Splinter Cell

Title: Splinter Cell
Platform Played On: PC/PS3
Release Date: February 19, 2003
Date Played: Fall 2003, Summer 2012
Time Played: 15 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 4/5


Opinion:
I became a fan of the Tom Clancy games after playing Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear, it featured  tactics I have never seen in a video game before and it was also my first ever online multiplayer experience. After seeing the trailers for this new game called Splinter Cell I could not wait to get my hands on it.

It was the fall of 2003, I have just moved into the dorms at UCI with my AMD Athlon XP 2.4Ghz, 1GB of RAM and a GeForce 6800 computer running Splinter Cell. I remember Splinter Cell looking incredible at that time. The infra red vision looked just as real is in the movies, the shadows and light were like nothing Ive ever seen before. The same thing could be said about my computer, it refused to run the game at more than 30FPS. Splinter Cell was a lot for a PC to handle.

You are Sam Fisher, a member of an elite special forces unit tasked with uncovering the truth behind Georgian (country) president's attempt to start World War 3. You are equipped with a silenced pistol and a rifle, night vision/infra red goggles, explosives and other gadgets. Your number one weapon though is stealth.

I played Splinter Cell throughout the first quarter of college. Eventually though I got to a very frustrating part with landmines that can only be seen with infra red vision, and the spot lights that could not be seen with infra red on. After attempting that section a few times I ended up giving up on it. If only I knew how close to the end I was. I was literally an hour or so from finishing the game. And it took 9 years and re-release of the Splinter Cell on the PS3 for me to sit down and play it all the way through, this time actually finishing it.

Splinter Cell immediately reminded me of the Thief series. Similarly the main focus of the game is sneaking around and accomplishing your objective without alerting anyone. While extremely satisfying when pulled of, this kind of game design can be very frustrating unless balanced just right.

Splinter Cell does suffer from a few frustrating design decisions. There are a few missions where you are not allowed to kill anyone, while yes you are a spy, even James Bond is allowed to kill people when he absolutely needs to. And the way the missions are structured it can be frustrating making it almost all the way through and then getting caught, and be unable to do anything about it.

The most annoying and dumbest design decision though is when even though you have killed every single person in the whole level, if any of one corpse is in the light, the alarm will go off once you get a certain distance away from it. In other words, you have to hide every singe body no matter the likelihood of it being discovered. Killed someone in a back alley and thew them down the well? Great... does a little beam of light shine in the well? Welp it doesn't matter alarm is going to go off! Killed someone in an abandoned warehouse bathroom? Kill everyone else within 10 mile radius? Great! Are any of their bodies in any sort of light? You lose! Its so silly that Ubisoft (developer) would implement such a mechanic. It would have been OK if you were not limited to a certain number of alarms going of. I found myself in a situation where if I triggered the alarm only one more time I would lose, and with everyone dead just because I left someone's toe in a non pitch black room the alarm would off, even though there is no one left to even press the damn alarm button.

Splinter Cell is a very rigid experience. There is one path and one way to do everything, and if you stray from that path you either fail the mission or die. A few times I ran into game breaking situations, such as needing to use a specific weapon and not having bullets for it, or having to use the spy mic and having it not work.

Overall though Splinter Cell is a good game. At the time it looked stunning, which helps it to still look good today. It is still fairly unique and is indeed fun most of the time. I am not sure how much benefit there is from going back to this particular release considering the fact that there have been numerous sequels that have tremendeously improved the formula. But if you want to see the roots of the Splinter Cell franchise, or simply cant get enough of Sam Fisher, by all means play this game. I would recommend the PC version or the HD release on the PS3.