Through the cover of night, comes a hero on the Gamecube!
For the newbies to this game and the genre, Splinter Cell is a stealth action game about espionage and spywork. You play as secret agent, Sam Fisher who's even beyond CIA status, the government denies your existance so you can't die or get caught. You work for Third Echelon and they recently lost contact with 2 of their agents, now you have to find them and the story unfolds from there. It involves an unnamed terrorist group with a leader named Nikoladze and a lot of the story revolves around him. The story isn't THAT great though, it could be better and it works.
The gameplay works quite well also. You have tons of topnotch moves at your disposal that you can perform like a split jump and and rolling crouch and things like that. You have 2 weapons at your side, this sounds bad, its not, let me explain. You have a basic silenced pistol and an Assualt Rifle with plenty of clever stuff (Attachments). You have at your side an attachment for rapid fire, sniper, ring airfoil rounds (Stunning stuff that knocks people out if shot to the head), sticky shocker (Its just cool and it also knocks people out and more! Its like having more than 2 weapons and you even get extra features with the GBA link cable and a GBA and the features allow another attachment to the Assualt rifle and an overhead map of the area including cameras etc. Also you can hack turrets with it and use them against bad guys. The controls work fluidly and it allows you to do stuff like deliver a blow to another person's head and grab a person and force them to cooperate. This truly is an ideal stealth action game when it comes to variety. Its kinda hard and has trial and error to it, you will be seen in a mission many times, you will do many wrong things etc. and it kinda gets annoying. You have to use shadows to your advantage and not be seen.
The graphics have to be good if its a game all about shadows and not being seen, but the shadows aren't as vibrant and dark as expected but at least they aren't horrible. Sometimes you don't feel like your in the dark and you are according to that meter. The sound has no complains, its all good, but its kind of a cheat because you can listen to the sound and when the background music starts, you know someone thinks your there and it stops when all guards are gone. Its Replay Value could be higher, but you'll likely at least play this 10-15 hour game at least one more time. Its a great experience but its kinda short which is disappointing.
Great game by its own methods and is good even if you haven't played stealth before. Truly worth a good buy!