Splinter Cell: Double Agent

by: The Ryan October 31 2006

Are you a hero or are you a traitor?

Sam Fisher… A Government Agent, a father, a Splinter Cell. I’ll bet that not a lot of you knew that he was a father, and that’s not your fault for not paying attention. Regardless of being based on Tom Clancy novels, the Splinter Cell series have often left out a good story element. It has always felt like they threw the story together at the last minute without any attempt in making an involving storyline.

With Splinter Cell: Double Agent, the meaningless storyline is a thing of last gen. From the very beginning of the game, not counting the “introduction” mission, you are told exactly why Sam Fisher is becoming the way he is.

As I mentioned the first mission is nothing but an introduction mission to get you accustomed to the controls. Which by the way resemble the past Splinter Cell’s controls almost exactly. You are sent to Iceland to thwart a terrorist attempt to launch a nuclear weapon. As you make your way through the exterior of the warehouse and eventually inside to stop the missile, there’s nothing different between this game and the past games. Other than the visuals of course, but we’ll get into that later. As your airlifted away from the Iceland terrorist base Lambert breaks the news to you that your daughter has been killed by a hit and run driver. Why Lambert would tell you this as your on your way back from a mission is still beyond me, but it does keep the suspense up from the very beginning. Sam doesn’t think life is worth living anymore and accepts the most dangerous mission of his career. Get in tight with a group of terrorists and defeat them from the inside, as one of them.

But first, you have to spring one of the members of John Brown’s Army (the terrorist cell) from prison. It isn’t until after you break out of prison that the real story begins. While you are working with the JBA, the NSA continues to issue orders to you. You have two trust meters, one for the JBA and one for the NSA. The objectives that are given to you both impress one and piss the other off, or if your stealthy enough, impress the NSA without any implications from the JBA. When your in JBA headquarters, you have to look through files and put wiretaps on communications systems (if you choose to) without being seen. If you are caught you lose trust with the JBA, which in some instances probably won’t be worth it. If your trust with the JBA reaches zero, it’s game over.

The game is completely decision based. In one instance in the game you are ordered to kill an innocent man, but you are also ordered to not kill that man. What do you do? That’s the stress that Splinter Cell: Double Agent inflicts on you. Always on the edge of your seat for what’s going to happen next.

Controlling Sam Fisher through all of this is like second nature if you’ve ever played Splinter Cell before. If not, take a quick stroll through the two training missions and you’ll pick it up fairly quickly. You have your trusty stealth guage with you at all times in teh game. However, now it is a light on his back and chest that lights up green when your hidden in shadow, yellow when your not hidden and red when you’re caught. If the light ever reaches red, you better find a way out of your current situation real quickly. As before, once Sam pulls out his firearm he slows down. Proving that it’s not a run and gun type of game play style, it’s pretty much all about Stealth. One major game play element that’s different from it’s predecessors is the lack of shadows. Sam Fisher has always been at home while rooting around in the darkness not being seen. Well now you have to root around in the daylight and not be seen. While a fun and interesting twist, it makes it several times harder being out in the open. The lighting is, as always, Sam Fisher’s best looking and worst enemy. The shadows that are cast and the way the sunlight gleams off of surfaces is very lifelike you’d think you were playing a movie. While most of the game you are staring at the back of Sam Fisher’s head you can’t help but be amazed at how good it looks. Every detail was looked over down to small objects on tables. And you’ll never get over how lifelike curtains and hanging fabrics sway in the wind.

The three Splinter Cell’s that were released on the Xbox had breathtaking visuals. The visuals in Double Agent haven’t jumped ahead as far as those, but it’s still a step up. Sometimes having games like Fight Night and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter on the Xbox 360 look as good as they do, they can take the wow factor out of other games. It is however huge step above the last Splinter Cell iteration. The audio in the game seems pretty generic, almost as if it was taken from the previous Splinter Cell game. Nothing that totally blows you away, but it is in 5.1 surround.

The multiplayer is nothing short of confusing when you first start experimenting with it. But it starts to get more fun after just a few rounds. It’s a three on three team oriented objective based mission. Three people are the spies and the other three are the Mercenaries. And yes, you can add in bots if there are some player spots that aren’t being filled.

The Spies have no weaponry, but do have an option to take one gadget with them into the level. Be it smoke grenades to hide their movements to electronic jammers that can confuse the Mercenaries’ radar. If you’re really stealthy, you can sneak up behind a Mercenary and snap his neck before he even knows you’re there. As the Spy, you infiltrate a base and seek out computer terminals that have the information that you are after. You then remotely connect to that computer and start downloading that file. The greater the distance between you and the computer terminal, the slower the file will download. Once you get the file fully downloaded, run back to your hideout without getting killed, and it’s mission accomplished. Some missions require you to get more than one file obviously, but the action is mainly the same.

The Mercenaries have one goal, kill the spies before they can download the files and make it back to their hideout. It’s like a high tech capture the flag. The Mercenaries never run out of ammunition, however their clips do run out and you have to re-load. Grenades and flashlights are also supplied. You have a proximity map that starts vibrating your controller is you sense movement within 10 meters of where you’re standing, letting you know if there’s a spy around you that needs some killin’.

The action in Multiplayer is pretty hectic at times, but some training missions do a pretty decent job of slowly introducing you to the action. But that’s nothing compared to when you’re playing with other human beings across Xbox Live who really know what they’re doing. There is also a co-op version of the multiplayer game. It’s the same Spies vs. Mercenaries game play, accept you play together toward a pre-set goal. As you play more and more online matches you start to increase your stats with each of the types of character. I don’t know how much this changes the game play, but it gives you that sense of accomplishment, not to mention Xbox Live Achievement points.

All in all Splinter Cell: Double Agent is a solid game with solid graphics. The controls are hardly even an issue and the visuals are stunning. If you’re a returning Splinter Cell fan this is a must buy. If you’re new to the stealth genre, it might be to difficult of a game to get your feet wet on but it’s definitely worth a try.