Trying to follow a breakaway success cannot be easy. The original Splinter Cell (SC) was a must-buy game, one which had appeal for all but the most stealth-hating of gamers. The sequel, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (SC:PT), has some pretty big shoes to fill right out of the gate. But that's enough history. The remaining question is simple: does SC:PT deliver the goods or not?
It most certainly does in the visual department. I'm going to have to buy a new thesaurus because the latest slew of games I've played—Unreal Tournament 2004, Battlefield Vietnam, and Far Cry (FC) —are so far beyond the games of the past that I'm running out of superlatives. I cut my gaming teeth playing the original Space Invaders, for crying out loud, so with all the hardware in my gaming system today I'm getting blown away left and right. Just ignore a few paragraphs here and there if I'm drooling too much.
That's a less than subtle way of leading up to a simple statement of fact: SC:PT looks gorgeous. The graphics in the original were wonderful to begin with, so much so that they taxed my computer right to its limits. SC:PT builds on that legacy, improving noticeably in virtually every category. The modeling has been improved. The animations are even smoother than before. The texture work is of still higher quality. The environments are far more beautifully detailed. The pre-rendered cinematics are still more stunning than those in the original.
But none of those things take the cake. What really stands out in SC:PT is in a whole different category than the original game: the special effects. The original featured night and thermal vision modes, both of which tended to flush the framerate completely. Not only is the quality of each mode improved in SC:PT, they're much more smoothly implemented this time around. Yet in addition one finds all kinds of other effects to enjoy as well. Distortions, mirroring, what seem to be volumetric gas effects, electrical arcs, and so forth. And that's to say nothing of the additional vision modes for the multi-player aspect.
In every respect the visuals in SC:PT are not only improved from the original game, they can also stand up against any game on the market today. I think FC does a few things better, but SC:PT is close enough and runs much better. You'll definitely need a sweet system to play with all the goodies enabled at a high resolution, but it's worth it in my book. SC:PT is a joy to behold, truly a thing of beauty.
In contrast to the visuals the audio is problematic. On the one hand the bits of music are great; the voice acting is top notch, particularly Michael Ironside revisiting his role as Sam Fisher; the environmental sounds are even more immersive than in the previous game; the praise flows so easily. Yet the game shipped with a number of screwy audio bugs. The problems weren't as bad in the single-player campaign as in the multi-player aspect, but some were shared by both modes. Could it be that the developers used two different code libraries for the two halves? I don't know. I just know that the former shipped a lot more polished than the latter.
For example, when firing a mercenary's assault rifle one sometimes didn't hear the sound of the gun. The muzzle would flash, and the tinkling of shells and bullet impact sounds would play, but the actual actual sound of the gun firing would frequently not be heard. That's really disconcerting while trying to take down some sneaky spy. At first I thought the problems were related to the game's use of Creative Labs EAX audio, but the problems occurred even after disabling that setting. The situation was somewhat improved by the v1.2 patch, and the v1.3 patch fixes most of the problems, but the game still has audio bugs. Heck, the voice communication just stops working sometimes for no apparent reason, which makes it really hard to coordinate a team's actions.
In the single-player campaign the problems were less obvious and severe, but the clicks and pops, the occasional dialogue miscues, etc. all irritate. Suffice it to say that the audio design and content are great, but the actual implementation still needs some work. Here's hoping the developers will continue to refine it in future games.
First, a big note of praise: the best of the original SC is retained by SC:PT. Both games allow the player to move and interact with the world in pretty complex ways, despite having relatively simple interfaces. Most first-person-shooter (FPS) games allow the basic crouching, walking, running, etc., but SC:PT adds climbing, performing rolls, split jumping, and a host of other cool and useful moves. I was quite impressed with the interface in the original game and SC:PT is equally impressive.
There are, however, a number of irritating problems in this department as well, all of which involve the multi-player aspect of the game. First, enabling Punkbuster is broken pretty much by default. Anyone who has played the game on-line has likely run into this problem at one point or another. The fix is reasonably simple (i.e., tracking down a non-corrupt, working Punkbuster folder and copying it over your own), but it shouldn't be required in the first place.
The multi-player game browser provides virtually no filtering or searching features, making it hard for the player to sort through a large list of servers. Sadly, as it turned out, this wasn't much of a problem, practically speaking, for reasons that will be made clear later. The multi-player interface is also egregious in requiring the player to sit through the ESRB notice, profile selection, logging into Ubi.com, etc. Never before have I seen a game that requires so many clicks to get into or out of the action. It's ridiculous. Oh, and the developers made a screwy choice for the console key (the single-quote of all characters), though this can be fixed.
Suffice it to say that the multi-player aspect of the game, new this time around, is about half-baked in the interface department. The buddy list is a nice feature, and one that I hope other games adopt, but it doesn't do enough to get past the bugs in my book. It's disappointing that the multi-player interface isn't nearly as polished as the single-player interface.
Ok, it's time for developers to start working a little harder in this department. The mechanics of the original SC were great. It took all the best from the stealth-action genre and packed it all into one, seriously fun game. But a sequel should do more than simply embrace the strengths of its predecessor(s); it should also move beyond them in at least a few significant ways. In that respect, SC:PT is just more of the same: more of the same sneaking up on guards and knocking them out, more sniping them in the head, more avoiding laser tripwires, etc. There isn't much new to SC:PT at all in the game mechanics department.
And that's not a bad thing, on the one hand, given how much fun the previous game was. Insofar as the stealth-action genre has any legs, these sorts of game mechanics should be expected. Yet on the other hand, I think the thing that bothered me most was the same rail-ride feeling that the original game had; i.e. that it's all about jumping through hoops and, more to the point, always the same hoops in the very same order. The one thing that developers should have learned from Deus Ex is that letting the player come up with his own solutions to the problems is half the fun.
SC:PT misses a big opportunity here because the game is simply too linear. Here's hoping that future entries in the franchise loosen up a bit in this regard. It's not that stealth action isn't fun anymore, it's that other games let the player go where he wants, use whatever vehicles and weapons he can find, etc., in contrast to which SC:PT feels like a straightjacket.
Blah, blah, blah... terrible bio-weapon... blah, blah, blah... terrorists will use it unless... blah, blah, blah... We've heard it all before. Maybe I'm getting jaded with games, or maybe I'm being too harsh. But after saving the world a hundred times or so in various games, I grow tired of the same old thing over and over. Just once I'd like to meet some terrorist/great-leader type who didn't want to rule the world, destroy it, etc. True, the bad guy in SC:PT didn't have ambitions quite so sweeping, but it's still more of the same. Maybe there's no getting around this kind of dreck, but at least one plot twist would have helped. As it was, I found the story of SC:PT to be so predictable it was boring. I didn't care why I was playing at all. I don't need an awesome story in every game, but SC:PT is dull in this regard even in my book.
Ok, first the positive. The environments and situations in the game are quite compelling and well realized. Sneaking into the camp in Indonesia is just as fun as running down the streets of Jerusalem. The various gadgets in Sam's inventory are more plentiful and even better this time around. It was great to have the SC-20K rifle right from the outset, rather than having to wade through several missions without it. I also liked the fact that lethal force was prohibited far less, it seemed to me anyway, than it was in the original game. More often than not, when I got in a jam I could simply unload on the bad guys and get the job done.
Yet despite all the good stuff, I have several negative comments to make, chief among which is inconsistency. This inconsistency was present in several respects, so I'll provide a few different examples. For starters is the silly way in which some guards are psychically connected. Seriously, in more than one situation, if I shot one guard in the head the other would know it and raise the alarm immediately, despite his being out of line of sight and out of hearing range. Yet this wasn't always the case. Some teams of guards were dumb as a post, practically unaware of the other guards' existing, while others would trip the alarm within milliseconds of the other's being grabbed, shot, or whatever.
The same inconsistency is to be found with the fifth freedom. In the mission in Jerusalem, for example, Sam is initially operating under a no-fatalities rule, but then there comes a long stretch during which the fifth freedom is granted. Imagine my surprise when the mission ended abruptly in failure upon my killing someone who got in the way. The fifth freedom was in effect only during that stretch, but I never received any message to the contrary. All it would have taken is a little "Ok, let's settle down, Sam" from Lambert to cue me in, but I didn't get it. That mission isn't the only one with the problem either.
And how about the final mission's countdown timer? The last mission requires Sam to make it through some increasingly tricky areas in the LAX airport, ending up in a series of catwalks where one of the bad guys has a bio-weapon. Despite being in total darkness, despite no guards being near me, despite there being zero possibility of any guard detecting me in any way, the countdown timer triggered every time I climbed a particular ladder. That's just silly, and it absolutely ruined any pretence of verisimilitude for me. If you're going to give me a game where avoiding detection is key, then don't foist such lame hacks on me.
Finally, the game's implementation itself is inconsistent in quality; i.e., there are plenty of irritating bugs. On more than one occasion I faced guards who had gone blind, deaf, and dumb after I reloaded the game. I also ran into several scripting problems, such as the third mission aboard the train. In that case, I completed all the obvious mission objectives but then got stuck on the train because something didn't trigger. I had to start over again from the very beginning. It really screws the experience when that kind of crap happens.
In summary, though the game does have a lot going for it, I didn't find the single-player aspect nearly as compelling as the previous game for the reasons above. Some more polish and some better design decisions would have made it a lot more worthwhile. Fortunately, SC:PT redeems itself greatly thanks to its awesome...
Every once in a while something truly unique and beautiful comes along, something new under the sun. SC:PT's spies vs. mercenaries multi-player aspect is just such a thing. It is pure, unadulterated brilliance. My all-time favorite multi-player game is Raven Shield (RS). There's just something about the gameplay that brings me back again and again. I love all of the elements of the game: hunting enemies, robust weapons with which to gun them down, a great number of cool maps that provide different tactical and strategic approaches, etc. I just don't get tired of it. Oh, I get frustrated with all the ridiculous bugs and the stupidity of various players, but I still love the game and play it again and again.
Why is that relevant? Because SC:PT takes all of those elements and turns them on their head with two radically different teams. Whereas the other multi-player games I love typically feature very similar roles, loadouts, etc. for each of the various teams, SC:PT provides a radically divergent pair of experiences within a single game. I don't know that SC:PT is going to knock RS off the pedestal on which it sits in my list of favorites, but it's definitely going to continue to occupy my time long into the future. At least, it will if I can stand the frustration that comes from playing it.
As one might expect the spies must rely on stealth, being careful with both motion and their use of electronic gear for fear of detection. They've got to distract, mislead, and use a variety of gadgets to get past their opponents to get the job done. They get to see the world from a third-person view, giving them much greater situational awareness in addition to their other gifts. They also have a veritable slew of fancy moves to get them from point A to point B with speed, lethal cunning, and even style. The spies make the most of the stealth experience from the single-player aspect and send it up for human vs. human consumption.
In contrast, the mercenaries rely largely on big guns and cool gadgets to detect, prosecute, and eliminate their targets. Their view is constrained by the limits of first-person view. They have no darkness-dispelling vision modes, having to rely instead upon motion and electromagnetic detection. They have an arsenal of tools at their disposal to detect and track spies, blow them up, mark them, and otherwise fulfill their function, but their game is ultimately that of the enforcer and not the sneak. Whereas the spies must use stealth and guile, the mercs are pure brute force.
Unfortunately, the game seems pretty clearly unbalanced, though the direction depends upon the level of play. I've played a few hundred games now against a range of different players. And I'd have to say that my skill set is somewhere on the high side of average. I'm definitely not a good player, but I'm not completely useless either. I'm somewhere in the middle. And every game I've played tells me the same thing: the mercs dominate in matches of low to medium skill, whereas the spies dominate in matches of high skill. Of course, given the wildly different approach to playing each side, one might say this is just fine. Maybe it is, but it frustrates me nevertheless. In games where the rest of the players are at my skill level, I virtually always win playing as mercs and virtually always lose playing as spies. That's frustrating.
Let me explain. The mercs completely dominate low to moderate skill games because they have all the killing tools. See a spy? One grenade shot and he's dead. See another spy? Don't worry, he'll go boom when he hits your mine. See another spy? Snipe him in the head; he'll drop like a sack of flour. In my very first game playing as a mercenary, I ended four spy lives without much trouble for one simple reason: I can shoot. My team easily won the map despite me being almost completely clueless. I knew how to point my gun and pull the trigger; that's all it took to win.
Yet in a game with highly skilled spies mercs are practically fodder. I can't even believe the stuff I've seen them do. It's like watching some kind of wild ballet. I played as one of two mercs facing a single spy, who clearly knew his stuff, on the Warehouse map. The guy came into the room in sector one from above. He must have shimmied along some series of pipes or something because the first time I knew he was there was when my partner called for help. He had shot a spy camera right at my partner's feet and released the gas before the poor guy could even move. I turned to open fire at him and hit nothing but empty air. I didn't see where he went. But a few seconds later he grabbed me from behind and broke my neck. My partner was just getting up as he grabbed him from behind and killed him too.
That's pretty much how the rest of that match went. At a distance he moved so fast we couldn't hit him, whereas he could put us to sleep almost instantly with a single spy camera. At medium or close range he would simply toss a smoke grenade and then either drop on our heads or grab us from behind. He never even bothered messing with any of the NDIs. He just used up all our lives in the first couple of minutes and that was it. Lest you think that's simply because of the differences in skill, I had opportunity to play one game with one excellent merc partner against a single, talented spy. The guy did the same thing. Sure, I was expecting him to take me out practically without effort, but he could kill my partner without breaking a sweat too.
I wish I could say otherwise, but I can't. At low to medium skill levels the mercs' tools give them a clear advantage. At high skill levels spies have all the speed, all the moves, and can breeze through mercs like they're not even there. Heck, all it takes is two spy smoke grenades and a merc can't move fast enough to get anywhere in time to prevent anything. I faced one guy who simply ran up to me up close, dumped a smoke grenade on me, dumped another between me and where he was going, and then took care of whatever NDI he had targeted. One might want to say that was my fault, of course, for letting him get close to me, but what am I supposed to do when he has all the advantages of terrain, stealth, etc.? The simple fact is that the game clearly plays different favorites at different levels of skill. Maybe that won't bother some, but it annoys me because the spy learning curve is so harsh.
Still, the multi-player aspect remains gripping no matter which side you choose to play. The mercenaries are a blast to play because it's mighty satisfying to stop those crafty spies, whereas the spies are a blast to play because it's equally satisfying to outwit those slow-moving chumps with the big guns. I'm not sure why it's so compelling an experience but it is. When I'm on a good server with good people—about which more in a moment—I can play for hours despite the clear imbalance. Heck, just tonight I played four or five complete matches with the same results in every game: mercs won every round while spies lost every round. That's really irritating, but it was still a lot of fun.
Now, I know some have complained that the multi-player aspect is too limiting, given that a maximum of four people can play in any one game, but I don't buy that for a minute. If anything it's actually quite liberating. In too many other games it's impossible to form any cohesion among of a team of five, eight, twelve, or even more. There are just too many cowboys, too many grief players, too many idiots, etc. Many of those I've met playing SC:PT really seem to want to work together. Maybe the small team sizes encourage that somehow. The game even has built-in voice communications, though sometimes it doesn't work for whatever reason. Granted, too many people will play only as their favored side and then leave, but it doesn't always happen.
Of course I should also comment on the usual stuff. One clear negative is that the in-game server browser is a bit lacking. It has no ability to sort servers by ping, has no ability to mark servers as favorites, and generally seems underpowered compared to the standards set by other games. On the plus side, though, the connections seem generally pretty smooth, and I've seen few server glitches. The basics of multi-player gaming are handled ably if not perfectly, so it's relatively easy to get into a game. The friends functions are also powerful enough that they make it possible to hook up with known-good players on a regular basis, which goes a long way toward ameliorating the problems with the browser.
Probably the biggest complaint is that there aren't exactly an abundance of servers. I assumed that the community of gamers would only grow, but I'm seeing the same people playing from night to night. Frankly, it's unusual for me to find more than a few dozen servers active at any given time. That's as pathetic as it is mystifying for a game this good. Maybe that's why the developers didn't bother to beef up the browser; only the fact that few servers are available makes it possible to live with its limitations. Don't let the small community stop you from enjoying the game, but do be prepared for a huge learning curve in trying to become a proficient spy.
As far as I'm concerned, SC:PT is another great game, but this time around only for its multi-player aspect. All save those who despise stealth or multi-player should pick up a copy as soon as possible. The single-player campaign good, but it's nothing to write home about. The multi-player aspect , however, is fabulous. I really don't understand why there aren't more players on-line. Maybe it's because of the learning curve. What I do know is that SC:PT's multi-player shouldn't be missed. It's that good. Here's hoping the next game in the series cleans up all the problems.
03/27/2005