Turin's Full Review: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell for Windows
It’s been a VERY long time since I’ve written a review. Between working full time, going to school on nights and weekends, teaching myself guitar, and spending time with the family and girlfriend, there hasn’t really been time. ?Fortunately? I am sick, so I figured now is the time.
As you can see I don’t have a lot of spare time to play a lot of games. The number of games that I have had the time and attention span to play all the way through has gone down. It is a testament then to Splinter Cell that I enjoyed it enough to play it to the end.
Story
You play the role of Sam Fischer. You are recruited by the NSA for some special ops in the startup of a new program. Your missions vary, but mostly they fall down to two categories: Sneak and Eliminate. The missions are composed of several parts, so usually there is one Eliminate part every other mission. Most of the game is about sneaking, snooping, and spying. You go in, climb, shimmy, slide, crawl, jump, rappel your way through, aided by a small variety of weapons and tools and your all important night vision and thermal goggles.
Graphics
The Graphics in Splinter Cell are real good. It definitely helped that the game is an Xbox port, because most games that are PS2 ports end up paling in comparison to most current computer titles. Splinter Cell would lock up my computer, but it seems to be a problem with my video card. 3dmark2k3 also would lock up my computer on a specific test. Battlefield 1942 runs perfectly as does Freelancer and 3dmark2k. Lowering the core and memory speeds on my Ti4200 seemed to fix the problem. Why only some applications have this problem is a mystery to me, though I would fathom that some aspect of the core that has to do with the pixel shaders is somewhat defective. Splinter Cell makes a lot of use of lighting and shadows. Due to this, I could only run the game in 640x480. I have seen the game at 1024x768 and 800x600 and played it somewhat before it locked up. They helped clean the graphics up a little bit, but not enough to make an impressive difference. Even at 640x480 Splinter Cell provided a good visual experience, but due to the nature of the game (you sneaking through kitchens in the dark) the graphics didn’t exactly WOW me. They got the job done though.
Sound
Sound is actually an important part of Splinter Cell. Since the game revolves primarily around you snooping about, the sounds you make and the sounds around you are imperative to success. To that extent, Splinter Cell is a little more focused on sound than a lot of other titles. They did a good job of sound placement (you can tell where the noise is coming from), which was critical to this title well executed.
Levels
They did a good job of delivering interesting and entertaining levels. At some point you will probably have to use, or it would make it easier for you to use each of your special goggles or tools. You don’t have to, and the levels usually only have one path to take. How you progress through the levels and down that path is up to you. There were a few points in the game where you had multiple paths you could take to accomplish your goal, and I thought those were the better points in the game. It allowed you to be more creative with your tools and abilities to achieve your goals. You still had the freedom to choose how you moved past the guards in the game undetected. Whether you knock them out, sneak up and grab them, or try to silently shoot them is up to you. There is a better method for each situation you find yourself in. The other levels where you had multiple paths were far more enjoyable though (hmm hey, if I jump here, sneak up there and go there, I can get around there; as opposed to hmm do I hit him, knock him out, or shoot him when he’s alone).
Controls
The controls were good enough in the game. For a Tomb Raider type of perspective and camera mode, it does one of the best jobs of keeping the game visible. Games like this tend to be plagued with bad camera angles. Splinter Cell wasn’t always perfect, but it was the first game of this type that it was never really an issue. The only problem I had with the controls is that sometimes you aim something at a bad guy and you’ll see the projectile clip through him. If you shoot someone in the head, they die instantly, however what the game defines as the head is an area that isn’t quite where the head of the enemy is displayed on the screen. It can also be frustrating when it takes 5-6 shots to kill a guy in his face and neck. Since the game is about sneaking, sneaking up and grabbing a guy is a key element to the game. You need to be right behind the guy to grab him. There were many times where for whatever reason I wasn’t perfectly lined up just the right way to grab the guard, even though I was behind him undetected. Then as you move about to find the right spot, you are detected. On a game that relies on stealth and speed, this can get irritating.
Other Notes
There are a few times when you must do something to progress in the game. You don’t always know when this is. That guard you knocked out, or guard you killed, or maybe you left a turret on somewhere and the guy you need now is dead. If you happened to save your game after that point, then you have to start over. Fortunately there is an autosave feature, which saves your game every time you complete a segment of each mission. That beats having to start over the whole mission. But I found that there were a few times in the game where I had to repeat a segment of a mission because my quicksave was useless. You can save any time so I suggest you make use of that. This is more of a user problem than a problem with the game, so you can avoid this.
Conclusion
Splinter Cell was an excellent game. It was long enough to give you a diverse experience with each mission, but not so long that it became monotonous. I don’t know how much of a replay value it is for you individually; I myself will probably not play it again, though I will likely enjoy a sequel.
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