Topic: Splinter Cell Review

[the_zombie_luke]

Splinter Cell GCN Review

      Splinter Cell isn't perfect or revolutionary, and has some downright questionable design flaws. That said, it is actually pretty enjoyable, if you're patient.

      You play as Sam Fisher, a Third Echelon operative who uses stealth. You have to discover what Georgian terrorist Nikoladze is up to and you discover that something that  might lead to war.
       
        The first thing you will notice about the game is the graphics. They are quite good. There are lots of shadows and light effects. The night vision is impressive, and so is the thermal vision. The only problem with the graphics is the frame rate. When guards start shooting, the frame rates drops considerably. It isn't that big of a problem, though. Just in case you're wondering, the X-Box version does look better, but guess what? The PC version looks the better than all of the console versions.

     The sound is usually good, though some sounds are low-quality, like glass breaking and the guards' whistles.  Where the sound really rocks is because of Sam Fisher's voice. Michael Ironside does the voice of Sam, and he does a great job.  Sam is sarcastic and makes wisecracks. The music is good, with most of it being appropriate.

       The gameplay is all about stealth. You cannot rush the guards and fire blindly. Instead, you use the shadows and sneak around, dispatching foes quietly. You'll have to hide the guards' bodies in dark places too, as you don't want to raise any alarms. The levels are usually designed well, except they are mostly trial and error. Expect to die every level. In the oil rig level, you have to find a certain pipe to progress and get to your objective and it's not fun. The controls themselves are excellent, and they quickly become intuitive.


All in all, I enjoyed SC even despite the trial and error gameplay. It's the only stealth game on GameCube for right now, and it's decent. Defnitely worth a rent.

Score:8/10

[CYBERSTAR]

i played this on the xbox and would have to agree that 8/10 is an appropriate score for the main game even though i have never noticed any slowdown whatsoever .

[Molobert]

I agree 100% with this statement - "All in all, I enjoyed SC even despite the trial and error gameplay. It's the only stealth game on GameCube for right now, and it's decent. Defnitely worth a rent." It was fun sneaking around, but the "trial and error gameplay" as you mentioned really held it back. Hopefully Pandora Tomorrow will fix this problem.

[Renny]

I'm a little late to this thread too, but I feel the same way about this game. It's a good game, with a lot of polish... the Xbox version anyway. The levels were too linear, and there was limited emphasis on stealth, or use of his special abilities [e.g., wall-straddling]. But the voice acting and ability to throw things at NPCs pushed it from a 7/10 to a 8/10 for me.

'Splinter Cell is the best stealth game ever, and I don't even like stealth games!'

How many times have you heard that? :¬\

[Nimbus]

I moslty agree with you.  The game is great, graphic and story wise.  But I consider the trial & error gameplay a major flaw in the game.  This is a stealth game, ok, but even a stealth game must have some kind of balance between scripted event and a bit of freedom.  I enjoyed the game because of the polish but I feel that game should not be 'there's only one exact way to do thing and you must find it'.  To die every 10 second is no fun.  I enjoy to develop my own style of stealth, but with this game, it is near impossible.  The game's poor fix for this flaw is to save very often.  So you'll find yourself trying to get past the same two guys at least a dozen of time without triggering an alarm.  If that was only a small part of the gameplay, this would be forgivable but this is really the core of the game and every false move or creative thinking is prohibited.

I'll give this game a 7 out of 10, just because the game is cool anyway.  The graphics would be ugly it would have get a 3.