Splinter Cell is a very cool game that looks and sounds awesome. It's just too short.
User Rating: 8.4 | Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell PC
Splinter Cell is simply the most satisfying stealth game that I have played since "Thief". In fact, I like it better in some ways. You can see how that classic stealth game influenced Splinter Cell. The game play is exciting and supsenseful, and although I occasionally found it to be frustrating, it wasn't overly so. The first thing that you notice when you start the game up is how fantastic the graphics are. All of the game's environments are richly detailed and crafted with a high degree of realism. Every room has all sorts of objects laying about -- telephones, computers, chairs, boxes, pictures, etc, etc, and they don't get repetitive. Every building in the game looks different. The stealth engine for this game is the best that have ever been made. Sounds and lighting are just so precise. The lighting is so advanced that even the light from a computer nearby screen can give you away. You can shoot out lights, and if you shoot a hanging lamp without destroying it, it will sway back and forth, and you will see the shadows in the room move with it. The game makes great use of all of Sam's stealth gadgets, especially his night-vision and heat-vision goggles. Sam Fisher is also one of the coolest action protagonists that I have seen in a video game. He has great dialog, and great voice acting to go with it (done by Michael Ironside). He has all sorts of cool gizmos like lockpicks and a gun that can shoot sticky cameras. He also has a lot of cool moves that he uses for getting through each level. You can combine moves for some really neat effects. For instance, you can suspend yourself between two walls by doing the splits, and shoot a guy as he walks below you. The game was programmed so that Sam will smartly react to his environment. If there is a ledge nearby and you jump, he will grab it. If there is a ladder or a pole, he will climb it. The controls are remarkably easy to use, considering that it is a port of a console game, and there is a lot of complicated stuff to do. The missions are interesting and fit in well with the stealth theme. Most missions involve infiltrating a well-guarded facility and finding some kind of information. They are set up in a way that encourages you to use minimal violence, but you tend to get in more shootouts towards the end of the game. The AI for the game is very pretty tough. Guards will react to sounds and other suspicious activity by seeking you out. They will turn lights back on if you turn them off, and they will also notice if you have shot out a light. There are even some pesky guard dogs in the game, which can sniff you out and track you down. The game has very linear missions, which is both good and bad. Good, because you never get stuck going on a boring Easter Egg hunt, wondering if you are even on the right side of the map. This is why the game rarely gets boring of frustrating. On the other hand, bad, because most problems have only one way of solving them, and you don't get to use much creativity. I think that I prefer to nonlinearity in the end -- it makes it more fun. The only true shortcoming of the game though, is its value rating. The game takes about 12-15 hours at the most to get through, and its linear scripted nature takes away from its replay value. That, by itself, isn't enough to keep me from recommending this game to anyone who is a stealth game fan. If you have enjoyed other stealth games, and you have been disappointed by the crappy implementation of stealth in a lot of other games, then you have to get "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell".
