Even better then the original with an amazing new mulitplayer addition. Fans of stealth sims apply now!
Now the sequal has arrived and its surprisingly even better in everyway with lots of cool new features.
The single-player aspect of the game agains focuses on grumpy stealth operative Sam Fisher. This time he goes up against a terrorist who has hidden several caches of a virus in the US. Everyday he makes a phone call to each location, preventing the release of the virus one more day. The phone calls are routed through several locations making them near impossible to trace. Nera impossible, that is where Sam Fisher comes in, he must infiltrate a series of locations across the world and gradually stop the terorist leader. Like in the first game the story is presented through cut-scenes and has some twists but don't expect a massive conspiracy spy thriller. Tom Clancy simply influenced this game, he didn't actually write it.
Al up though the single-player should provide several hours of excellent stealth game play with some well designed levels and scenarios.
The mulitplayer is new to the series and quite possibly one of the smartest gaming innovations of recent years. It pits two teams of two against each other. One is a team of spies with normal Splinter Cell abilities. The others play a FPS shooter style similar to Counter Strike's terrorists. Anyone who felt that the single-player game was not realsitic enough with love this new addition as it pits a persons stealth skills against a real human opponent.
The graphics and sound are both excellent.
Lighting and shadows and sharper then in the original and environments are more detailed. Overall the game's visuals are actually quite similar to the original's but since the original had great graphics this is hardly a concern.
Sound again plays an important as the music will change mid level depending on the situation. Its a good feature that makes the game exciting in tougher situations.
Overall this is a great game, it takes the good points of its predeseccor and builds on them while adding a fantastic mulitplayer mode.
Fans of stealth sims or anyone looking for a new and exciting game should look into this.