Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Double Agent – PC – Review

Men like Sam aren’t supposed to
exist. And I suppose by and large our own government would never admit to
having someone on the payroll who does the things like Sam does, but we know
the truth. And that is that there is indeed people like Sam operating in our
own and pretty much any other major government in the world. People who
officially don’t exist yet are granted the freedoms that are necessary to keep
you and I from the silent harms that seek to damage the U.S. way of life.
Sounds dangerous huh? Well I have never met anyone like Sam in real life (or
didn’t know so) so I can only speculate the above statements, but whether or
not they really do exist, it sure makes for an exciting game series.

Following some wet work operations
(see previous games) abroad our man Sam has been locked up in prison and the
key has been flushed down the proverbial toilet. And being that the title of
the game is "Double Agent" you can know that Sam has hooked up with a domestic
terrorist unit known as John Brown’s Army (JBA). Being asked to join JBA is
all part of a master plan hatched by the National Security Agency (NSA) in the
hopes that Sam can discover what the JBA is up to and destroy it’s deadly plot
from within. Anyone who has played a previous Splinter Cell game will
understand the complexities of a game like this, the stealth missions, the
tension, the action, all of it is here yet so is a little something else
called trust. What makes this so cool is that as you gain the trust of the JBA
your contacts at the NSA start to question your allegiance as you make the
tough moral decisions it would take to play both sides of the fence.

"Man that HDTV really looks real!"

You are in really familiar
territory here if you have played a Splinter Cell game, Sam must travel around
the world doing missions for both JBA and the NSA; always spying, always
sneaking, the action is intense but it is fairly restrained. Since the game is
a stealth based action-er you can expect to save often and therefore reload
often as you will routinely blow it by getting caught trying to sneak into
areas where JBA does not want you to go, and if you are like me, you will play
the game on the harder difficulty, which does not allow for so much leniency
like the easy mode. Silent kills and knocking people out are all par for the
course as you sneak about the various levels. It should be noted that the game
does recycle it’s visuals and locations. Most notably the fact that you
constantly have to sneak off into the JBA compound quite often throughout the
game and that does tend to get a bit old.

If there is a problem with the
graphics (and there is) you can download the first patch here on the Web site

http://downloads.gamezone.com/demosfiles/t21319.htm this will clean up
some of the lagging technical issues the game does have. Framerate speed can
begin bogging down and I noticed some clipping issues while playing. It froze
up on me the first time I played it. So the game is not without it’s problems.
And again, this is a game that really wants to be played on a pretty big
system with a 3.5 Ghz preferred and a video card with shader 3.0 enabled. I
know this because during original installation I only had 2.0 shader
installation installed. Time to download new drivers…. sigh.

"Yes, he’s in big trouble."

Back to the game, the gameplay is
still the tried-and-true formula that has made the Splinter Cell games so
popular, however, there is very little use of Sam’s trademark night vision as
most missions are in broad daylight. The biggie is the trust meters. As you
play each faction (JBA, NSA) has a line on how much they are currently
trusting you depending on your actions, if you do not tend to the trust issues
and let the meters (either one) deplete, then the game will be over. Depending
on the difficulty you select in the game, this could be a forgiving concept or
one that is very limited. I recommend playing it on the medium difficulty as
it does allow you some flex in the trust area, and you are not killed
immediately for snooping around. One thing I thought quite odd, the JBA has
you doing some pretty high level stuff from the get go, nothing like I would
expect in a undercover job like this. It would make sense for a government
hating group like the JBA to have any new recruit pull guard duty or some
other menial task for quite a while before assigning high level operations,
but then we may have a really boring game if the first 12 missions only
involved you guarding a warehouse full of munitions. Still, a simple plot
device could have fixed this, but as it is, the plot is generally left a
little open to interpretation and not fleshed out quite as much as I think
players would have liked.

Michael Ironside

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000461/ returns as the voice of Sam Fisher,
Mr. Ironside is a movie veteran with a low growly voice that just oozes deadly
when the right wording is spoken. He sounds great and keeps the character
alive. Sadly though this is the least plot-driven story in the series; it sets
up great, but there are plot points that never seem to go anywhere. Action
sounds are well delivered and I would find myself tightening my jaw as I moved
about in the stealthier parts of the game. Even the light background noises
came out of my computer speakers crystal clear.

There is several multiple paths
that play out through the game and the end is one humdinger of a situation,
with your previous actions pretty much coming full circle and presenting you
with several different endings. I enjoyed this new setup and believe that
while they did not flesh out the trust meters as much as they should have, the
game is a decent one and will be another notch in a winning franchise.

Gameplay: 7.0
This is my first PC Splinter Cell;
I am used to a controller, so there was some re-learning going to the mouse
and keyboard. It still plays pretty tight and the way Sam switches to stealth
movement automatically lets you know it’s time to get sneaky. Get the patch,
there is some bugginess out there. You get to go all the places a super spy
would go, underwater, in the air, in Hackensack, NJ. This game has it all.

Graphics: 7.3
Sure things bog down, but they do
look good, I wish the graphics weren’t so reused in some situations, but when
you go to the various locales around the world, the developers did a bang up
job of translating them to the game.

Sound: 8.1
Michael Ironside, as always,
delivers. The sound effects sound very clean and Sam’s experimental rifle
really hums when fired. Am I hearing different gunfire pitch from those enemy
weapons?

Difficulty: Medium
The game can be beaten in about 8
or 9 hours, depending on the difficulty you select; save often so you don’t
have to replay scenarios over. Keeping the trust meters up is darn near
impossible on the hard setting; now that is a challenge.

Concept: 8.2
The introduction of the trust
meter was brilliant but unless you play on the hard level, never of any real
consequence. There are a few times throughout the game where you are forced to
make a gut-wrenching decision; sadly they come very infrequently, but still, a
little taste of honey is better than none.

Multiplayer 8.5
A sweet six-on-six game where
spies must infiltrate an installation and download info from a computer
while mercenaries must try and stop them. It’s a totally new multiplayer game
that is one of the strongest reasons to purchase this title. Each side has
it’s strengths and weaknesses and the balance actually works out really well.
Plan on seeing more multiplayer action in the months to follow because this is
really fun.

Overall: 8.1
With the minor technical flaws,
and the unrealized potential of a story, Double Agent is still a darn fine
time. Fans will love it, and newcomers will quickly go and buy the previous
installments in the series. Here’s hoping we see a bit more of Sam in the
future.