Played on:
Windows
Splinter Cell is the first Tom Clancy-licensed game that really diverts from the Rainbow Six-style tactical action game. It is more akin to the classic Thief games, although the setting is obviously very different. Splinter Cell has already done very well on the Xbox for the last few months, and now an enhanced version is available on the PC.
In Splinter Cell, you take on the role of Sam Fisher. Fisher is returning to the National Security Agency and is set to go on several covert missions in order to gain information on (and stop) terrorist attacks by Georgia, a nation that spawned from the breakup of the Soviet Union.
The game uses a highly modified version of the Unreal engine that does some of the fancy lighting and shadows that the DOOM 3 engine is set to do, along with some brand new special effects that haven't really been seen before. The lighting effects are a bit more subtle here, though, and I can imagine that the frame rate hit isn't so big as it might be in DOOM 3. Still, lighting and shadows are done in a pretty realistic way, and the game does take specific efforts to show them off in several ways. On top of that, shadows are very important for the gameplay here, so you can bet that there's a practical reason for having the nice eye candy.
Splinter Cell does have a few drawbacks, though; many of those extra-cool lighting effects have to be turned off if you aren't running a top-of-the-line computer. The recommended system specs don't necessarily mean you will get all the features, and many computers' video cards today also don't support the game's impressive lighting system. The game will still work, of course, but a good chunk of the eye candy is getting cut out completely on many people's computers. Even with a GeForce 2 GTS video card, the game would only run in 640x480, period. For these reasons, it is difficult to recommend the game to someone who owns a slower computer as well as an Xbox - the Xbox version is going to be superior.
There are some other technical issues as well. There was a patch available the first day the game shipped, which to me seems a bit disconcerting. The big problem, though, is that even the best video cards out there will not run this game correctly with Full Screen Antialiasing turned on. Having FSAA on means that any light source in the game will shine through any opaque objects - it is a simple visual problem but it makes the game completely unplayable like this.
Even though this was known to the developers, it was never mentioned anywhere in the game or in a readme file that I saw - the readme does recommend offhand that players use "Application Preference" in the control panel for your video card (which would fix the problem in most cases), but that is not enough. They needed to put a big notification somewhere: "This game doesn't work with FSAA yet! Turn it off!" I am curious as to how many people will try to return the game, try updating their video drivers, or go to more drastic measures thinking it is their computer's problem.
Ubi Soft had to make a few changes from the Xbox version in order to make the PC version of Splinter Cell work. The speed at which you walk or run is very important, and since an analog stick is simply not practical on the PC along with all the other controls you need, they instead set the mouse wheel movements to pick the speed at which you move. At first, I didn't like the system, preferring the Xbox stick controls. But after a little while, I found the PC version better - I can pick a specific speed and don't have to worry about accidentally making a loud misstep (which in some cases can end a mission easily) with a slip of the thumb.
All the other controls you want are here - while Splinter Cell is a third-person game, the mouse is integrated just right for aiming at stuff or merely spinning your view around. All keys can be rebound, and everything works perfectly.
Splinter Cell is most definitely a graphically impressive game - it doesn't sport super-high resolutions or extreme frame rates, but it does pile on the special effects along with some pretty detailed environments. This is definitely a game that can show off some cool DirectX 8 features in style - minus the FSAA, that is. Add on to this the two extra visors (thermal and nightvision) you can use, and there is a whole range of special effects that have never been done the same way in a game before.
Many of the levels you will sneak through are based somewhat on real-world locations, with lots of little things to add to the immersion and detail. Enemies generally look and move well, although there are still the requisite robotic-looking animations and other tiny visual inconsistencies. This generally hasn't been a big deal before, but with game developers trying to make everything look so realistic, more attention needs to be paid to the little things.
Of course, Ubi Soft spent the most time making Sam Fisher himself look and move great. There are a ton of animations here, all of which look pretty appropriate for the stuff he does in-game. Considering his gruff style, I expected his character to be a lot more boring than he turned out to actually be.
Splinter Cell is laid out in a mission-based format where you will be required to infiltrate some sort of facility, plant or steal some sort of item or info, and get out. The missions commonly feel much more dynamic than that, though, as the story will sometimes abruptly change and your mission objectives will change as a result. In truth, it is all linear, and there are no branching storylines here; the first time through, though, it feels much more open.
