Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell 2002 Published by: Ubisoft   Developed by: Ubisoft Montreal   Buy It Now

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Platform: Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube, PC

Genre: Action

Number of Players: 1

In the beginning, there was Tomb Raider, and it was good.  New, exciting, and fun to play, busting open (clever turn of phrase not intended, but wholly appropriate) a new style of game play for all mankind. 

Time passes, and things change.  While Lara floundered, stuck in the lameness of sameness, the hungering masses were introduced to a mullet headed super soldier known as Solid Snake.  Snake could sneak.  Snake could slink.  Snake could move in ways we had never seen, do things we had never done, kick ass like no one before, and manage to look cool all the while.  We came, we played, and it was very good.

Now, the fine folks at Ubi Soft have taken the best of both worlds, and given us Sam Fisher, Splinter Cell.  Splinter Cell takes stealth action to a whole new level, and manages to look better than anything you’ve ever seen while doing it.

In the year 2003, the National Security Agency has begun a super secret initiative known as Third Echelon to operate in the new world of ultra high tech espionage.  When traditional methods of intelligence gathering have failed, Third Echelon is called in to conduct physical operations on location.  Stealth is the name of the game- Third Echelon operatives are masters of getting in, getting the info, and getting out, without anyone ever knowing they were there.  These operatives, known as Splinter Cells, must leave no trace of their dealings.  If discovered, they are denied by their government.  Although they are charged with doing their job without being detected, sometimes discovery is unavoidable.  In these instances, they are authorized to exercise the Fifth Freedom- lethal force leaves no witness to tell the tale.

March 10, 2004.  A CIA operative working in the former Soviet republic of Georgia has gone missing.  A second agent is sent in to locate her, and he drops contact seven days later.  Fearing their agents have fallen into the hands of the terrorists they are monitoring, the CIA turns to the NSA and their Third Echelon for help.

Playing as Sam Fisher, your task is locate the missing agents, unraveling a doomsday terrorist plot at the same time.  During the game, you will infiltrate a Georgian police building, a Chinese Embassy, an oil rig, and even the CIA headquarters, just to name a few.  The number one priority is stealth-  the best way through a mission is the quiet one.  Being seen by the enemy leads to firefights and alarms going off, and depending on the situation, this means either instant mission failure, or you have to find a way to get away from whoever is chasing you.  “Getting away” can involve getting out of sight, finding a dark place where the guards wont look to hide, or killing them and hiding their bodies in dark places where other guards wont look for them.  Considering that the guards in this game are smarter than your average video game bad guy, these things are not as easy as they might sound.  While you sneak around bad guys relatively easily when they are lax, if they are alerted, they will search diligently, looking in darkened corners, closets, even above their heads and below their feet.  Dealing with these situations is tense and invigorating in a way that has been missing from games for quite some time.  Unlike the Metal Gear Solid games, Splinter Cell gives you no enemy vision cones or floating Z’s to indicate what a bad guy can see or what state of alertness he is in.  Instead, you use your senses and instincts to negotiate the levels.  A guard may be looking away just now, but he could turn around any time.  Or someone else could walk in the room.  Or you could make just a little too much noise as you try to walk past him.  Patrolling guards do walk a pattern like in most games, giving you an opportunity to find the best way to get past them or take them out, but the patters they walk seem to be more complex and varied than you generally see in games, making the task more challenging.  These elements make for some truly intense gaming moments, and there will be times when your heart rate goes up as you wait to sneak up behind a guard to grab him, or when you jump as someone unexpectedly walks into a room you though was clear and sets off an alarm.  To be successful, you must be aware of everything around you.  Look around constantly, listen intently, and take your time. 

You have a wonderful array of moves and tools to aid you in completing your mission.  Your standard walking, running, jumping, and rolling are here.  Analog control is very good, easily keeping Sam under control and doing exactly what you want, and you will rarely, if ever, die or otherwise fail a mission because you couldn’t get Sam to do what was needed.  In addition to the standard moves, Sam can crouch for extra stealth, side jump off of nearby walls or objects to get higher up, and in narrow corridors he can split jump, taking him up the wall, where he can wait to drop down on unsuspecting enemies, knocking them out.  Sam shimmies across pipes, rappels down walls, and can aim and shoot while doing these things.  You will need every move available to get around the maps in the game, and figuring out what works best to get from point A to point B is a lot of fun.  Much of game is laid out in a non linear fashion, giving you options on how you want to accomplish your goals.  For instance, you might need to gain entrance to a building through a particular door or window, but there may be several methods you can employ to get to that door or window from wherever you start out, and most of the time, no one method is right or wrong.  As long you stay within the mission parameters, you can do whatever works. 

There are some interesting gadgets to employ on your quest, and believe me, you will not only need these toys through the course of the game, you will want them.  At first, you might tend to forget about all these wonderful toys, falling back on the old school game mechanics of if you cant sneak around him, kill him.  Now, a bullet to the head can be an effective means of removing a pesky guard who is blocking your path, but shooting a diversion camera at his feet and gassing him when he comes to investigate means you don’t have to hide his body, and a missing or dead guard is a lot more likely to get an alarm set off when someone notices he is missing than a knocked out guard is.  Also, the gas wears off quickly enough so that he may very well come around before another guard even notices that he was out.  The optic cable lets you see beyond closed doors, so that you don’t barge into a room full of bad guys.  Picks get you through locked doors.  The camera jammer lets you hide from electronic eyes.  The sticky camera can be shot down a hallway to let you see who might be at the other end, and the sticky shocker and ring airfoil round can let you knock them down without killing them.  Your goggles give you night vision and thermal vision, all the better to see you with, my dear.  Lethal force should be used only as a last resort, and only when you can find a good place to hide the bodies, but if you do just have to snuff someone, you have a few options there as well.  First off is your standard SOCOM pistol, good for close quarters battle, but not terribly accurate at range.  Frag grenades do nicely for knocking down gaggles of baddies, just make sure you have room to throw, as a bad rebound can do more harm to you than your enemy.  You will have the most fun, however, with the SC-20K MAWS, or Modular Assault Weapon System.  This here is the Swiss army knife of sniper rifles, baby, and it will make you giggle like a schoolgirl.  It has a flash/sound suppresser to keep your killing quiet.  It is highly accurate, has a good zoom, and can penetrate body armor like butter.  And in addition to all the head shot-ty goodness this weapon provides, it can also fire gas grenades, sticky cameras, diversion cameras, sticky shockers, and ring airfoil rounds for effective knock down power, without all the mess.  Remember, the SC-20K is your friend, but use it sparingly- ammo is rather sparse in Splinter Cell, and if you’re running out, you shooting too much.  Oh, did I mention the wall mine?  Stick it on a wall, set it, and go on your merry way.  The next guy that comes along passes by it, and gets turned into a gooey mess.  Very nice for weeding out persistent pursuers.

Now, no discussion of Splinter Cell would be complete without a chat about graphics.  This game looks incredible, and really shows off the power of Billy’s Big Black Box.  Lighting effects run from the subtle soft light of a low power bulb, to flickering neon's, to intense spotlights, all casting shadows in the most realistic fashion yet seen in a video game.  Light is bad for Sam’s stealthy ways, and darkness is bliss- if there is too much illumination and you cant find a switch, just shoot it out.  The shadows will accurately change to reflect whatever light sources are still shining, and the effect is just superb.  Walking behind a semi translucent object, like curtains or plastic, will produce the proper silhouetting effect, leaving you vulnerable to being spotted.  And speaking of curtains and plastic sheeting, these things sway and ripple with absolute realism, and you might end up getting killed because you decided to stop and play with them a bit, fascinated by the way they move when touched or blown by the wind.  The camera is tight, and can be moved at will to wherever you need it, which helps tremendously throughout the game.  Other makers of third person perspective games, please take note-  after playing Splinter Cell, we now know the camera issue can be solved beautifully, and we will no longer accept your lame excuses for your shoddy camera controls.  Suck it up and do it right, because “good camera control in a third person perspective game is nearly impossible and what we give is as good as it gets” is a load of crap, and you might find your incompetently coded game disks being hurled back at your skulls side arm style.

The games sound is also great, and works well to clue you into what is going on around you, provided you have a good surround sound setup.  Dialog and sound will come from wherever the enemy is, clueing you in to which way you need to scoot to avoid being detected.  Sound effects are realistic and convincing, blending well with the games action, as does the music.  Soft and subtle when things are going smoothly, the music will ratchet up in intensity with the on screen action.  The voice acting is very well done, although they seem to have only used a few actors for the bulk of the bad guys.  All the major characters are distinct and convincing, but after a while you will be thinking they cloned all the guards in the game, as they all have the same voices and say the same things.  Its just a small nag, and doesn’t really detract form the game, but you will notice it.

Control in the game, as touched on briefly already, is great.  Apart from moving Sam around, accessing menus and using items is a painless experience, easy and intuitive once you learn everything.  The one problem can be with manual reloading and quick inventory, on the black and white buttons.  In a tight situation, these buttons can  be clumsy to get to, but this is the fault of the button layout on the controller.  Even on the Controller S, these buttons can be a pain to get at in a pinch, requiring you to shift your grip on the controller, which can cost you a life from time to time.  The coders did their best with what they had, and overall, they did a very good job.

By now, you have probably guessed, I really like this game.  My only real complaint is that climbing pipes and jumping up to grab pipes or ladders can be a bit harder to pull off than they should be, as if the collision detection was coded way to tight for those instances.  But, in a game with so much to do, so many ways to do them, and so many wonderful things to look at and listen to, those issues end up being minor annoyances, at worst.  With a great story, wonderful gadgets, an impressive array of moves, great control, and incredible visuals, Splinter Cell has truly redefined the stealth action genre.  The bar has been raised significantly by this one, and I cant wait to see what will come next.

-Ed-