Tom Clancey’s Splinter Cell

You are Sam Fisher, a man empowered to protect the freedom of America. Armed with
the latest cutting edge technology and sophisticated weaponry, you
have the right to spy, steal, destroy and assassinate to ensure those freedoms.
You are silent and deadly, your only friends are the shadows you employ to travel,
kill, and destroy… while you remain completely undetected. You are a Splinter
Cell, a highly secretive operative of the nearly unknown National Security Agency’s
Third Echelon initiative. Small, silent, and virtually invisible it’s your duty
to protect, investigate, and assassinate . . . tread lightly soldier, your discovery
is almost certain death. Splinter Cell, carrying the tag-line
‘Stealth Action Redefined,’ truly excels where many stealth action titles
have fallen short, let’s find out what makes Splinter Cell such a blazing success.

Two agents are missing in action in the Soviet Republic of Georgia, your initial
mission is to locate the agents and evaluate the situation and inevitably avert
disastrous results which may lead to World War III. Once you complete the short
but effective (and required) tutorial you’ll be dropped into the action
and begin your covert mission. Played from the third person perspective, Splinter
Cell gives you all the tools necessary to take out the bad guys, with a presentation
that’s second to none. The key point of the game is stealth action,
and it has come in such a realistic and impressive form that we need to congratulate
Ubi Soft Montreal for their exceptional work. If you think you can just waltz
right in and unload rounds of ammunition into the enemy you are sadly mistaken,
and you’ll soon realize your deadly mistakes!

It’s
second nature to many gamers to have the taste for blood and take every available
opportunity to kill, but as you become more familiar with the true vision behind
Splinter Cell, you’ll begin to use the surrounding environment to your advantage
to take you through the levels silently and anonymously. Consider the shadows
within the game your safe haven, an area where you can feel relatively comfortable:
enemies are much less likely to spot you while moving in the shadows as
long as you keep quiet. Furthermore all of the lighting is dynamic, streetlights
can be shot out, room and hallway lights can be turned off, even the lighting
from a nearby computer terminal can emit enough light to change the landscape
of the level.

On screen indicators will continuously allow you to see your estimated visibility
to others based on the area you are in, as well as health status and ammo/gadget
information. Keeping a close eye on the light meter, and a near ear for the
subtle noises you make are essential for survival. Never before has a game’s
use of lighting and shadow effects played such a crucial role in the gameplay
mechanics and techniques. Couple this with the audio cues and subtle ambient
sounds, and you have a game that’s more emmersive than any of the ‘top’ games
to date. You are not playing as Sam Fisher, you ARE Sam Fisher!

Holster
that weapon Sam! As you’ll learn in the tutorial, Sam is able to perform
many different techniques and maneuvers to get around, kill, and avoid, quite
a few more options available than in your standard third person shooter, although
we don’t really categorize Splinter Cell as a ‘shooter‘ by many standards.
Sam Fisher has the ability to walk, run, crouch, climb, jump, and every other
move you might expect, but he also has a few more maneuvers up his sleeve. Tactics
like placing his back to a wall, peering around corners, sliding down zip lines,
shimmying across tight ropes, moving hand over hand across wires and pipes,
rappelling from the side of a building, peeking through doors, dropping on enemies
after doing the split jump, and the list goes on.

Many
of the moves still allow Fisher to use his pistol in mid stream, and there’s
really nothing like rappelling down the side of a building, your feet against
a plate glass window, and whipping out that pistol for a well positioned shot
through the glass and into the skull of an enemy soldier. While you are equipped
with a silenced pistol from the onset of the game, and will have access to more
powerful weaponry as the game progresses, utilizing your arsenal effectively
is your decision. More often than not you’ll need to decide between using your
limited ammo to take out the enemy, or to take out surrounding light sources.

Inspector Gadget? James Bond? Nope! Sam Fisher is equipped
based on the needs of the mission and if the mission calls for the retrieval
of a sensitive conversation in an elevator, then you can bet your stealth hero
has the tools to make it happen. From laser microphones, to explosive lock picks,
to sticky cameras, there’s more high tech cutting edge espionage tools than
you can keep track of. At your disposal is a very impressive arsenal; camera
jammers, night vision and heat vision goggles, wall mines, flares, frag grenades,
optical cable and more. If you begin a mission equipped with heat vision goggles,
there is a need for them. Other items will be acquired throughout the levels,
the key point is that you are not overloaded with everything at once, you are
given a set of tools to work with, and you need to take the right steps to accomplish
the task. While the gameplay in that respect is linear, there are several tactics
that can be used to accomplish the same goal.

If
you are at a loss for what gadget or weapon to use, chances are you need to
resort to brute force, in a stealthy manner of course. Sneaking up behind someone
and interrogating them is done with ease, as is forcing a high ranking soldier
to activate a retinal scanner, allowing you access to a certain location. In
the same manner you can use one guard or soldier as a human shield, as you pick
the remaining enemies apart one by one. With all the options available in the
game you might be lead to believe that the controller has issues, such is not
the case. The controller has been intelligently mapped to a default setting
that will be familiar to anyone who has picked up an Xbox console first, or
third person shooter.

Between
missions you are brought up to speed through a CNN/Bloomberg style
news report, that subtly mentions the current state of affairs. While the cut
scenes are effective, they seem to be the one section of the title that could
have used a bit more attention. This in no way takes anything away from the
title, since the intermissions do keep you engaged in the story that unfolds,
it may just be the fact that the actual gameplay looks and plays even better.
You also have 24/7 access to your OPSAT, a Palm Pilot like
device that stores mission critical information, as well as any pertinent information
you acquire, such as keypad codes and sensitive information retrieved in the
form of data sticks from computers. This becomes very useful when you acquire
an access code early on in a level, and realize the need for it later on . .
. no back-tracking required.

All in all Splinter Cell becomes a title that you want to play over and over,
just to get the feeling of suspense and anticipation. Much of the time you’ll
be shooting out lights and cameras, and hiding bodies, and after playing for
a bit you’ll get the feeling that you are an undercover operative. With two
levels of difficulty, we call them Hard and Harder,
you’ll have a blast figuring out different ways to elude the enemies and not
fall off the edge of your seat.

This
is a solo mission my friend, you’re in this battle on your own. However,
Ubi Soft has put the ability for content downloads through the Xbox Live service,
which means long after you’ve done everything possible to ensure freedom, downloadable
levels will bring you back in the game for some more stealth action.

Splinter
Cell is a visual treat right from the start. Lighting and shadow effects are
superb, animations are smooth and realistic, and everything is extremely detailed.
It’s amazing how much detail they crammed into a black suit. If there is one
thing that you’ll remember from Splinter Cell, it’s the lighting effects, at
times they will leave you speechless and you’ll need to look at the controller
to remember you are playing a video game. (Try playing with the lights out.)
The cut scenes could have used a bit more detailing, and there are a couple
of rare clipping issues, but the frame rate stays consistent and overall it
is one of the most impressive looking titles on any console to date, if not
THE MOST impressive looking title thus far.

Stealth actions requires the use of all senses, especially sight and sound.
As spectacular as the graphics are, without excellent audio support they just
would not have had the same effect. Fortunately Splinter Cell support Dolby
Digital audio. Hear your footsteps, the footsteps of oncoming guards, the distant
burning of a flame on a stove, hear the wind howl, and be able to tell which
direction it’s all coming from. It would have been impossible to be able to
ascertain where a camera was located if you could not hear the sound of the
panning motor, thanks to exceptional development you can even distinguish what
direction the camera is facing, without seeing it. Character voice overs are
done well, especially those from Sam Fisher himself, and the overheard conversations
can be as useful as they can be humorous.

Playing through Splinter Cell can be frustrating because it is an unforgiving
game, when you make a mistake you know it, usually by the Mission
Failed notice on the screen. Splinter Cell is a linear game with
linear elements, linear outcomes, and linear progression. That is the main reason
it’s so amazing to get the level of replay out of it that so many of us have.
It’s not point A or point B, it’s what you do in between those points that counts
toward making or breaking the game, and Splinter Cell keeps you entertained
and engaged the whole way through. Sure there are times when the action gets
sluggish, and you may even get tired of playing the game the 5th time around,
but that’s why we have downloadable content to look forward to.

If you haven’t played Splinter Cell and you are still reading this review,
you missed my point . . . Go get it! Granted it’s not a title
that everyone will enjoy, since it is difficult to master certain moves and
sneaking around isn’t so easy when you are accustomed to throwing frag grenades
all the time, but once you’ve realized the point of the title, you’ll do just
fine. From the initial screenshots we looked at months ago, we knew Splinter
Cell was going to be a great looking game, but we weren’t so sure it was going
to be such a great ‘playing’ game! – xbox

Splinter Cell is absolutely one of the most revolutionary new games of
the next-gen consoles. From the drop dead gorgeous graphics, to the amount of
gadgets, this game delivers a solid stealth/action gameplay experience. Sam
Fisher is capable of making some pretty damn impressive moves as you go along
on this shadow operation. Be quiet, be smart, and be invisible in order to complete
your mission. Splinter Cell is honored by receiving the first ever Gronar
Snaggletooth Award of Damn Bad Ass Coolness! I don’t give these out
easily. – Gronar

Overall Score: 10/10 [Not an Average] A
Must See – Highly Recommended

• Official Game Site
• Ubi Soft
• Ubi Soft Montreal
• Tom
  Clancy’s Splinter Cell Screenshots (Temporarily Unavailable, Sorry.)
• Tom
  Clancy’s Splinter Cell Hints and Cheats

Buy
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell from Amazon.com

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