The new dawn of stealth games, and dynamic lighting effects, embrace the dark.
Before I continue I must point out that SC is not really the first game to truly have the player feeling the shoes of a combat stealth specialist. That honouts goes to the Metal Gear Solid games, but these are very different from SC. Quite simply SC is high on realism and can be a punishing game. This is not a game where you'll shoot out every guard you see, if anything you'll go out of your way to avoid hurting your opponents (granted, they will most certainly not return the favour if they see you) becasue this game really is stealth.
The premise is simple, you play a lone commando named Sam Fisher who works for a part of the NSA, a group known as Third Echelon. Fisher is given the missions that are either too tough for an averae spy, or are simply so sensitive that the US can't afford to be caught while involved. Eg late in the game you'll be in China, if a US soldier is caught attacking Chinese soldiers, it means WW3. As Fisher, players must become like a ghost doing everything to disapper. And surprisingly, this works incrdiably well thanks to some great game mechanics.
On of the biggest points about SC is that you can use the dark to your advantge, Fisher always wears a nightvision headset that lets him see in th dark when need be. His enemies almost never have these, so your most common tactic is hiding in dark corners to avoid patrolling guards. A handy little metre on the screen shows how visible you are by way of a sliding marker. When its at the far left, your pretty much invisible, to far right, then they can see you easily. Granted, if a guard walks right up to you while the metre is far left, he will realise you are there if he gets too close. At first this can seem quite annoying but it makes sense, in real life a person would hear your breathing, or they might bumb into you. All up though this makes for lots of hide and seek in the dark moments that are quite thrilling.
Next the game offers plenty of play options, Fisher can climb about on just about anything, he can jump up and wedge his legs in a tight corrdior to stay above the ground, he can hug walls and look around corners, grab enemies from behind and use them as human shields in a gunfight or use to activate retinal scanners. All the later note there are plenty of scenes in the game that require you to whip out either your assault rifle or pistol (both silenced) and shoot it out with the guards. These encounters are nothing like normal shoot outs in games becasue all the weapons are very realistic. Try to fire while moving and you'll miss, guareneeted. To fire and hit an enemy in one shot you'll want to crouch down, and take time lining up your shot, just like in real life. But since Fisher can only take a few hits before dying and if there's people shooting at you this can get quite hard. Overall its best to play it quite and avoid direct combat with the guards at all costs.
That is of course provided the game even lets you engage your enemies, there are plenty of levels where you wont be allowed to fire at guards or even set off alarms. This can make the game very tense but also, boring. Quite simply many players will find themselves resorting to trial and error to finish the level. This is a game that is adamant in its stealth standing. Fortunatly it really is a lot of tense, exciting and realsitic fun once you get the hang of things.
The game looks great, I'll say that now. The charecters all animate well and Fisher's movements all look real. The lightning and shadow effects of course steal the show. On a good note its quite easy to get the game running smoothly on alomst any PC.
The audio is quite good with the music changing to match the gameplay. Sneak silently and there's a steady cat burglur theme, but alert the guards and it jums up a notch. You;ll know howmuch trouble you are in depending on the temp of the music.
The game's story is not actually written by Tom Clancy, in fact he had almost nothing to with the game, rather the story is insipired by his novels. Its quite good though with some good twists but don;t expect anyting special though.
Overall this is an enjoyable game once you get used to the stealth mechanics. It is taking gaming in a new direction though, one where intelligance is vital. Its tense, realistic and worth looking into if your eager for a more challenging action game.