Tag Archives: Splinter Cell

Review: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (PlayStation 2)

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Review by William Kee

Sam Fisher is back with a whole whack of new missions and a brand new story to boot.

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow is an Ubisoft developed and published game, and the second title in the franchise. The game starts off in the Spring of 2006, where the Darah Dan Doa, an islamist militant group led by Sudahi Sandono in East Timor, is receiving support from the United States in the form of training in their fight against Indonesian guerrilla militias. Sadano is CIA trained and considered a charismatic leader. The game starts off when you have to rescue your friend and ally Douglas Shetland. There is also a larger story in that an unknown drug known as ND133 makes a huge impact on the game’s story, and later becomes the focal point for the final chapter. The ND133 is a compact version of the smallpox virus, which of course if released, could spell deadly consequences.

You are once again put in the shoes of Sam Fisher (voiced by Michael Ironside) and assisted throughout the various missions in the game by Irving Lambert, Anna Grimsdottir, and a new character, Brunton.

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Jungle missions? Hell yes

The game was developed by Ubisoft Shanghai, while the first game was originally developed by Ubisoft’s Montreal team. However, Ubisoft does a great job of staying true to the game’s dark atmosphere and pacing in its story mode.

There are a lot of new changes that made progressing with stealth a lot easier this time around. For instance,  you can now perform a whistle with “LB”, which distracts the character and can help you get them away from any action. Health kits are now mounted on walls instead of spread around the levels as individual kits.

Your arsenal of gadgets and weapons stays pretty much the same, I didn’t notice any changes in that aspect. However, there were still some gadgets I found myself never getting around to using, including the Sticky Camera and the Ring Airfold Round, but that’s just me. Of course, my ever favorite Diversion Camera came back, and it helped me out of quite a few jams.

I really liked a lot of the missions this time around. I felt there was a lot more diverse locales that we were given the chance to explore, much like the first game, but this time, we got to head outdoors into the jungle for the first time, and act as stealthy as the cover art depicts.

The final level, however, was a bit irritating, and at times, it was never explained clear enough what to do in the mission and I found myself getting stuck multiple times and looking at playthroughs online. If you are as dull as a lightbulb like I am when it comes to stealth games, you’ll be pulling your hair.

Use stealth, remember? From the first game. I'll let you finish now.

Use stealth, remember? From the first game. I’ll let you finish now.

Regardless, I don’t think that detracts from the overall experience. However, as much as I enjoyed Pandora Tomorrow, I still have to lay all my chips down on the first Splinter Cell. I think to date, it’s done stealth action perfectly, and it was far more challenging than this game was. I admit, I was still faced with challenge in Pandora Tomorrow, but nothing to the level the first game put me through.

To add to my thought, with some of the changes put in place, some aspects of the game do become much easier. Those include the mounted wall health kits and the whistling. And in some cases, you will find yourself running into twice as much ammunition as you can carry. In every mission, I found ammo I didn’t even need, and even if I were to run out of my pistol, that wouldn’t matter as long as I could whistle for distraction, lure an enemy into darkness, and knock him out - rinse and repeat.

But first-time players, I’d definitely suggest starting with the original Splinter Cell before this one. Pandora Tomorrow is still worth the buy though, don’t get me wrong. Newcomers will find it a challenge because it’s not your typical run-and-gun scenario, there’s thinking involved. Are you sure you can handle that?

Final Score: 8 out of 10

Review: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell (PlayStation 2)

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I remember going into an Electronics Boutique about 10 years ago (now its called EB Games) and looking for games for my newly purchased PlayStation 2 console. It was my way of differentiating from my brother. We had split down the middle in terms of gaming together and we would finally be able to play games on our own consoles. Carter the Gamecube, and myself the PlayStation 2.

The only two games I had at the time of receiving my PlayStation 2 on my 12th birthday was NHL 2003 and The Sims, but I wanted something more. And with my parents I would trot along down to the local Electronics Boutique, and there I would purchase my first new PlayStation 2 game…well it was actually two at the time: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell and Nascar Thunder 2003.

The box art for Splinter Cell and the back cover intrigued me greatly, describing Splinter Cell as “Stealth Action Redefined”. I had never heard of stealth, but it would prove to be one of the most challenging genres I would ever have to learn in a videogame.

You are Sam Fisher (voiced by Michael Ironside), a highly-trained agent of a fictional black ops division within the National Security Agency known as “Third Echelon”. In the first title of many, Fisher along with his team, including operations coordinator Lambert; Agent Wilkes, who is responsible for transportation and extraction, and Anna Grimsdottir, a computer and security expert at Third Echelon, must hunt and take down newly risen-to-power Georgian president Kombayn Nikoladze, after the country’s previous president was assassinated in the year 2004. Finding Nikoladze is a mission that takes Fisher across the countries of Georgia, United States, China and Russia, as you progress through 10 missions including T’Bilsi, the Chinese Embassy, the CIA, an Oil Rig, a slaughterhouse, and the Georgian Presidential Palace to name a few.

As Sam Fisher, shadows are your best friend. Sticking to the shadows throughout most of the game is a must and will allow you to avoid detection.

Years ago, I was stuck at a certain checkpoint on the CIA level and I thought I’d never be able to beat the game. Last year, I picked up Splinter Cell: Conviction for the first time, and upon beating that, I was able to prove to myself that I had the patience and determination to tackle a stealth-action videogame again. At the beginning of this month was E3 2012, where they announced the newest title in the Splinter Cell franchise, Blacklist, and from there, I knew I had to go back and beat Splinter Cell in order to get myself caught up on the series. As of yesterday, I was finally able to beat the game on a Normal difficulty.

So now its time to get to my review of the game, pointing out the high and low points of this game. All-in-all, I had a lot of fun, and returning to the shoes of Sam Fisher after many years always seems to be a treat for me. This month of June has definitely felt like the month of Splinter Cell, as I haven’t been able to start any other game until I could say I finished this one for good.

An image from a later point in the game, where you must interrogate a Chinese general possibly aligned with Nikoladze, and force him to access his computer files.

So what does Splinter Cell have going for it? Well its definitely got to be one of the most challenging games I’ve played in my life, that’s for sure. Stealth-action is almost hard to come by these days, but I feel Splinter Cell, as well as the classic Metal Gear Solid franchise revolutionized stealth-action for the consoles after the turn of the century.

Patience is definitely a huge aspect in this game, as well as memorizing and calculating certain movement patterns of your enemies if you want to proceed and take out foes without alerting anyone else. Shadows are your best friend in this game, and Sam is equipped with an arsenal of covert gadgets, gizmos and weaponry that you can utilize to your liking, so long as you don’t draw too much attention to yourself.

A light meter is shown on your screen in the bottom right hand corner above where you can scroll through your gadgets and weaponry. Sticking to extreme darkness will have your light meter stay on the left side, or as Lambert in-game describes, you become a “ghost’s shadow”. Avoid your light meter being on the right side, or you stick out like a sore thumb and are an easy target for enemies. Fisher dons the classic trifogal goggles, and can also switch between night vision and thermal vision throughout the game, both of which prove very important in some cases.

Fisher is equipped with two main weapons throughout the game:  a suppressed FN Five-Seven pistol as well as a suppressed FN F2000 assault rifle, which includes a scope and a launcher for some of the less-lethal devices such as ring airfoil projectiles, “sticky shockers” and CS gas grenades. Frag grenades can be found during the game if you like to play dirty. You can also collect sticky and diversion cameras to shoot from your assault rifle; the latter is very helpful because it allows you to make noise and activate a knock-out gas from the camera to disengage your enemies from a distance. Medical Kits are also provided through the levels, but be sure to save up, and this goes for everything. You can also grab characters in the dark, knock them out and drag their corpses away. Special characters may require interrogation, in order to gain more information or access codes to a keypad. As well in certain levels, you may need to use a higher-level security guard for a retinal scanner, as gaining entrance any other way will not work.

Ammunition is scarce in this game, as you have to rely on stealth and only stealth in some levels. Some levels range in difficulty, and can include utilizing lethal force if necessarily, or not being able to trigger up to 3 alarms before it is game over. So keep an eye out for which levels and areas ask this of you.

An image showing the Kalinatek building, the level after the CIA level.

This game does an excellent job of not only telling a compelling story through news wire cutscenes and conversations between Lambert, Fisher and Grimsdottir, but the characters in themselves are very memorable and you grow to learn more about them as the game progresses. As well, these characters span over mutiple Splinter Cell titles, so I’m anxious to see what the next few titles have in store for me and these characters. I can’t find much complaints about the game rather than bicker like a schoolgirl over its difficulty. This game sure kicked my ass several times, but in the end, its all worth it. I guess I would’ve liked to be able to use all my gadgets at some point. I found that the Air Ringfold Round and Disposable Picks proved unnecessary in my inventory.

In the end, if you’re hoping for a challenge, I’d definitely recommend the Splinter Cell franchise. I’ve already beaten two, I’ve got three more to go, minus Essentials for the PSP. Stealth-action is a genre that has always scared me, but more in terms of utilizing patience and silence as your weapon. It was never something I could understand thoroughly as a young 12 year-old boy, but now, I feel I’ve gained enough experience that I could tackle any game, big or small. So ha, take that Splinter Cell. I’m going to come down hard on the rest of you!

Final Score: 9 out of 10

E3 2012: After-thoughts from the Xbox E3 2012 Press Conference

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Microsoft never fails to impress me. Starting off with a bang with the world gameplay premiere of Halo 4, which featured new enemies and a new story, with the return of classic protagonists Master Chief and Cortana. And to end it off, Treyarch premiered new gameplay footage from its new futuristic spin on the Call of Duty franchise, Black Ops II.

So all-in-all, how did Microsoft’s press conference turn out? Well there were definitely a lot of high points in this year’s conference including the unveiling of the new Xbox Smart Glass tablet, a device that will connect the console to a tablet.

As well, we saw a brand new trailer for the prequel to the popular Gears franchise, titled Judgment, in which you take control of classic ally, Baird.

Personally, I became very excited for the new Splinter Cell: Blacklist and Tomb Raider premieres, both of which played beautifully and look to impress. Tomb Raider’s graphics, voice acting and overall audio quality was through the roof, and Lara Croft has definitely got her work cut out for her in this new game. Other smaller, less popular unveilings included sports and music for the Xbox console, Fable: The Journey’s premiere, and the world premiere of three new IP titles: Ascend New Gods, LocoCycle and Matter, whose teaser trailers felt completely out of place and didn’t add much to really lifting audiences out of their seats.

Tomb Raider was definitely at the top of my list for best looking games at this year’s Xbox conference

But by the time Harmonix came around with its unveiling for Dance Central 3, and Usher took to the stage with his new single “Scream”, the crowd was definitely on their feet.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, co-creators of South Park, came out with the unveiling of South Park: The Stick of Truth. A true RPG-style new title in the classic comedy franchise, and not only will players feel like they are taking control of a paper-thin South Park character, but the movements and graphics are reminiscent of the series as a whole, bringing players into the small town of Colorado for real this time.

Resident Evil 6 looks to bring the horror back, but still hold true to its newfound action angle.

I was very excited for when Capcom took to the stage with the gameplay premiere for Resident Evil 6, one of my biggest anticipated games of this year. I was glad that Capcom has listened to the hardcore fans a little bit, and it looks like they’ve pulled back in terms of action gameplay and re-introduced a darker element of survival horror into this game. But I do feel that they’ve finally found a spot in the middle, although the action is still over-the-top, I’m glad that they’ve pulled back and elements of horror finally feel like they’re returning to the limelight.

I may be bouncing around a lot, but I’m just summarizing various highlights of the conference. The Kinect played a very small role in this year’s conference. But there was almost no mention of any body recognition games except for the new Fable: The Journey, and only voice recognition for titles like FIFA 13, Madden 13, and Splinter Cell Blacklist. So will there be any shortage of Kinect games? We’ll have to wait and see on that part.

Check back on GTA Gamers for after-thoughts on the Sony conference later tonight, and the Nintendo conference tomorrow.

New “Splinter Cell” game is under development

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Ubisoft Toronto, in an interview with CVG.com teased details about the next title in the Splinter Cell franchise.

Is "Retribution" the latest title tied to the Splinter Cell franchise?

Rumored to be titled “Splinter Cell: Retribution”, Ubisoft Toronto’s studio head Jade Raymond told CVG that the new title will explore one of the franchise’s “root themes”, while still maintaining its persona as an action flick game.

“It will have all of the action flick elements for sure, but we’re trying to also explore something a little bit more interesting that is actually one of the themes that’s at the root of the franchise historically, but never has been surfaced so much,” Raymond told CVG. “I can’t really say more on this!”

Raymond also debunked any rumors of the company working on a new IP title, and said all of their attention is focused “100% on Splinter Cell”. But the studio would like to work on a new IP at some point, just not at the moment.

“We’re not actually working on a big new IP yet within the studio,” she explained. “It’s one of the mandates and we’re definitely starting up some things in that direction, but we’re not working on a big new IP yet.”

GTA Gamers decided to reach out to find out more about the title. Heather Steele of Ubisoft Toronto said in an e-mail to GTA Gamers, “We are indeed making the new installment of Splinter Cell at Ubisoft Toronto.  However, we haven’t disclosed any details about the game yet.  But stay tuned more to come on this soon!”

So sadly in our attempts to uncover more information, we’ve come to a halt. But that’s okay, GTA Gamers will continue to follow the story as it develops.

 

With files from CVG