Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell®

Where Thief invented the stealth genre, with it's dark corners and tense situations as you skulk about castles and dungeons, Splinter Cell took it to a new level with a 3rd person perspective, and a world-hopping conspiracy, bringing it to the forefront with innovative character movement and allowing for low-light and heat vision to identify threats in the dark and low-visibility areas. The game centers around a new branch of the NSA code named Third Echelon, where you play as Sam Fisher, an experience and grizzled agent brought in to solve a problem that threatens the US. As Sam Fisher, you delve deep into enemy territory, using the shadows to slink your way past enemies, using high-tech weaponry to keep the silence around your presence in military bases, Chinese streets, and European suburbs. As a game that helped refresh and redefine a genre, this stealth-action game is a true classic, rewarding stealth tactics and guerrilla style approaches to problems. I highly recommend this if you love silent take-downs and listening to Michael Ironside talking aggressively.

Splinter Cell, was all about the sneaking. The game has an emphasis on getting by undetected by forcing you to rely heavily on your gadgets and the surroundings. Running and gunning will get you killed faster than you think and leaving a room full of TKO's will net you heightened enemies who are much harder to get by. In a sense, the game is somewhat heavily scripted as you move from one checkpoint to the other and there is always, one preferred method. It does not make the game any less enjoyable but a checkpoint save system really makes you stop and think before you decide to take a potshot and deal with the consequences later. You will have to observe, plan and execute with enough finesse to avoid alerting every guard on the station. Splinter Cell has a fairly standard popcorn movie plot in the style of government conspiracies and international terrorism but it does well at keeping your drawn in by having the incredibly classy secret agent Sam Fisher as your protagonist. The voice acting is very well done and the constant chatter between Fisher and his handlers are surprisingly engaging and can be even somewhat amusing. First timers, wouldn't have expected that in all the "seriousness" of Splinter Cell, there's a fair amount of camp. If you ever need a laugh, grab an enemy and interrogate him. The game knows when the poke at the odd joke and still keep the pacing and immersion in check. All in all, it's a solid stealth action game that will net you several good hours to complete. It's a little clunky and sometimes very unforgiving by today's standards but still an excellent title worth picking up. If anything, it's a great way to start the series as later games just gets better in every way.

Wanted to start and try out the entire Splinter Cell series, quite late, I know. Went ahead and tried the first game, and pretty much lowered my expectations as the game was released way back in 2003. 14 years ago! I was very surprised though, in a good way. I'll start by saying the Splinter Cell definitely passes the test of time. It's quite old but still stands as an awesome experience nowadays, and not only for nostalgia lovers. Of course, it shows that it's a game from 2003. But that somehow doesn't prevent it from being fun, from looking pretty neat and running on modern machines without much problem (at least in my experience). Splinter Cell shines with its gameplay, and I'm sure that back then it defined some new rules in the stealth gaming. Despite the AI can be slightly dumb at times, it really felt rather sophisticated to me. Plenty of gadgets to help you sneak your way through without getting bored or too tired by it. Plenty of ways to handle each level and each situation, and you're free to do it brutally or to try and keep most of your enemies alive. It's also pretty realistic and goes into small details for such an old game, which I found pretty impressive (Example - you can usually sneak past your enemies without them noticing, but if you'll step over shards of glass they might make some noise which would make you noticeable!) A pretty strong aspect, served in a nicely looking package as the graphics looks pretty nice for such an old game. They can be a little bleak but that's because of the different places you'll be in (submarine, governmental offices, etc) so those places are very well designed. Music is unfortunately not very special or memorable, BUT definitely fits the game well and creates tension and just the right atmosphere. Only thing that disappointed me was the story, which wasn't bad but wasn't anything special, and I found myself not caring for it very much. Luckily the game itself is totally worth the experience nonetheless.

For a 10+ year old game, its aged pretty well. Some people may be frustrated with the game, especially the movement mechanics and control scheme on the pc. It will take a little bit of time to warm up to it and get used to it. The first mission is the time when you will spend the most time, after that, you will go through it pretty seamlessly. I love the stealth game play. It's not like the original Thief of course, but similar to it. I like to urge people to play older games of all genres and appreciate it before it goes away. I missed this games like this and Syphon Filter. If you play it now, it seems clunky and awkward but in it's day, it was great. The tech back then was the best available at the time so it would not be fair to compare to contemporary games as this is completely different. The story and voice acting is a little cheesy but Michael Ironside's voice acting makes up for it. Play it, its ten bucks, even if you don't complete it, try it.