only thing that could save it would be fixing everything, it’s time to give up the family business.

 

Final Score: 1/10 – Broken

Latrgo Winch .//Commando SAR is a lesson plan for all would-be game developers. It should be used as a “what not to do” in almost any area of the game creation process.

 

 

 

Screenshots

 

Videos

The video review of the game.

 

 

Trivia

• The cover shot of Largo is the actual actor from the TV series. It’s from Season 1, Episode 1 where’s he’s in a chair looking left.
• Largo Winch as a character is very confusing. He’s essentially Bruce Wayne without the alter-ego or dedication to the public. Almost all story arcs involve him trying to prevent other corporations and billionaires from taking over his inherited fortune and business empire. Despite in-game claiming that, “he prefers non-violent solutions,” he can use a gun and knife to kill enemies. Which would make him a vigilante like Batman but with a much thicker gray area of the ‘good’ he is doing.That he is a billionaire allowed to break into other buildings, subdue or kill people, and go as he pleases brings up the real-life discussion of how much upper class citizens can get away with.
• Despite the sub-title of “Commando SAR” – SAR isn’t short for ‘Search and Rescue’. It’s the opposing force in game, the ‘South American Redemption’.
• There are two confirmed soft-locks in the game:
  In the airport stage, it’s possible to break the timer in the Gate 2 terminal as you run back through the hallway to Gate 1. If you die or run out of time, instead of giving you the correct alloted time for the checkpoint, it sets the timer to what you were at when you crossed into the hallway. And then keeps subtracting from there. Eventually  you will be stuck in a loop of Continue Screen and being timed out in game. You will have to reset the game.In the Oil Rig stage, the elevator doors close for a few seconds if you are spotted by guards. If you happen to be IN the elevator when a guard spots you, you’re stuck inside till the alert is over. The softlock comes if two guards spot you – the game treats each guard as separate instances, causing the door to only open 1/4th of the way before closing again. You’re permanently stuck inside unless you reset the game, or use the elevator to go up and then back down and hope the guards reset.A user on GameFAQs found another one involving the distraction process, but I could not replicate it so I left it off the list…for now.
• If you turn on the cheat code and both options. the only obstacle in the entire game is the laser trap in SAR’s Headquarters stage. The rest of the game can be finished in about 23 minutes with cheats activated.

 

Secrets

Largo Winch has one cheat that more or less completely removes any difficulty the game may have had, outside of that cursed laser room in the SAR building.

• Secret Cheat Menu
  At the title screen with the spinning logo press Select, Square, Square, Circle, Circle, Triangle, Square, Triangle, Circle. This will bring up a simple menu where you can make the following options. Cross button toggles on/off, Up and Down on the D-Pad moves the cursor.
  • Invisible On/Off: You can not be seen by guards or cameras, even if right in front of them.
  • Silent On/Off: Guards can not here you.

Once you press continue, the screen changes to a Level Select screen. Press left or right to select a stage, and then press Cross to accept. Note that if you want to undo the options, you will need to go back to the main menu, repeat the code, and then change accordingly. The stage order is:

• • 1. W Factory
  • 2. SAR Headquarters
  • 3. W Headquarters
  • 4. Airport
  • 5. Venezuela
  • 6. Oil Rig
  • 7. Amsterdam (Final Stage)
  • 8. Training