Sam Fisher's debut on the PlayStation 3 is a triumphant one.
If you have played any of the previous three Splinter Cell games, then you will have no problem picking this up and playing it right away. There are a couple of tutorial levels for the newbies, but veterans of the series can just move to the main game. When you first start the story, Sam Fisher is in rough shape. Since the story is actually pretty good in this game, I won't ruin the game with spoilers here. But as the game advertises, you end up joining an underground terrorist organization called the JBA. While undercover, your job is too get enough evidence to take these guys down, stop any terrorist attacks they are planning, and basically save the day.
Double Agent basically breaks down into two parts. Most of the time, you will be doing missions, just like you did in every other Splinter Cell game before this one. That part of the game is still fun, but it shows that this series needs a jumpstart. Thankfully, the developers threw in a few daytime missions so you won't just be running around with your night-vision goggles on the whole time. These missions are a nice change of pace and hopefully we will see more of them in the next game of the series.
The other part of the game has you inside of the JBA headquarters. When you start one of these missions, you have about twenty-five minutes to accomplish whatever task your boss has given you (assemble bombs, un-encrypt an email, etc.) and the rest of the time is yours to freely roam around. This is where the best parts of the game come to play. Sneaking around trying to uncover files, information, and other stuff is a lot of fun. Just don't get caught.......
You also have a couple 'trust meters' that you have to keep your eye on. Basically, you have to keep both the JBA and the NSA happy or it's game over for you. So between the in-game missions & the missions at the JBA headquarters, there is a constant ebb & flow to the game. To go even further, there a few times in the game where you are given a 'moral' choice of sorts. I won't spoil them for you here, but they are cool when they happen. Unfortunately, there are only a few of them.
What all of this amounts to is this is the same Splinter Cell game that you have played before, except with the 'Double Agent' theme running throughout the game. There isn't much in the way of new weapons, moves, controls, sounds, etc. The graphics look nice, but like a lot of other games that are made multi-platform, they could have been better.
The multi-player remains intact here and is as fun as ever. This is my first foray into actually playing this series online and it was a lot of fun. It's a nice mix of strategy and gunplay and certainly breaks up all of the FPS I play online. Playing as a spy is a blast and I can hardly wait to see how they improve this in the next game.
With this being the PS3 version, I should mention the differences that entails. This game was, clearly, made to run on the Xbox 360 best so there are some frame-rate issues here. It's not a deal-breaker, but if you have a choice, I would go with the Xbox 360 version.
Splinter Cell: Double Agent is a game that if you liked the other entries in the series, I would recommend picking it up. The series hasn't evolved as quickly as I would have hoped by now, but there are definate signs of improvement on the horizon. With the multiple endings, tough moral choices, daytime & undercover missions, and great multi-player........this is a game that should satisfy even the biggest Splinter Cell fan.