Levels are laced with air ducts aplenty to crawl through and multiple paths to explore, all of which combine to form a sublime stealth sandbox. The delightful improbable success of this compromise is a testament to game design that always has choice in mind. Splinter Cell is back on the right shadowy track.
Was this article informative? YES NO. In This Article. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist. Release Date. Multiple-choice gameplay rooted in stealth plus co-op and the return of Spies vs. Mercs make Blacklist a great package. What did you think? For the most part, Splinter Cell plays like a typical first-person or third-person shooter, but it makes innovative use of the mouse wheel, allowing you to fine-tune Fisher's movement speed from a slow, silent crawl all the way up to a brisk run.
This works great, though it arguably diminishes some of the challenge found in the Xbox version of the game, where you needed to gently move the analog joystick in order to make Fisher tiptoe. The other controls, such as for drawing your weapons and using the context-sensitive menu, take some getting used to but work effectively, enabling you to perform an array of maneuvers that collectively make Splinter Cell feel like a pretty believable super-spy simulation.
In fact, aside from the pretty lighting effects, the variety of moves at Fisher's disposal is probably the highlight of Splinter Cell.
Sam has something for every occasion: He can move quite quickly from a crouched position, and if you tread carefully while crouching, you'll be almost invisible and almost silent. He can climb ladders, chain-link fences, and more.
He can rappel down walls and kick through glass windows while doing so , climb hand over hand or using all four limbs across horizontal pipes, and zip across downward-slanted ropes or wires. He can put his back against a wall and lean or shoot around corners, he can peek behind doors that are slightly ajar, and he can make soft landings or perform evasive rolls. Fisher can also kick off a wall in mid jump, and his coolest move though it isn't very practical allows him to stand in the splits atop a narrow passageway and then either shoot unsuspecting opponents or drop down to deliver a stunning blow.
Sneaking up behind an opponent allows Fisher to either knock the foe unconscious with an elbow strike or a pistol whip or grab the enemy and take him hostage.
Fisher can then use the opponent as a human shield against other enemies, or in some cases interrogate him or force him to do such things as activate retinal scanners that otherwise prevent passage. He'll eventually have to dispatch his hostage one way or another, and then he can pick up and move the prone body out of the sight of enemy patrols.
Fortunately for you, unconscious foes will awaken only if discovered by their allies. In Splinter Cell, the use of deadly force is more of a convenience than a necessity. Toward this end, Fisher's arsenal is fairly limited but nonetheless effective. To start with, he has a trusty silenced pistol that can kill with a shot to the head and can also be used to shoot out certain lights to make for a more-favorable situation for Fisher and his night-vision goggles.
Later on, he'll find a high-tech experimental assault rifle that becomes his mainstay. Featuring both single-shot and fully automatic firing modes, the SCK also sports a silencer and a muzzle-flash suppressor, making it perfect for Fisher's purposes. This modular rifle even has a magnifying scope, allowing for precision shooting--in a great touch, Fisher can hold his breath while looking through the scope to temporarily steady his aim. The SCK also supports a number of alternative types of ammunition, such as special rounds that can be used to incapacitate foes rather than kill them.
In a number of Splinter Cell's missions, casualties are strictly prohibited, so this feature isn't just for sympathy's sake.
More interestingly, the SCK can be used to fire remote camera probes, nauseating smoke bombs, or a distraction camera that can be used to lure guards away from their posts and then give them a mouthful of knockout gas. Such funky devices aren't always strictly necessary for finishing a mission, but they're fun to use and can help you avoid getting into a tight spot.
Fisher can also get his hands on frag grenades, though high explosives aren't really his style. Throwing cans or bottles to distract foes is more up his alley. Picking locks is definitely his style, too, and he can use his trusty lock picks to bypass any locked doors. Here the game presents a clever rendition of lock-picking in which you must tap the proper directional keys on the keyboard to nudge loose as many pins as there are in the lock.
Some of Fisher's other neat gadgets include an optic cable that can be slid under doorways to give you a gander at what's on the other side, camera jammers that disrupt security cameras, and emergency flares that can draw the fire of automated heat-sensitive gun turrets.
Fisher is basically a high-tech government ninja, what with all this stuff, and what with his all-black body suit and night-vision and heat-vision goggles. The odds are always against him, but he has a big-time element of surprise. His moves and gadgets aren't just for show, either, as Splinter Cell will require you to make use of almost all of Fisher's various abilities in most every mission. Fisher's missions may all be different--one takes place on a seemingly unassuming oil rig in the middle of the ocean, while another takes place within the headquarters of the CIA--but they're all pretty similar in how you must proceed in them: Stay out of sight, stay out of harm's way, and engage hostiles only when necessary.
This is easier said than done, and despite Fisher's impressive list of moves and exceptional skill, you'll invariably draw your enemies' attention in every mission you attempt. If caught in a firefight, Fisher can be killed with just a few shots, though his foes tend to go down much more quickly. Nevertheless, ammunition is limited, and Fisher's aim strays wildly if he tries to shoot while moving or tries to shoot in rapid succession. More importantly, being discovered will often cause a guard to raise the general alarm, which in several missions makes for automatic failure.
In other missions, the alarm can go off several times before Third Echelon pulls the plug on you, and sometimes there's no alarm to worry about at all. In what's possibly the most frustrating aspect of Splinter Cell, sometimes the alarm will go off at scripted moments if you've killed or knocked out too many guards leading up to that point and failed to completely hide their bodies. This can force you into a perpetual mission-failure cycle, ultimately forcing you to restart a mission from scratch and then try to avoid contact with rather than dispatch foes, or at least do a better job of cleaning up.
You won't always end up restarting missions from scratch, but you'll invariably be screwing up and restarting different sequences constantly, perhaps dozens of times per mission. The abilities to quickly save your progress anytime, anywhere and to quickly load your saved game if caught in a pinch--features that aren't in the Xbox version of Splinter Cell--do much to alleviate the potential frustration factor of the game's lengthy missions, though they may take away from some of the challenge if relied upon too heavily.
Again, you're never given prompts on when to use these items, but shooting either of these cameras into an unsecured area using the secondary fire on your rifle is a great way to see what's going on without risking being seen.
Deploying these cameras gives you a point of view from that camera and since you shoot it into position it's usually within Sam's line of sight. The sticky camera has zooming capabilities along with thermal and night vision, making it as effective as a second pair of eyes. The diversion cam doesn't have all of the recon functionality of the sticky cam, but it does give you a new point of view and tapping the B button causes the camera to make a whistling noise, great for drawing suspicious guards off your trail or into a remote area.
But of course Splinter Cell goes the extra step and gives you a full dose of knockout gas on the Y button so you can quietly take down any guards that come around investigating that whistle.
The catch with each of these cameras is that they're one use only. As soon as you pull the right trigger to return to Sam, you can't toggle back to that camera, so you have to make sure you see everything you need to see while you can. Plus Sam is totally vulnerable while you're looking through the cameras so it's best not to leave him exposed.
Even with super cool 21st century gadgets you can't forget to use common sense. The lock pick and fiber optic camera round out the gadgets you'll be using most often. The lock pick isn't too special in and of itself, but how you use it is a brilliant innovation. Engaging the lock pick on a locked door brings up an overlay of the pick and the lock's pin and tumbler assembly. Moving the left analog stick until you feel your controller rumbling is how you find the sweet spot for that particular pin, the pick is working on.
You hold it on the sweet spot until you see the pin for that part of the lock drop into place. Then it's time to move on to the next pin and find its specific sweet spot. It takes time to open doors this way, so this yet another realistic system Sam has to handle. If you didn't know already Splinter Cell has some of the most impressive lighting effects, character models and animation ever seen in a videogame. If this title wasn't so fun, the visuals would easily be its strong point.
The lighting in Splinter Cell, as we said, isn't just some effect where you have lamp in a room but that room itself is actually lit by some mysterious off camera source. Ubi Soft Montreal has simulated the behavior of light to the point where everything is self shadowing, and the only way you're able to see what's going on in the game is because of the lighting device in the scene you're playing.
Whether it's overhead halogens, a bank of monitors or the glow of a brilliant full moon, you'll always know where light is shining from and so you'll be able to anticipate where and how shadows will fall and which ones need to be shot out.
The developers even simulated the different shines you get from banks of several halogens versus the harsh lighting from a single exposed light bulb in a dingy hallway.
Light shines through trees, latticework and even chain link fences and falls on whatever may be on the other side. So when Sam is facing a giant glowing billboard whilst hanging from a chain link fence the fence will cast a network of shadows on him with the glow of the billboard lighting the negative spaces.
Sam Fisher is rendered beautifully even though his suit is stealth black from top to bottom. When you take the time to look, you can see his equipment straps and pouches drawn in exquisite detail right down to the snaps and buckles. Throughout the game you'll even notice Sam change into his short sleeved temperature controlled suit when he's in the tropical climate of Myanmar. On the last mission he dons a ski-mask that only leaves the eyes exposed.
It kind makes you forget little details like Sam's graying temples and obvious five o'clock shadow that he sports the rest of the game.
Sam's lips move when he interrogates people or talks to Lambert, and you can even notice emotions creeping across his face if the camera is in the right position. But enemies speak and emote just as well, albeit not as often, as our hero. The movements of enemies tend to be noticeably stiffer than Sam Fisher's but they're still intricate and believable. An enemy investigating an area will lean forward with his rifle raised and creep slowly as opposed to strolling along confidently when they're not in alert mode.
When you die you often get a glimpse of them turning their heads to speak into their shoulder-mounted radios to report the American spy they've just killed. Sam himself moves with more stealth and cunning than most videogame ninjas you'll see. When he moves in crouch mode, the Unreal 2 engine is sophisticated enough that he appears to be timing shifting his weight from foot to foot so as to make less noise. The difference between walking and running in crouch mode is made clear not only by Sam's speed but by the fact that he uses one hand to hold his pistol in place to keep it from jostling and making noise.
Sam can rappel down ropes and even slide down quickly like a SWAT team member by lunging away from teh building with both legs. When he draws his gun in this situation, the animation of him reaching for his holster and transitioning to the hybrid-first person perspective is as silky smooth as when he puts his sidearm back into his holster and we return to third-person mode.
The only problems Splinter Cell has in the graphics department are the clipping issues and occasional drops in framerate. The oil rig level, with its burning fires, attack jets and brilliant sunset-orange sky is pretty but it also taxes even the Xbox's processing ability since this is the level that chopped up the most in our opinion. The clipping can get bad when you start manipulating that free camera in tight spaces or when doors open and close suddenly.
Splinter Cell boasts outstanding voice acting, an excellent score, superior sound effects and just some of the best application of sound in a videogame we've ever heard. Like everything else about the game, the audio is intended to re-focus your attention on the stealth action.
You're doing yourself a disservice if you play this game with the sound turned down. If you're hearing a lot of ruckus at any point in Splinter Cell, that usually means something intense, horrible or horribly intense is happening. This is because the music of the game changes up to match the mood of the situation you're in. A big gunfight will give you a heavy guitar track plus all of the bullets, echoes and yelling you might expect.
Sneaking down an empty hallway is usually pretty quiet with background sound effects filling up the sound space to keep the game from feeling empty and boring. Michael Ironsides is the voice of Sam Fisher and good old Jester has the perfect tone to play a secret operative who has seen it all.
All of the characters in the game are all well done with inflections, accents and subtle emotions all coming through beautifully. Sam and his NSA contact, Lambert, chat with each other regularly throughout the game with varying levels of tension. You get the feeling that while Fisher is always going to follow orders, he still doesn't completely trust Lambert or his new bosses.
That's some mighty fine character development for a videogame where you can't see the actors' faces. Drama and comedy are a big part of what moves Splinter Cell's story and it's all done through voice.
You can overhear some genuinely funny conversations that have nothing to do with the mission if you're in the right place at the right time and paying attention. There's a reason why the embassy chef let's a soldier spit in the pot of soup he's making, but you have to be patient and listen.
Listening to the variety of conversations going on at CIA headquarters --be sure to check the briefing theatre-- is a good way to find out how that agency operates. Really, it's a good idea to slow down and listen whenever you encounter a situation where you can hear people talking in Splinter Cell. Sometimes you'll get critical info or a good chuckle. Either way you should be impressed.
One of the most important sounds of the game is the quick base note you hear whenever an enemy is alerted to your presence. It's a sound you'll learn to recognize even when there are conversations or other noises going on. Rather than a radar telling you that the enemies are on you trail, the alert music that follows this initial indicator is the only way you'll know what's going on and when it's safe to proceed once it stops. All of these sound elements are coming to you through fine 5.
Not that you have to have a surround setup, but you really are missing out on that last piece of stimulation that really immerses you in the game if you're just using your TV speakers. Explosions are as shocking and nerve rattling as they should be with the subwoofer kicking in and all of the subtle sound effects like weapon reloads, typing on a keyboard, walking on broken glass and zipping down a line are better when they come from the right direction. This game literally shines on the Xbox and has enough gameplay hours to satisfy dedicated Halo junkies who've been waiting for the next landmark single player game on the system.
Since you can play with varying degrees of stealth and aggression, you'll have every reason to play through Splinter Cell multiple times. I often found myself saying "Whoa, I don't know if gamers are going to be ready for that. Was this article informative? Have you played Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell? Splinter Cell. Ubi Soft's excellent espionage game is the birth of a new franchise and the best title on Xbox this year.
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