The assortment of equipment in Splinter Cell is excellent. All of the included equipment is either known to exist today or is based upon current technologies. This gives the equipment a realism factor which in turn increases the potency of the equipment's cool factor.
Your equipment does, of course, include a couple guns, but your guns are often far more useful as tools than as weapons. Often shooting and killing that guy blocking your path will result in mission failure, and even if you are allowed to kill him doing so may backfire by alerting other baddies nearby to your presence. This is especially bad because Sam isn't a great shot compared to the main characters in your standard faire shooter game. So your guns are often more useful in taking out a troublesome light or camera, although that, too, can cause more harm than good.
Other weapons in your arsenal include fragmentation grenades and wall mines. When used appropriately they can clear an area of all hostiles, which is generally ok since the game doesn't provide these items on no-kill missions.
You also get a nice host of non-lethal weapons. Add ons for your rifle, like air foils (heavy projectiles that can knock a hostile unconcious), shockers (projectiles that shock a hostile unconcious, or several if fired into the water they're standing in), and diversion cameras (cameras that can attract guards then deliver a gas payload to knock them out). Gas grenades are useful in the right situation and aren't lethal, and if you hit a guard in the head with an empty bottle you find lying around it will usually knock him out as well.
Beyond weapons you have cameras you can deploy to see around corners, a camera to see underneath closed doors, lock picks, quick disposable lock pics to get doors open on a deadline, a camera jammer, and a laser mic to hear sound through glass. Of course, don't forget Sam's trademark goggles which can be used to see in lowlight or infrared. I may have missed a couple things, but you get the idea: the array of equipment is nicely extensive and great fun to use.
Here's where the game shows a little weakness. Don't get me wrong, the enemies are great, although mostly limited to guards, civies, and dogs. The problem here is in behavior, where the behavior limitations are a little better than average but well short of ideal.
They stand around or follow a routine path. Okay, so your average security guard probably does follow the same path over and over-- it's a boring job most of the time. But even such a guard when put on high alert, having been told an armed intruder has been spotted, will begin really differing his routine. Worse, some technician on his job will definately be more erratic in behavior (where he stands and walks) than what is seen in this game. Worst of all are the cops who stand still, facing a wall, and never ever ever move.
When a guard hears a noise he knows it's bad. It doesn't matter that until twenty seconds ago there was a guy working here and making a lot of noise, if I take a normal unstealthy step here somehow that guard around the corner knows it's an intruder and comes running over, guns blazing. It seems to me if that the noise I make can be reasonably expected under normal circumstances, then guards should ignore it. In other words just ordinary footsteps shouldn't cause an alarm unless the guard thinks no one at all should be there.
Guards always shoot. This would make a certain amount of sense except I really don't buy a guard outside the CIA headquarters openning fire on me, an unarmed man he doesn't know, when I'm not doing anything-- not even moving. Yet that's his first response. I understand this is a game mechanic, but it's avoidable and kind of silly in execution.
Negative points asside, there's a lot to like about the enemies. They're distinct, having diverse reactions to seeing you or hearing a random noise. They have conversations with eachother. It's not uncommon for one to be carrying a "data stick" with a personal email on it. Some whistle, some hum. Sometimes when you get close you can hear them breathe. They have interesting things to say when they decide what they heard was their imagination. Sometimes they have a little quip for you after they shoot you dead. Some of them even have important information for you that you can interrogate out of them. There's a lot of depth to your adversaries despite their behavioral shortcomings.
Movement in this game is excellent. The controls are intuitive when it comes to more complex maneuvers once you have the basic controls down. Sam has a good range of movement options, and this in turn enhances the depth of strategy available to the player.
Splinter Cell gives the player a good range of choices when it comes to your approach to the game. Although you're admonished at the beginning of the game that killing should be a last resort, for the most part if you want to gun all your opponents down then you can, provided the mission doesn't proscribe it and provided you can do so skillfully enough to not get shot to pieces yourself. If you want to just knock everyone out, then go right ahead, your success will be entirely dependant upon your ability to use your surroundings to achieve this. Or, even more challenging, you can try to get through and leave as many guards still standing as possible.
Splinter Cell really shines here, if this is what you want. It's filled with dramatic setup provided by cut scene intros of Sam and his team and of TV news clips. Computers often have personal emails you can read which flesh out the local players, subplots, and even the main story line. Such emails can sometimes be found on the body of enemies after you knock them out or kill them. Enemies often have conversations to further flesh out their roles in the unfolding story, their attitudes about those roles, and any subplots they're involved in. The nice thing about this approach is you need only follow as much as you want to, and if you want a lot of detail it's there for the taking.
The storyline and it's subplots are well done and interesting. We're not talking great literature here, but it's as good as I've ever seen in a video game.
The look of the levels is excellent. Excellence in Splinter Cell is achieved in a different way than in Unreal2. Set in 2004, obviously this title can't go for sci-fi fantasy. It's locations are real-world, and this is pulled off well. Every location looks for the most part like it should, and differs as much as is reasonable.
The one weakness here is common. How to present a linear level of limited size when the desired environment is city streets? The answer is, you can't. There are no devices for limiting player exploration on the streets of a city that aren't clumsy and stupid. But because leading the player by the nose is for some reason such a powerful imperitive to today's game designers, an otherwise stellar 'Level Architecture' score gets screwed right up the ass.
Here's another disappointment. Splinter Cell is another example of a failure to understand fully the role of light in the game. For the most part the lighting is great, but then there are glaring failures. One example that leaps to mind are the dark hallways in the CIA Headquarters. Yes, it's nighttime, but there aren't any windows so that doesn't matter. Yet this state of the art building has main hallways that are pitch black except for periodic little islands of light. No, there aren't any busted lights and every present light is turned on, and yet this high security modern day fortress is filled with long dark stretches.
Other problems with lighting abound as well. This is the Unreal engine, so I speak with some experience when I say that some of the lighting errors are due to lax standards in the map design area. Cases where the light isn't placed correctly to make the "source" of the light actually look like it's what is casting the light. This kind of flaw in a user made map generates abuse from map reviewers, so we shouldn't be seeing it ever in a professional map.
If you haven't read my review of Unreal2, then I'll recap a bit here what applies to Splinter Cell. Linear map design is outdated. It's over. Helloooo, Mr. Game Designer, ask not for whom the clue phone rings, it rings for you.
More points off for doors that lock behind me. Some of that, when it makes sense for the area I've left, is ok. Doing it persistantly and nonstop is just irritating. This is worse than outdated, it's entirely retro. Hexen, an ancient game in terms of video game longevity, allowed you to go back to areas you had already cleared. Get with the times.
That said, Splinter Cell does a little better than Unreal2 in this area because if you watch closely you can see that you are, indeed, passing by areas you've been through. This makes the linear levels more successful in presenting the glorified hallway they call a level as a real place.
Pickup placement is great. Very rarely, if ever, do you stop and think, "why would that be lying around here?" Medical kits are found in places that make logical sense: security stations, bathrooms, infirmaries, and the occasional baddie is carrying one. All the pickups are this way, found in places where you'd expect to find a thing, and never jarring like a glowing health orb floating in the middle of a city street.
Furthermore, pickups tend to be limited to what you need, depending on your playstyle. The qualification in that statement is necessary. If you're playing the game and not allowing any confrontation at all, then you'll never need a health pack, so there will be too many health packs. But if you're playing super confrontationally and getting shot up a lot, then you'll find your lack of finesse appropriately dangerous: there won't be enough health packs to keep you going.
This is also excellent. The placement of enemies makes a great deal of sense. Guards are patrolling, civies are hanging out at their homes or going for a stroll down the street, technicians are getting their jobs done, etc. Ambush points don't seem contrived or staged, or even particularly like an ambush. When an ambush-like scenerio occurs it makes sense, whether because it really is an ambush, or because the people who "ambush" you didn't mean to and were all just doing their thing.
The cut scenes in general do a good job of getting important pieces of story across, setting the mood, and keeping things going. They tend to be dramatic and interesting, shy away from being irritating, and are done within the game engine which keeps the cut scene from jarring the player out of the game's reality. If it weren't for the big flaw on this item I'd give this section a 10/10 score.
You can't skip cut scenes. This is moderately annoying when the cut scene is at the beginning of a level because your first save point will be after the cut scene, so unless you go back and play the level again you won't have to see that cut scene again. This is quite annoying when the cut scene is immediately following a save point heading off a difficult area. About the tenth time I see a particular cut scene I lose sight of how well it is executed and focus on the fact that no matter how violently I mash my controller I'm still forced to watch the scene to completion. Stupid.
The voice acting is good. Sam's voice is done by Michael Ironsides (Welcome to Splinter Cell. Radcheck's Splinter Cell! Huh!). It's short of being feature film quality, but it's better than most. And because Sam was cast so well, and because I just really like the style of the voice acting througout, I'm giving a perfect score on this one.
This is pretty simple, Gameplay is far and above the most important aspect of any game. If it's not fun or it's irritating, then any other success falls short. So Gameplay carries a 3x weight, or 50% of the score. Level design comes next in the scheme of things. A player can get past poor level design and still enjoy the game if gameplay is there, but level design is not able in return to overcome abysmal gameplay. Level design is still important. Level Design carries a 2x weight, or ~33% of the score. Finally, baggage is just that. It's little nagging things that can drag a title just a little further down, or be the icing on the cake of a perfect game. Therefore Status Quo Baggage carries a 1x weight, or ~17% of the score.
| Gameplay | 8.8 |
| Level Design | 8 |
| Status Quo Baggage | 9 |
| Total | 8.6 out of 10 |
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Splinter Cell is currently my absolute favorite game. No other game comes close to measuring up to Splinter Cell for me right now. That said, there are definately flaws in this game. It could have been better. Just keep in mind that perfection isn't a required ingrediant to a great game, and some of the best video games have been pock marked with serious flaws.