The second installment in the Splinter Cell series is everything the fans and community asked for, plus a little more.
User Rating: 8.9 | Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow PC
Hitting shelves of local retailers a little over a year after its predecessor, Pandora Tomorrow adds much more to the already terrific stealth game developed by Ubisoft. Coming out on March 23 of 2004, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow not only has the amazing single player game gamer’s have come to expect from Ubisoft, but it also comes with an intense multiplayer mode that pits Spies against Mercenaries in a string of objectives that must be completed or stopped, depending which team you’re on. Again playing as Sam Fisher, a special agent of Third Echelon, a division of the United States Government, you must once again come to the aid of the country by disposing of a lethal distribution of the smallpox virus. Traveling across five different continents, Fisher must stop the terrorists from releasing the virus worldwide. Being considered a one-man army after the first Splinter Cell, Sam must traverse from small office space areas to the dense forests of Indonesia while trying to find the terrorist leader who plans to blanket the world with a virus once thought dead. You cover a lot of area throughout the game’s eight missions. Now that may not sound like a long game, but having to use stealth throughout the different missions will definitely make this game last for awhile. Now, with that said, the individual missions will last depending on your type of playing style. Whether you want to be a shoot first, ask questions later agent, or a stealthy ghostlike agent where you’re never seen throughout the game, will affect the amount of time you spend on the game. But remember, always hide the bodies or it will come back to bite you later on in the mission. Some missions are different from others because of their objectives and goals, such as not being able to use any lethal force, or given the green light to take out anyone to reach your goal point. Every mission’s objectives are different and this keeps the player on his toes for stuff he can and can’t do. The graphics have been stepped up a notch from the first Splinter Cell and is easily noticeable by the gamer in the first few missions. Again, you’re given the “light meter” which represents how easily you’re seen by your enemies. This little tool is quite helpful because of not always noticing the actual light you’re in when wearing night vision goggles. But although you’ll be using your goggles for most of the game because of dealing with so many shadows, don’t forget to just try traversing through some of the game without them to appreciate the great graphics that have been provided by the developer. A game like Splinter Cell can have a gamer never noticing the great graphics because of all the darkness, so if you get a chance use your normal vision throughout some missions to get the full effect. Along with the night vision, Fisher is given thermal vision to pick up land mines and trip wires and will also need it for different objectives of some for the missions. But those aren’t the only gadgets Sam Fisher gets throughout the game. Like the first Splinter Cell, Fisher receives an overabundant supply of spy gadgets and top of the line weapons to help him along his way of saving the world once again. While proceeding through the game, you’ll be able to use different techniques of your own choosing to complete the different objectives which give the game some replay value, even though it has linear gameplay. Ubisoft brought back a lot of the weapons from its predecessor, but also added a few trinkets to make the game that much more fun to play through each time. Some of these new gadgets are used more within the multiplayer mode of the game, but are still fun to try and use in the single player in different ways and techniques. Ubisoft again made small cinematic movies between each mission to tell the story a little more from different perspectives and this helps the player by building a little more atmosphere in the game, and giving an overall sense of knowledge of what’s going on throughout the world while you’re taking out the bad guys one terrorist at a time. The sound in Pandora Tomorrow was done well with the voice actors from the first game coming back for the second game. The atmosphere noise throughout the missions was also done exceptionally well putting the player into the actual place they were in, whether it was the rugged streets of Jerusalem, or crawling through the grass reeds of Komodo while you try to locate the submarine underneath the ground. Wherever you are in the world, Ubisoft brings that atmosphere to you in your headphones or speakers, whatever you may be using at the time and as you crouch through the shallow water under bridges and buildings of small villages, you’ll appreciate the sounds of different things in the backgrounds such as birds chirping or water splashing giving your movements some cover from the enemies. A multiplayer component was added to the Splinter Cell series and Ubisoft did quite well for the series’ first time. In a unique style of multiplayer, you have two spies on the same team and two mercenaries on the same team and depending on the map, the spies will have to complete different objectives while the mercenaries try to stop them. While this may not seem like a good multiplayer being so small and only available to four players at a time, the intensity that is experienced by each side during the time allowed is entertaining enough whether you’re a spy or a mercenary. With the ability of speaking to your teammate over a headset, and planning you strategy during the game, you’ll find that time flies by as you experience both the side of the spy and mercenary. There are numerous differences between each side’s playing style and what they can do though and these aspects makes each team’s strategies different each time around. Overall, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow brings all the great features its predecessor had and adds so much more including better graphics and an intense multiplayer mode. If you were a fan of the first installment in this series, you’ll definitely want to pick up this title. If you’re a new comer to the Splinter Cell series, you may want to try this game, not only for its great single player game, but also for its great multiplayer components. 
