Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell®

This is the first of the series. It starts off a bit shy and clumsy, compared to Pandorra Tomorrow and Chaos Theory (which was the peak of the series). It has a nice story, but sometimes the combat is a bit weird. The dialogue and humor are top. Definitely reccomend to play the series and start with this one.

It's an okay game, and I played through all of it, but it does not even come close to the earlier Thief and Hitman games (let's forget about Thief 4 or Hitman 5 :). The levels are extremely linear, which takes all the fun out of stealth. Sure, there are possibilities for variation, but these are of the type "jump on this object rather than walking straight through the door" rather than "enter the building from the opposite direction and take a completely different way", i.e. more room-centered than map-centered. A lot of potential is wasted here, probably due to being a console game originally. The AI is also pretty stupid and all-knowing at times, which I think was much better in earlier Thief and Hitman games. And then there are those sections that are outright frustrating, like the final mission-critical and long-distance shot you have to fire - you will most likely have to load the game a dozen times to get it right. Graphics are still mostly nice and can be made wide-screen and HD - just find the necessary INI settings using your favourite search engine.

Like all good stealth games, it's very effective at using the gameplay to invoke tension and to keep the player in suspense. The stealth is intense and challenging, you have an impressive amount of moves, and various gadgets that give you options to get creative in how you deal with enemies, which keeps things interesting. The game relies on all the archetypical aspects of the genre, so keep in mind that it inherently has trial-and-error as part of the gameplay; but that's just the way this kind of stealth works, so take it or leave it. The game doesn't hold back on pushing you to play it the way it's intended to be played, and there isn't any hand-holding. I think this is to the game's credit, but keep in mind it's very stubborn and old fashioned that way, and it's difficult too, so quicksave and quickload are your best friends. Playing it as an action game is close to impossible, unlike the newer Splinter Cell games, but it can't be played as a pure stealth game either. There are moments where it pretty much forces you into combat, which makes the game seem less confident in its approach to stealth, and the shooting mechanics are too damn awkward to be fun. The game shines most on the levels where you're not allowed to kill anyone, because the level design in those sections is constructed to make the most of the stealth mechanics. The level design in general is good, but your options on how to proceed through the levels are very limited. This was intentional, as it's supposed to be a strictly linear game, but if you've played Chaos Theory, you might find that this one feels too limiting. There are some elements of backtracking (the fair kind, not the padding kind) that are done quite cleverly to make the levels feel more intricate than they really are, but it's kind of a façade. Every step is a motion that has already been planned out for you, and every path is very enclosed. It's no Chaos Theory, but overall it's still a good game today.

Nostalgie pur i love it!!!!!!!

I remember exactly how awesome it was to play this for the first time back in the days. The lighting, the atmosphere, the story... I think this is one of the old ones which aged well and is still very enjoyable today.