Splinter Cell Double Agent was one of the most anticipated games of 2006. After SC Chaos Theory we expected nothing but a perfect stealth game, sadly Ubisoft Shanghai managed to mess things up. The storyline was never a SC selling point and DA is no different I mean it's O.K for a SC. It is quite believable at first but later it gets strange I mean c'mon NSA knows who the terrorist are and what they are planning but still you are ordered to assist them. I want fifth freedom with this f****rs, I want to bash their heads and cut their throats (not really I'm the non violent type) However this story manages to set a stage for the next game all in all a poor story with a few occasional exceptions. Now for the main course the gameplay, here it's a typical SC you get lots of sneaking around and you still have to keep your head down to survive. Sam got some new moves this is nice but the new mission rating system which subtracts points for every enemy you knock out makes this new moves pretty much useless if you want to get a perfect stealth score. As for the new rating system, well it makes the game more believable no longer can you knock out every single enemy out and pile them up in a corner (I loved to do this made enemy soldiers look stupid).Idea with bonus equipment is silly I really doubt sending out an operative with dated tech and giving newer stuff to him/her later is a good idea. Highly anticipate daylight missions are nothing special and feel right at home compared with the rest of Double Agents gameplay. One thing that really sets DA apart is the new visibility meter which seems to be designed by the same people who did the Xbox 360s infamous "Ring of Death" design. The old visibility meter was probably too complicated for Xbox 360 owners and was replace by a tiny LED with three colors. Green= Sam is invisible, enemies can't see him, Yellow= Sam is visible, enemies can see him but sometimes they don't because of the distance between Sam and his enemy. The last color is red ("Ring of Death") and it indicates that Sam was detected and is under attack, this one troubles me the most, I thought that with the coming of Next-Gen, games will get enough tech sophisticated that a player can determine if he/she is being shot at, but geniuses at Ubi Shanghai think otherwise. Also this system effectively eliminates a possibility for a color blind person to play this game. New trust system is a nice idea but very poorly executed an average player, on normal difficulty setting, will have no problem with keeping both NSA and JBA happy. The new multiplayer mod is a bit different from what it used to be. It has almost nothing to do with single-player and being a spy got a lot more difficult because spies don't carry guns, however now they move much faster this is a nice change of pace. In order for a spy team to win they have to cooperate in order to confuse mercenaries. As for cooperative missions I'd say they could have skipped this one at all, they have nothing to do with single-player, what's up with that? it's just a multiplayer mod played against bots, I'd rather see them spend more time and resources(if they did any at all) on single-player and multiplayer campaigns. The sound is O.K but leaves a lot to be desired. Music in this game rocks, much better than confusing stuff from SCCT. I still think a proper stealth game should focus on sound and noise very much. Sound can be used for delivering info to the player but nobody even tried to do this in DA. Graphics look nice in all the right places but I can't shake the feeling that HDR is one thing this game can't do without while this works good on "Xenos" not everyone has a 3D card that powerful. Two training missions also feel extra on a PC and look like they were designed to demonstrate graphic capabilities of Xbox 360 heck it they even remind me of Xbox 360 white + green. All in all this is a very nice game. It's a must-have for all Splinter Cell fans but it doesn't live up to high standards set by Splinter Cell Chaos Theory.
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