A DISGRACE TO THE SPLINTER CELL SERIES!
the Bad: everything else!
This game is completely and utterly appauling, ubisoft has completely destroyed the point of splinter cell by releasing this game. Sam fisher, the master of shadows is now working in the day?!?! what the hell. The first 2 missions are ok, not completely upto previous splinter cell titles standards, but still not bad, as soon as you get past these its all downhill.
In my opinion the graphics havnt improved a great deal since chaos theory as chaos theory's graphics were very impressive for the xbox. But ill put the graphics aside for now because there is much worse aspects to this game. To start, the enemy A.I., the enemy's general reaction to you remains pretty much the same, stand still and shoot at you, with the occasional few that seek cover. The thing that has changed is the fact that the enemies have gained a special ability...the ability to see through walls, see you at very long distances away where you have to use thermal vision just to be able to see their heads and the ability to look at you but not recognise that you are an intruder???, on many occasions i have been on a level where i am hugging a wall and the guard walks past, looks right at me, keeps walking whilst looking at me and doesnt start the alarm...plain and utterly retarded. Secondly is the levels, 2 things about the levels, one, very little to no shadows to hide in at all, leaving you very vunerable to been seen, as the snow/blizzards and dust flying around doesnt do anything to hide you. the levels are bright and therefore take the fun of stealth away from them making it virtually impossible to stalk your enemy from the shadows. Secondly is more to do with the storyline, you go from one exotic location to the other without a real link between them, such as going from the antartic to africa...very different locations and your not told what they have in common. The HQ levels are also complete garbage, its liek the game prisoner of war but far worse, you have to "sneak" into restricted areas of the HQ and do certain tasks for both organisations. And if im right, theres 4 missions where you must do this...ive seen mission recycling in games before but this takes the biscuit. Now what really pis.sed me off about this game is that you arent a double agent, you dont get to pick what organisation to work for, you must work for both, and the trust metre makes sure of this, because if you lose to much trust for either organisation then missions over, and i actually got to the point in the game, where i had very low trust for both organisations and i had to kill or let this guy live, and either way, it failed me due to what ever i did one of the organisations failed me...so let me make it clear, YOU ARE NOT A DOUBLE AGENT, YOU ARE JUST UNDER-COVER!, your still working for the dam NSA!
The storyline is well, quite simply, very poor, their is little character development making some of the moral decisions quite easy, as you dont really get involved with the character to an extent you dont want to kill them off.
Also, not much has really been added to the game, theres the pulling the guards down from beneath the ice moves, and a few new gadgets like the microphone gun thing that shoots sound to a place of your choice, but other than that, nothing has been added.
Lastly is Sam himself, now he has become very slow and well, old. this is shown simply by the way he runs, it looks like a guy puffed out with a wedgy or something. Hes become less agile, less stealthy and well, i personally think its time for him to retire, and after this poor excuse for a game, i wish he would.
There is only 2 good thing i can think of for this game, one is the sound, the voice's and sound effects sound great. And lastly the online gameplay in my opinion has improved, playing as the spy has become alot more fun as where your supposed to go is more clearly marked out and you are alot more acrobatic.
In conclusion, this game may be good to those who have never played splinter cell before or didnt like the previous titles. To all true splinter cell fans out there, dont bother playing this game, it will hurt to much, at the most rent it for a day, trust me, you will make your judgement in alot less time than that. So to any true splinter cell fan, i give it 4.1 out of 10, to the others, i give it 6/7 out of 10