A decent stealth action game. Not nearly as good as it could be, though.
Gameplay: 8/10
- Stealth is very good here. The enemies behave semi-realistically. Most of the time you *have* to sneak, which means you are going to get shot very fast if not careful. The only major gripe here is that it's so linear. Stealth games should not be linear, at all. Thief and Deus Ex are much, MUCH better in that area.
Atmosphere & Immersion: 7.5/10
- Yeah, it has quite a bit of atmosphere. It's nothing compared to Thief though. Well, they are pretty different anyway. I'll just say that it feels pretty good to sneak around. The bad thing is that I never got the feeling that *I'm* Sam Fisher, which is a bad thing in any game, especially RPGs and stealth games. (I blame the 3rd person camera for this)
Graphics: 9/10
- I find the graphics to be really good. REALLY good, for a 2005 game. The textures, the lightning, other effects, are all excellent.
Sound: 7/10
- It's mostly ok and does it's job well. Especially the ambient sounds are good.
Physics: 5/10
- Just your average ragdoll. Nothing more, really.
Replay value: 6.5/10
- You could play in different difficulty levels, set your own goals (not to be seen, don't knock out & kill anyone etc.) Too bad the levels are so linear, it would've had so much more replay value if there were more like Thief.
Value for money: 7/10
- This is one of the games that I actually think is nearly worth the full price. Nearly.
Bugs, Stability & Performance: 3/10
- For an unknown reason, I couldn't get this game to run on my PC that easily met the system requirements. The problem was that the sound lagged or missed completely. I asked Ubisoft tech support and they couldn't help me. I got this game to run only in my newer PC. Other than that, there are no major bugs that I am aware of, and it never crashed. It performs very well on a medium to high-end PCs, I myself can run it on all maxed out at the resolution of 2048x1536, and my PC isn't exaclty the most high-end there is.
Will this game be remembered by old school gamers as a classic after 10 years?:
- I don't think so. It's a decent game, but other games of it's genre (mainly Thief and Deus Ex) will be remembered longer, no doubt.
Who would I recommend to buy the game?:
- The fans of stealth oriented action games. Fans of Hitman or Thief. Do not buy this if all you want to do is shoot everyone.
Final score (not necessarily an average): 7.5/10