Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell®

It's no coincidence that Splinter Cell 3 - Chaos Theory is considered the best of entry in the franchise: you had more tools to play around with and more ways to tackle every level and situation. Splinter Cell 1 is, sadly, not that type of game: yes, each and every single level is as vast and engaging as stealth will ever get, but there's also only one way to solve every problem. You'll beat it once, maybe go for a perfect ghost run but you'll most likely never touch it again.

Next to the Metal Gear Solid series and Thief, Splinter Cell was further pushing the genre forward and making it even more accessible to broader ranges of audiences, while simultaneously being a spearhead for Tom Clancy's stories in videogame form. While the age does show, especially in terms of difficulty, the creative and unique gameplay, lighting, paired with the innovative stealth gameplay, platforming, and high-tech gadgets make this game a true delight. I was hooked the whole way through, and Michael Ironside delivers an amazing performance as Sam Fisher. It's clear why this game went on to become an enthralling franchise of seven games.

This is the original ignorant PC port that they released way back when, not updated at all. Only 4:3 resolutions maxing at 1280x1024, and no controller support at all even though it originally came out on Xbox. Many companies are doing way better these days with fully updated ports, as with AVP Classic here on GOG.

My review is based on the retail release: The game itself back in it's original release was brand new and fresh in the stealth genre. It was amazing, to use the enviroment with its lightning and background noise. The graphics were good for the time and the soundtrack was also very well done. The GoG-Version delivers you the mission pack, which adds more and good levels to the game. It's awesome to see them here, because I had to buy an used retail-version of the levels over amazon. Back in January 2009 the Complete Pack offered only Splinter Cell 1 till 4, without the missions pack. But buying the old mini-addon is not everything. I had to update (or downgrade) Splinter Cell 1 for compatibility with the mission pack. I downloaded back in 2009 the "SplinterCell13DVD.zip", which was not easy to find on the old UbiSoft-Forums. Who knows if this patch package is still online, I saved it on my harddrive. After applying this patch, you have to install the mission pack. Nice to see GoG providing it and spare us with all the patching. More I cannot say about the compability of the GoG version (because I own retail), but I thing it should run very well on modern OS. I played the retail version on Win Vista and it worked well. I give 4 stars, because the Sequels Splinter Cell 2 (Pandora Tomorrow) and 3 (Chaos Theory) are even better. On technical and completeness side I would give 5 stars (if there are no issues compared to the DVDs on Win Vista and upwards).

I remember the first time I played this game. What a beauty. This has it all. Going into the role as Sam Fisher you will experience the feel of responsibility of helping the NSA dealing with the terrorists. The graphics at the time was immense. The factor with Splinter Cell that kept me so interested, was the fact that for the first time in a video-game I could hide in the shadows! Something so simple was something special and so addicting to try out new ways to try to complete the levels with the most stealth. Hands down, this is one of my all-time favourite video-games. If not the all-time favourite. Xbox - IGN Video Game of the Year 2002. My score: 5/5 - 10/10.