Splinter Cell: Double Agent review

    I really shouldn't be doing a review of this as Double Agent is almost certainly a game way-way too old for the majority of my reviewers. It was also one of the less regarded entries into the Splinter Cell series. It's, however, slated to be one of the Xbox 360 games which Ubisoft is going to be re-release as Backwards Compatible for Xbox One. My opinion? I wish they'd re-release the PS2 HD re-release of the first three games instead. But it's still pretty enjoyable. Warmed over Splinter Cell is still Splinter Cell. There's also a few really good elements.

    The premise is Sam Fisher, operative of Third Echelon, is on a mission to sabotage a group of Russian terrorists when he receives word his daughter Sarah was killed by a car wreck. This story element has no further bearing on the plot and apparently exists just because it's apparently "uncool" for a manly badass to have a daughter. Clearly, the developers of this game never saw 24 with its psychotically interesting protagonist or played Joel in The Last of Us. Which, fair enough, The Last of Us is six years latter but come on!

Good, bad, he's the guy you don't see coming.

    After hearing this horrifyingly traumatizing news (which is retconned in Conviction to much fan-rejoicing), Sam proceeds to get himself arrested so he can go undercover in John Brown's Army. This is a right-wing (?) domestic terrorist group which plans to strike at America for reasons which remain nebulous. Honestly, I don't expect much from Splinter Cell games in terms of villain motivation but given they chose to name themselves after a famous abolitionist and employ a black woman as their chief medic, I wanted to know a lot more about their motivations.

    Ultimately, John Brown's Army just exists for the purposes of Sam Fisher to infiltrate it and eliminate the members. Strangely, despite the fact they're engaged in gross terrorist acts from the beginning, Sam goes along with several missions while they prepare to launch a devastating strike which will cripple the United States government. According to the developers, there was originally an option to join the JBA for real and it's a shame that wasn't included in the main game as I think the premise is a lot more interesting than it's really allowed to be.

The Hong Kong mission is my favorite.

    The big draw from Splinter Cell: Double Agent is the decision system. At several points during the game, usually at the end of a level, you will be given a choice to either do an act to further the aims of the JBA or subvert them for the NSA. Each action will result in you gaining or losing reputation with one faction or the other. If you lose your reputation with one or the other, the game ends as you're disavowed by one. As a Double Agent, you have to maintain at least a bare minimum of activities for both sides.

    The game contains, for the first time, a potential love interest for Sam Fisher in Enrica Villablanca. In the original (P2/Xbox) version of the game, Sam and she actually consider running away together while the second (Xbox360/PC) version of the game has him just playing her. It's really disappointing as the game seems almost pathologically afraid of showing Sam Fisher as possessed of human emotions when these qualities are what separates him from other generic action video game protagonists.

Enric is perhaps the first love interest in Splinter Cell history.

    There's some really good levels in this game like a prison break, Shanghai, and a cruise ship. The controls are somewhat combative but work well for making it clear Sam is not an individual who should be engaging in combat. This is a pure stealth game with combat deliberately designed to be clunky and only useful when you have someone from behind. I think the game would benefit from a different control scheme but, overall, it works well.

    Michael Ironsides' performance is the heart of the Splinter Cell series and without him, it's just not the same. He doesn't have as much to work here as in Conviction, but he still manages to make Sam and intimidating yet likable figure. Don Jordon's Lambert is also an excellent performance and his character has a great send-off before his replacement in Conviction.

Emile Dufrane is quietly menacing, albeit not exceptional.

    Keith Szarabajka does a decent job as Emile Dufrane, being both intimidating as well as evil. Sadly, again, we don't have any real understanding of his motivations. I really think Rachel Reenstra's Enrica was too likable for the story and could have been much-much better developed but that's my problem with the game as a whole. The plot seems very phoned in.

    Still, the big appeal of Splinter Cell is and, hopefully, always will be the fact it is an unforgiving test of your stealth abilities. It's possible to simply murder your way through much of the game but this is less recommanded than simply avoiding conflict in the first place. There's not much interactivity in the game compared to later stealth games which would allow you to hide virtually anywhere (here, it's only under tables and desks) but it's still perfectly serviceable ten years later.

Run away! Run away!

    Double Agent adds a couple of useless features to the game like different colors of night vision which don't add any benefit to the game whatsoever. Also, there's a couple of sections in the game where visibility is obscured for Sam Fisher but not his opponents. You can also unlock a staggering variety of equipment but I never had to use anything but my trusty silenced pistol. The best device bonus I could have used there was more ammunition and even that is something of an unnecessary bonus.

    Overall, I had a pretty good time playing it. It's not as good as the previous episodes of Sam Fisher's adventures or later ones like Conviction and Blacklist but it's still entertaining. I hope they'll re-release the game soon and it'd be awesome to compile this, Conviction, and Blacklist into a single game.

9/10

Splinter Cell: Blacklist review

    I'm a fan of Tom Clancy's work in spite of the fact they're more the kind of books my dad prefers to read than my usual tastes. Despite this, I'm never going to lose my love of his over-the-top spy fiction. While Tom Clancy's role in creating the Splinter Cell series is limited to the creation of Third Echelon and the character of Sam Fisher, I see a lot of his influence in every level of the semi-grounded series.

    The premise of the series is Sam Fisher is a past-his-prime Special Forces operative who specializes in getting into places and out of them without being seen. Working for Third Echelon, he is given carte blanch by the government to do whatever it takes to protect American freedom. In real life, that doesn't work out very well but we're in fantasy-land so I'll give it a pass. In Splinter Cell: Conviction, this proved to be a mistake as Third Echelon turned traitor and it fell to Sam to destroy his former comrades.

It's never a good day for terrorists when Sam's around.

    Blacklist picks up a year later with Sam Fisher having inexplicably gotten twenty-years-younger and being portrayed as a man in his mid-thirties-to-early-forties rather than someone pushing sixty. Having left the service of the United States government to become a private military contractor, Sam gets roped back into it when his best friend is badly injured during a terrorist attack on Guam's military base.

    Now the head of Fourth Echelon, Sam is given the task of tracking down and eliminating ex-MI6 operative Sadiq and his collection of terrorists known as Engineers. If not, they will unleash a series of devastating attacks on America called the Blacklist.

    The game has a big budget action-movie sort of feel from beginning to end. There's big epic plans to poison Chicago's water, set the natural gas reserves of the United States on fire, and other huge James Bondian plots. The game looks every bit as good as Conviction, better even, with a strong focus on memorable charaters as well as keeping the plot moving. There's never a dull moment in the game save, perhaps, some of the latter levels going on a little too long. The fast-paced, epic plotline has both good and bad effects.

No torture in the game but many forceful interrogations.

    The good is this is an immensely entertaining game which manages to capture a 24-meets-Metal Gear Solid level of play. Sadiq is an effective villain and I could easily imagine watching this on the big screen. The sets are big and grandiose with locations that stick in your memory like Iran's secret police's headquarters and the bunker where all of the United States' leadership is kept during a crisis. The game can be played in its traditional stealth mode but also in a hard action shoot-em-up style.

    The camaraderie with Fisher's Fourth Echelon team doesn't approach Mass Effect levels but it's in the same ballpark, which works fine. I love how many of the characters flat-out don't trust each other in the beginning, only to gradually warm to each other in unexpected ways. I especially liked the relationship between Sam and Grimdottir, which was permanently damaged by her actions in Conviction.

These characters DO NOT like each other.

    Watching them try to work together when Sam flat-out holds her in contempt is an interesting experience. Anna is forced to confront the hard reality that making her "hard choices" in previous games have consequences which extend far beyond the political. Sam and she may now feel like exes rather than father and surrogate daughter but the relationship is still fascinating.

    The bad is the game tends to be a little underdeveloped for what it could be. Sadiq's motivations are never followed up upon other than he is an MI6 operative who feels betrayed and hates America. Likewise, I feel we could have gotten deeper into the characters of the game despite Blacklist focusing more on them than previous volumes. That's not to say the game isn't good, by any stretch of the imagination, it could have just been better.

    The gameplay for Blacklist is very fun, combining the best of previous Splinter Cell games with the more action-orientated Conviction. The return of non-lethal takedowns was a welcome addition with the fact you're dealing with complete scumbags meaning it was a genuine choice whether to spare or kill your opponents. You get your mission grading based on what style of play you choose to indulge in and I admit, I usually went the assault route.

To shoot or sneak, that is the question.

    Long-term fans of the game will dislike the fact Michael Ironside is no longer voicing Sam Fisher but, honestly, I think it was time for a change. The problem is, I think they should have taken the time to replace Sam Fisher himself.

    Maybe have the newer, younger version of him in this game be his nephew or protege. Eric Johnson does a serviceable job in the role and I think manages to capture the spirit of the character, even if it's played much-much younger than a man with a twenty-five-old daughter.

    The game comes with the option of high-definition graphics but this proved to be a mistake as my Xbox 360's hardware wasn't able to run the game without an immense amount of problems. The voices of the characters dropped, there were pauses in the game, and other problems which left me feeling severely disappointed. These problems disappeared when I ran it without the upgrades, however.

    The game is beautiful with amazing sets, locations, and character-design. I loved the supporting cast, action, and gameplay. The voice-acting was excellent while the plot was a little stereotypical in places but still enjoyable. I'm not a big fan of the game's multiplayer nor was I really pleased with the amount of bugs I faced when dealing with the high definition Xbox version. I hope, when it gets to Xbox One, it'll play much-much better.

9/10

Splinter Cell: Conviction review

    With the advent of backwards compatibility for the Xbox One, a lot of old games are about to become new again. One of the series which I hope not only makes the jump to the next generation consoles but also will, hopefully, receive a sequel made with present-day levels of technology. Despite this enthusiasm, I've got to say I've always had a love-hate relationship with the Splinter Cell series.

    On one hand, I really like the series in terms of gameplay as well as the premise. You're always going to find me enthusiastic about stealth action adventure stories. Splinter Cell is about halfway between Hitman and Deus Ex, which makes it a pretty awesome place to be. I also love spy fiction both in terms of reading as well as gameplay.

    However, the politics are terrible.

Sam Fisher is Batman in many places.

    It's part of the reason why I could never get into 24 as the show's lack of self-awareness until later seasons was always a sticking point with me. It's the same issue I have with a lot of Tom Clancy's work as it's entertaining as hell but you have to well and truly shut your brain off about the story being anything other than good-guys doing what it takes to take down the EVIL bad guys. Which is appropriate since the concept for Sam Fisher and his organization came from Clancy originally. God rest your soul, you techno-thriller crazy man.

    So with that lengthy intro, I have to say something which will invalidate almost everything I've just said: Conviction is really-really good both in plot as well as examining the setting's implications. Okay, not really. It's the EVIL bad guys who are being controlled by a mysterious EVIL group but it takes the premise Sam Fisher's ruthless "ends justify the means" organization can and does do some horrible stuff both to other people as well as Sam himself.

Sam kills a LOT of people in this game. No disable for you!

    The premise is Sam Fischer is retired from Third Echelon, the NSA-based secret organization of secretiveness which Sam has been serving for all of the previous games, in large part due to the death of his daughter. When Anna Grimsdottir, his handler, contacts him about a plot against the United States by the now-treasonous Third Echelon, he is uninterested in helping until it is revealed they have his still-living daughter. It's the kind of situation where, for fans of the series, it feels like Moneypenny is holding Bond's wife Tracy hostage.

    And yet it works somehow.

    The graphics are beautiful in Conviction, being one of the best-looking games of the Xbox 360. Everything is gorgeous and I loved the character design. It really does capture the Nineties techno-thriller atmosphere and looks like a movie. Even sets which shouldn't be interesting like a dingy locker-room are full of little tidbits that make it look more lived in. An immense amount of attention was put into making the game leap off the screen and you can see it everywhere.

Anna's redesign is amusing. Did she get some work done?

    Michael Ironside's acting is very well good and he maintains the high quality of the series throughout the game but he's a little too long-in-the-tooth for the character onscreen. It would have been a good idea to recast the character, I think for this game just as they did for Splinter Cell: Blacklist. I know I've attracted the ire of many purists with this statement but it's only my opinion. Still, he manages to convey the gruff weary old soldier thing very well and really makes you believe he's well and truly done with Third Echelon's bullshit.

    The gameplay continues to emphasize stealth but ramps up the action considerably, which I didn't mind but some players might find off-putting. Sam also abandons his willingness to take his opponents down non-lethally and becomes a human Terminator. I didn't mind this but this makes the story significantly darker and edgier for no-reason since, really, the non-lethal takedowns of previous games were part of the appeal. One element I did enjoy, however, was the "tagging" system which allows you to do bullet-time executions of your opponents that are always fun to watch.

The use of shadows and lighting in the game is great.

    There's a lot of really good levels in the game such as an escape from a United States Air Force base, an infiltration mission in a carnival, a couple of levels in Iraq which switch genre from stealth to action, and a mission where you invade Third Echelon. You even get to invade the White House and that's just awesome. There's none of he typical underground bases and crumbling buildings which make up most games.

    Sam Fisher is a great character with a lot of grizzled toughness and sly sardonic humor. He's a pretty generic in the context that he's a distillation of every single rugged American soldier type since Rambo wandered onto the stage but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The fact Michael Ironside's performance, too old for the role or not, conveys how thoroughly DONE with all this crap really amps up the emotional investment I had in the story. I may not feel for the guy quite the same way I do as Solid Snake but he's still a very enjoyable on-screen presence.

Feeling betrayed is a good reaction to betrayal.

    I could describe the plot but it is a nonsensical yet fun collection of various modern spy fiction tropes: EMPs, a plot to kill the President, evil PMCs, faked terrorist attacks, rogue government agencies, and secret conspiracies in the highest levels of government.

    It's funny because most of this is the exact opposite of Tom Clancy who tended to lionize the US government no matter what (unless they'd been taken over by naive-bordering-on-stupid liberals). Still, it's closer to my kind of politics and I won't lie to you by saying that didn't improve my opinion of the game.

    I think my favorite part of the game was the complicated and devastated relationship between Sam Fisher and Anna Grimsdottir. Sam has treated her like a daughter/potential love interest for much of the game series so watching her violate his trust so completely (by hiding his daughter's survival from him) is horrifying. However, it fits strongly with the themes that Third Echelon was never as heroic or noble an organization as Sam believed it to be and they would do anything to get their job done. It's just Sam never believed that would fall on him.

    In conclusion, this is a really fun game and one I have very few complaints about. There's an exceptionally frustrating and unpleasant section involving evading laser beam trip-wires but, otherwise, I can't say I didn't enjoy any element of this game.

9/10