Was Splinter Cell actually overrated?

Playing the first Splinter Cell for the first time since I was a kid. Actually started in order to collect footage to make a point about the mediocre Batman games, but I'm not sure I can use it, because the way Splinter Cell uses darkness is actually ridiculous. The darkness/light is so weirdly isolated to small spots, and everyone works with the lights off, as if electricity costs a fortune. Definitely should play a part in a Batman game, but Splinter Cell forced it too much.

Also weird how they can suddenly see you even in the dark as soon as you are discovered.

Sam speaks to daughter from airplane, her first appearance. Two seconds later she is kidnapped, lol.

The first three were amazing for their time. I don't remember anything related to the story, but gameplay and visuals were so good that it really is not important if the story was good or not. Still to this day, those were the best stealth games i've played.

A little bit, yes. However, I don't recall Splinter Cell having a lot of real competition at the time of release, in terms of stealth games. I mean sure there was Metal Gear Solid but that is a game about giant mechs and superpowers. Splinter Cell isn't quite like that, you know? I mean it was meant to be kind of realistic!

That being said, the games were serviceable. My favorite was Pandora Tommorow where Tom Clancy finally came up with a plot twist.

Had Splinter Cell on Gamecube and Pandora Tomorrow on PS2. Why the hell is Pandora Tomorrow not on Steam, GOG or Uplay?

Heh, beats me. I did have all 4 Splinter Cell games that came out for GameCube years ago, but I sold them. It would be nice to play through Pandora Tommorow again, but I don't think it's even for sale on the Xbox store. I guess if you have a PS3 you could always get that Splinter Cell HD collection or whatever it is.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Classic Trilogy HD | Splinter Cell Wiki | Fandom

Is it just me or does anyone else notice the OP seems to just hate video games?

SC was amazing when it was released, and then Ubi slowly killed it by turning it (for the lack of a better word) arcadey in that it became less a stealth game and more a shoot everything that moves type action game.

After Double Agaent things went downhill. Which reminds me, I wonder what's happening to the remake of the OG game?

I'm not really into remakes, but I kinda hope it succeeds so we can possibly see a new game in the series, but if it does succeed it will most likely mean they will just remake the rest of them for the next 20yrs.

Yes

If anything the franchise is underrated. We need more games like Splinter Cell and Syphon Filter.

That's different. Someone like me who appreciates Splinter Cell can still find deep faults with it. It's not underrated, but it may be underappreciated. Something can score 10s everywhere and still not sell that well or lose to the open world shit like Assassin's Creed (at the time).

@warm_gun: I guess underrated is the wrong choice of words, and under appreciated would fit better, but games like those don't exist these days and are sorely missing from a well rounded lineup. The market still exists and if anything is larger than ever, especially if there is a fully fleshed out mp mode.

Nope. Early Splinter cells specially Chaos theory was masterpieces. it gone downhill after double agent then conviction than blacklist killed series.

irrelevant topic of very old game.

How is it irrelevant when the first game is currently getting a remake.

Third game obv signicantly better. But it's still a very good game go back to every couple of years.

Stuff like "The darkness/light is so weirdly isolated to small spots, and everyone works with the lights off, as if electricity costs a fortune.", video game logic. Enough said.

Splinter Cell has always been mid. Don't care what y'all say.

No idea, never played a SC game. Always thought they looked overrated though.

Also don't care for the darkness being spaced in your favor. I'd focus more on if the game is fun or not, not how many lamps the NPCs should be able to afford.

Thief did darkness well.

@last_lap: Even if there was no remake in the works, how would it be irrelevant? What, do we only talk about the game that came out five minutes ago?

SC was always just a poor white mans uninspired version of Metal Gear Solid.

There couldn't be a more dull and uninspired title just to offer an alternate American/Western version of something the Japanese did far better.

I agree.... The games were must plays when they launched d and each of them were really good. The story was always a side bar and those endings were as bad as it gets.... Pretty sure the first game you just walk out the front door of a level and the game ends. I remember being like, "that's it?" but it was the gameplay I was after.

Also... Unpopular comment here... I loved conviction. Lol. Played it through a few times.

i'm mildly curious about the remake because my steam copy is bugged. crashes near the start of the oil refinery level, which is like the third mission in, so haven't played it start to end for probably close to 15 years. i do have a hard copy of the first five sc games (six including the og xbox double agent) so could try that but old games are always a pain in the arse to get working, particularly ubi ones that were always buggy on pc. i bought conviction but had to play the cracked version because ubi's always online requirement / servers kept disconnecting me.

yep. and it knows it too.

fisher: "let me guess - three alarms and it's over?"

lambert: "of course not! this is no video game, fisher."

chaos theory is the pinnacle. still holds up incredibly well to this day.

it's something to do with a graphics feature that was used in it that won't work with modern gpus. shadow related maybe. cup found a patch for it and got it working ages ago tho so it is fixable

It's a game about sneaking in shadows and you have three glowing lights strapped to your face. You can't take it seriously right from the get go.

The first Splinter Cell game was one of the earliest 3D stealth games, and while it was not perfect, it was and is still a masterpiece.

I only remember 2 faults:

Checkpoints were sometimes too far apart.

Yeah, sometimes the darkness was ridiculous, especially in the CIA underground mission. I would feel constantly sleepy if I had to work there, lol.

Because there's been no games in the series in what a decade, and this is SW not game discussion, so your thread is in the wrong place, so on second thoughts it is irrelevant on here.

Secondly you need to cheer up as all I see you do is make threads about games you hate.

Tried to get into the games a couple of times but they just never did click with me. Metal Gear Solid games were more my jam.

There's almost no traffic in Games Discussions. The forum as a whole is fairly dead. Same few people posting all the time, mostly. The actual "system wars" was when manufacturers still had consoles worth fighting over. PS5 already, according to Sony, more than halfway into the generation and still like three exclusives? Xbox with no exclusives, closing studios left and right? Please. Battle of the morons.

True that most of this site is dead, the lounge still has a dozen or so users regularly posting in it.

I'm the complete opposite, I found the SC games to be way more stealth over the MG games, and I played 3 of the MG games and even finished the first game back in the day on the PS1, MG is hardly stealth, so I find the comparison to be odd, SC is stealth and MG is an action game.

@last_lap: I just preferred doing the stealth stuff in the MGS games more. Could have just been that I also enjoyed the other aspects of the MGS games more as well though. Just couldn’t get into the Splinter Cell games on the whole.

More options in Metal Gear Solid, even if only talking about stealth. I also liked the movement more. Mousewheel determining speed, GTFO of here. Don't remember how Splinter Cell played with a controller. Tedious to set up with one. Before 4, Metal Gear Solid also didn't have the crouch-makes-quiet(er) that's, sadly, in everything now. Slow and so uncool to crouch so much.

For its time? No. But with each release thereafter it became less and less impressive, still a fun serviceable game series but nothing exceptional to point I yearn for another so bad that it hurts.

If anything any future lack of interest in the series is more about Ubisoft releasing a shit game and pretending everything is fine which they do more often than not.

Still, I'd take a new Splinter Cell game over some boring MGS game any day.

@warm_gun: I just never really got far enough into the Splinter Cell games to be able to compare them all that much in that area to be honest.

Nah, if anything, they're underrated. I think they've aged incredibly well in terms of gameplay and frankly I thought the stories were decent enough.

You had a good cast of characters with the story told via in-game dialogue (no immersion-killing in-game cutscenes, thank you very much!). Michael Ironside was cast well as Sam, and I thought the voice actress of Grimsdottir and Sam's boss were also good voice actors.

Yes, and let's critique Mario for basing their gameplay around jumping on top of enemies, or Tetris on being based on simplistic block designs.

You're basically criticizing the game for the mechanics that make it good and what it is.

Do shadows work like that in real life? Are parts of a room pitch black while others bright white? Of course not, but this is also a video game and you sort of have to make creative choices for the sake of making it fun.

Splinter Cell was never a simulation, so maybe cut it some slack in the "it don't work that way in real life" criticisms.

Yup, we really need the genre to make a comeback. Once in a while we'll get a decent stealth game, but the big-name titles don't seem to be around these days.

Stealth might be an aspect of gameplay in modern games, but there are very few games based entirely around stealth as the point.

It can be a fun challenge. I imagine executives are probably like "Wait, you want our customers to avoid combat? What are you, stupid!?" not realizing that games aren't inherently about just killing things.

Amen to that.

Sadly we are more likely to get another MGS game than a Splinter Cell game

Not a bad game, but not very memorable to me and not the quality of what I would call a classic.

I'm much more excited about the MGS3 remake (even though Kojima isn't involved) than I am about the Splinter Cell remake.

Splinter Cell is boring, overrated and mediocre.

Even the 8-bit Metal Gear games are more fun than Splinter Cell.

The original and Pandoras Tomorrow are eh, Chaos Theory is 10/10

I loved the one on 360 I forgot the name. I think the few xbox-GC-PS2 games aged poorly compared to metal gear solid due to technology used for is janky and can be hard due to no minimap and no objective markers. I honestly loved the GBA splinter cell game more than its console brothers.

Can't have a Splinter Cell thread without the disgusting Metal Gear Solid fans showing up.

Shocking display.

He started it.

@Archangel3371 said:

@uninspiredcup said:

Can't have a Splinter Cell thread without the disgusting Metal Gear Solid fans showing up.

Shocking display.

Sam can't even crawl. Only vents and stuff.

Maybe if they hadn't focused so much of the gameplay on absurd darkness, Sam could crawl. Or use more CQC options.

Because they are incredibly insecure and know that SC beat the f**k out of every MGS game in mechanics, graphics, realism, stealth, controls, story and comprehensible story telling. They still think Kojima invented the stealth genre and everyone copied it.

Got into them with pandora tomorrow and then chaos theory top tier, gameplay has aged not so well but for their time great games.

I agree, they should stay hidden under that cardbored box 🤣

MGS is indeed far inferior than the original SC trilogy. If you disagree, you're a weeb, and can't be taken seriously.

@hardwenzen: 100% agree with you! Yey!

You would think the CIA would at least keep this security checkpoint lit.

MGS fans sneaked into this thread undetected using tactical espionage action.

You aren't the only one, I too loved Splinter Cell: Conviction as well. Conviction to me was as close to getting a Jason Bourne game as we'll ever gonna get.

High five to Conviction! The hate it got at the time was oversaturating.

Same

And no SC is not overated

On the flip I'd say MGS is overated