Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell®

Action, stealth, gadgets, intrigue and you're favorite episode of 24 in a wet dream coming true. That's the power of Splinter Cell a well crafted espionage thriller that never fails to impress. GOG thanks a lot and keep them classics coming!

I'm a fan of the stealth genre and stealth elements in games. I decided to try this purported classic, cuz I never got to actually try it back when it was out. As my review title says, this game has not aged well at all. I'm sure lots of folks have a lot of memories of playing this game, but nostalgia has never been enough for me. I'm all about gameplay and immersion. There are games older than this (Thief 1 and 2, for example, and we may as well throw in all the fan missions from TTLG) that played better right out of the box. The stealth aspect is clunky--I snuck up very quietly on many guys, only to have them suddenly turn and shoot me dead. The mechanics of movement are not very good at all, and compared to today's games (both Styx games), this game is a massive step backward. I'm not going to gripe too much about the linearity of the game, since that was par for the course back in those days; and many games I'd say were better than this one were still somewhat linear--and really, what game isn't linear in the end, even with "multiple paths" to the same destination? I also don't gripe too much about old graphics, so long as I can tell what things are. In short, while I guess it's cool to have it at last and get a chance to play it, I feel like it's not worth the $10 I paid. I'm still going to finish it, just to see if the plot holds up, and to say I've played it.

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.