Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow Multiplayer Hands-On Impressions

By Jason Ocampo, GameSpotPosted Mar 1, 2004 5:20 pm PT

We check out the latest build to see how the taut cat-and-mouse multiplayer gameplay handles.

Splinter Cell was a game that had almost everything, including riveting gameplay, gorgeous graphics, and the military coolness that the Tom Clancy name conveys. But the one thing sorely missing from agent Sam Fisher's first adventure was multiplayer gameplay. Unfortunately, once you finished the single-player game, there were no online worlds to conquer. That's going to change in Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow, Ubisoft's upcoming sequel. Not only is Fisher coming back to save the free world in what promises to be yet another enthralling single-player campaign, but Ubisoft is finally giving us the multiplayer gameplay we've always wanted. So how does one translate a stealth action game--especially one that's all about skulking in the shadows--into a multiplayer game? We've been playing with a build of Pandora Tomorrow, and we've got a pretty good idea as to how the company is going to pull this feat off.

The spy has position and surprise advantages on this hapless mercenary.

Pandora Tomorrow doesn't play like a typical multiplayer action game. Instead of having huge games with upward of 16 or more players, Pandora Tomorrow will only support up to four players, each of which gets to play as either a spy or mercenary character. The spy character plays exactly like Sam Fisher in the single-player game, so you're a Splinter Cell commando, and you view the action from a third-person, behind-the-back camera perspective. The mercenaries play the game from the traditional first-person perspective, much like in tactical action games like Counter-Strike and Rainbow Six 3.

The multiplayer component will contain several gameplay types, and we got to try one called "neutralization" in both the Xbox and PC versions of the game. The premise here is simple: The spy has to neutralize devices, such as security terminals, that are scattered throughout the level, while the mercenaries have to stop him. It makes for a suspenseful game of cat and mouse, but it's one where the hunter and hunted can switch places in a heartbeat.

This is what motion tracking looks like. Other characters are highlighted by a nifty-looking gray box.

The spy can perform all of the moves that Sam Fisher can perform in the single-player game, including climbing up on ledges and dangling from overhead pipes. However, to make things even more challenging, the spy doesn't get to carry lethal munitions. Instead, the spy gets a Taser that looks like a submachine gun, which can be used to stun mercenaries. He also gets a couple of nonlethal grenades. There's the flashbang grenade, which temporarily blinds a luckless mercenary, and there's the chaff grenade, which explodes into metallic confetti that hangs in the air like a cloud. The chaff grenade is useful because the mercenaries use high-tech vision enhancement systems, like motion tracking, electromagnetic vision, and targeting. The chaff grenade will scramble these systems, thus temporarily nullifying the mercs' technological advantages.

While the spy doesn't get any lethal weapons, he can still kill mercenaries in a number of ways. The easiest way to take out a mercenary is with a basic physical attack, whereby you can sneak up from behind and you can grab the mercenary in a nasty humiliation move. The mercenary is completely helpless when this happens, and it's a lot like when Sam grabs a character from behind in the single-player game. In fact, through the use of a headset microphone, the spy can actually verbally taunt the mercenary he's just subdued before he snaps the merc's neck. While this taunt ability doesn't serve any functional purpose, it's cool nonetheless. The spy can also climb on top of an object and can wait for a mercenary to walk below. The spy can then drop down and knock him out. The mercenary will be knocked out for a few seconds the first few times you do this, but eventually you can wear a mercenary down to the point where he'll die and will have to respawn.

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jakeboudville
Posted Sep 2, 2006 1:31 am PT

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