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Not what I thought it would be.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: December 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

As a fan of stealth games like the Thief series, I thought Splinter Cell would be fun, but its not. In Splinter Cell you have absolutely no freedom. All the great moves and gadgets the game claims to offer never really come into play. You cant just up and repel of a wall if you want to. You can only do it as part of a heavily scripted sequence, and only at the designated wall in the designated location. Kinda takes the fun out of it. Also when you sneak up behind someone, you have to get close enough for some bizzare antiquated menu to drop down, and then you select the appropriate action. I should not need to go through all that nonsense just to hit someone. The game was boring. It was simplistic and required no thought or strategy.

If you want stealth action check out any of the Thief offerings, Splinter Cell was a major let down, in my oppinion.

Good fun.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: September 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

When I first started playing Splinter Cell I didn't really like it but after a while I came around and I couldn't get splinter cell pandora tomorrow in my comp fast enough :P

I thought it was very linear and I felt confined by the whole "one way through" thing. Eventually, I began to feel like it was part of the plot because i figured most "secure" locations would have very few weaknesses.

In the begining I was also a little dissapointed with the whole "don't kill anyone but the target thing". I was used to just fragging everything that moved and now I'm surrounded by all these nice little potential targets and i'm not supposed to kill ANY of them??!!?? Now i'm completely bored with the games that only requre a finger permenantly attached to the fire button to win. Mass murder is good and all but it's definatly better to savor your kills and interrogate and force them to co-operate. And it's good to be able to use a little strategy.

I liked the story a lot too. It was very captivating compared to most of the games i've played recently. The movies gave the game the sence of urgency and importance that make your missions seem worth while and rewarding.

This is YAWN FEST of the Year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 13
Date: December 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Splinter Cell is the most boring linear OVER-HYPED waste of time in video game history. There's no exploration, no alternative path to victory. You either do it Tom Clancy's way, or go put the game away. Honestly I had more fun playing Pong 30 years ago. Hell at least that game had some replay value.

"Here take this gun, oh by the way, if you kill anyone the mission is a failure"

"OH um why do I have this gun than?"

"So we can market this game as a shooter, even though everybody under the sun knows its not; except the pre-schoolers writing these reviews and hailing this game as a five star must have"

"WOW I didn't know Tom Clancy was so popular in kindagarten!"

"Oh he's a God with them"

All Sizzle, No Steak

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: March 11, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Since the games industry has become almost entirely graphics-focused, with [more] cookie-cutter games coming out every single day, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that Splinter Cell is so underwhelming.

There's no need to discuss the graphics. They're great, but that's not the point. Buying games for graphics is like buying a book for its cover. You can only look at it for so long - eventually you're going to want to play it.

Splinter Cell fails because it is ridiculously linear, automated, and just not fun. Virtually everything is "push the action button and watch your character do a scripted event". It's like Dragon's Lair in 3D. It doesn't help that all of the interactions are stiff, robotic, slow, and tiresome to watch. Seeing a rogue agent creep over a handrail like a 70-year-old man while an enemy agent approaches is just [bad].

The combat is virtually nonexistent - you only get two guns, which you can rarely use. As a stealth agent you are supposed to sneak, bonk people over the head, and avoid detection. That would be fine if the environment weren't so static, the path so straightforward, and playing so unbelievably dull. Most missions rapidly devolve into "try, fail, quick load, try, fail, quick load" ad nauseum. ...P>And I don't understand the stealth model. Moving at anything faster than a creeping crawl allows the enemy to hear you even through stone walls and in pouring rain. So you spend the whole game creeping slowly from shadow pool to shadow pool. Some guy turns his back to you, it's a ... chore to catch up to him, and there's no leaping grab. So it's a matter of trial-and-error as you try to get the exact perfect spot to have the "grab character" action pop up.

Basically it's a gigantic obstacle course, but you don't even get the satisfaction of solving a puzzle in your own way. There's one solution, just about every time. And you have to keep banging away until you get it right. When you do, the payoff is nada - just the next load of the same [stuff].

Overall: ... repetitive, boring gameplay; stiff, slow controls and sluggish interactions; tiresome, repetitive environments. And what is up with the story? ...The cutscenes are interminable, and are best skipped. Thus there's no atmosphere, no believability, nothing drawing you into the game.

But it sure is shiny!

A good game, but not without it's flaws

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: June 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Splinter Cell is a great looking game. I don't like modern settings, but they did a beautiful job making the levels look great. Probably the best use of light and shadow in any game. The game moves along quickly, but it seems very linear and small to me. I'm just blasting through the levels.

Sam is one of the best animated characters in gaming. It's a pleasure to watch him go over a wall or pick up a body. He moves so fluidly and lifelike. He grabs the rungs on the ladders and his feet are in the right places too unlike games like Tomb Raider.

Some things I don't like...
The game takes itself very seriously. It's just a personal preference. I like a little humor in a game. The guards say some stupid things and they can be very repetetive. Sometimes I felt rushed to kill a guard hunting me because he just wouldn't shut up with his two lines, "Ollie Ollie upfree. Come out wherever you are." and "You're as good as dead". In the minute it took me to put this man out of his misery he seemed to have said this 15 times and I'd heard the same lines from several other guards. In a game like Thief or Thief 2, I never got tired of the guards lines. They were always coming up with new things.

I'm going to compare the playing style to Thief too. In Splinter Cell you play in third person. Thief was first person. It's really nice to see the character in Splinter Cell, but the thing I miss is the way the Garrett leaned in Thief. He could peek out without being discovered. With SC you can swing the camera out and look way around a corner, but sometimes you'll still get spotted while you're trying to move that camera around. When you were in total darkness in Thief, the guards wouldn't spot you if they stood on your toe. In Splinter Cell you can be in total darkness. If you've alerted the guards, they'll notice you in zero light, which is just annoying because you can't outrun them either. In Thief you at least had that ability to outrun and maybe jump into a well and hang on a rope. In Thief you might need to steal from a mansion and you'd have access to the whole place at the beginning with all your goals. In SC it seems like there's is one way to enter the grounds and one path to follow. The objectives get added as you go along because there's really no chance you aren't going to stumble across the trigger for the new objectives. You're on a path.

The things I did like in SC were...
Rappelling and climbing. This was beautifully done and I thought there could have been more of this. Seemed like there was a lot more shooting than sneaking. It was very rare that you would have more than one way to get someplace. Through the whole game I thought he needed a way to fire a rope arrow so he could climb whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted. When all you can do is climb pipes and ladders, it soon becomes very obvious where you are supposed to go. If you have some sort of grappling hook or rope arrow you can check out many alternate paths, but then the developers would have had to make a much bigger world.

I liked being able to grab people and make them talk or use a retinal scanner or just drag them off and knock them out, but once again, these options were rationed. You could only interogate a few specific people for some very limited dialogue. Compare this to the elaborate conversations (often funny) that you could have in Deus Ex.

I liked some of the gadgets, but you had to work to use them. Still, they're fun to play with. All in all I'd say Splinter Cell is one of the better games out in the last year. It could have been much better if it hadn't been so limited.

Game of the Year

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 12
Date: December 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The graphics come no where close to atari style. These are some of the most impressive graphics in a game I have seen for a while. The story is impressive. A nice touch is after completing a mission you see the results of your mission in a CNN style news cast. How ingenious. And finally the lack of options. What are you talking about? You don't have to kill your suspect. Why not just pistol whip him or knock him out in a sleeper hold. There are many ways to reach and objective. And some of the gadgets add a whole new dimension to the gameplay such as the thermal goggles, which allow you to "see through walls" by reading heat signatures. The list goes on. I believe because of your biased response, you are missing out on a great game.

WAIT, READ THIS FIRST----BORING...Good Night

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: February 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game has NOTHING in common with other Clancy games. Personally I do not care for the game at all. Having read the other reviews regarding this game, I was under the impression that they were similar in that you were part of a team trying to catch the bad guy. I enjoy shooting and blowing stuff up. This game is about one individual who has to sneek around, while trying to be extreamly quite, to complete his objective. This is fine if you DO NOT enjoy destroying things within a game. Buy this game for it's graphics, level of difficulty, and to enjoy a "sneaky" good time. However, please do not think that this is anything like Rouge Spear or Rainbow Six, it is not. All in all, I wish I could get my money back. This type of play just is not for me. I'm sure though that some will really have a great time being quite.

Not much fun :-(

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: December 15, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Right after the first map I knew I was not going to enjoy Splinter Cell. I was expecting stealth action, similar to the Hitman series, but in truth Splinter Cell offers very little action. Each map plays out like an obsticle course. You merely perform the required action to advance. No thinking is required at all. Your actions are scripted from start to finish. Very dull game.

Thumbs to the side, but angled upward.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: February 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I must admit this is one game I'm really torn on.

On one hand, the graphics are some of the best I've ever seen (especially lighting effects), and I really appreciate the number of moves available without controls being too complex or difficult to learn at all. It frankly just looks and plays very beautifully and smoothly (even on a mid-level system), and game load times are some of the most fast and efficient I've ever encountered (which is a joy in and of itself).

On the other hand, I'm more than halfway through the game, and have suddenly found it virtually impossibly difficult (maybe it's just the individual level?), and am quite frustrated by having to repeatedly save and load virtually every five steps I take just to make progress by trial and error at this point. Up until now, the game hasn't been *that* challenging, and it's suddenly turned. Most of the work seems to have gone into presentation over actual gameplay, at least to this point.

Overall, I'd say if one has a bit of money to burn, the graphics in-and-of-themselves might make this worthwhile. It's also a nice change to play a game where stealth is a marked factor over just shooting away (though I must add the stealth element is done 100 times better than other games like Hitman 2--it's not a pain like it can be in some games. If anything, it's closer to the periodic stealth element that occurred in No One Lives Forever 2--useful, but not an automatic game-ender if one blows it depending on circumstance).

This is a very good game, and worth a looksie for the more serious gamer looking for something a bit different. For someone looking for "wiser" spending choices, however, I'd still recommend No One Lives Forever 2, or perhaps Jedi Knight. Going through Warcraft 3 again might even be a more worthwhile way to spend one's time.

Splinter Cell has some great aspects to it, especially when it comes to presentation, but enjoyment and creativity values somehow leave something lacking when compared to some of the greats. Thumbs to the side, but angled upward. With some polish, a sequel could one day be a game of the year contender.

Awesome PC Demo Hampered by Lack of QA

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 15
Date: December 21, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing through the PC Demo again and again for the past two days and I have to say that I am amazed. This is the closest you can get to a modern day Thief: The Dark Project. Amazing graphics coupled with great interactive environments make for one of the most immersive gameworlds since, well Thief: TDP.

If your familiar with Thief, the game plays very similiarly, that is extremely well. If you arn't familiar with Looking Glass Studios masterpiece, consider playing a first person sneaker as opposed to shooter. The object is to remain unseen while you go about your objectives. Only bring force into the equation when absolutely necessary as getting into combat typically involves getting killed. What Splinter Cell brings to the Thief formula is modern world equipment, astounding graphics and some acrobatics on the part of the protagonist, Sam Fisher.

Praise aside the demo did have a myriad of technical issues on my Win98, Athlon XP, Geforce 4 TI system. One, it took me at least half an hour of messing around in the .ini file in order to get the game to run. It took me another day in order to get the .ini settings just right so that I wouldn't have to mess around for another half-hour each time I play. Second, the jaggies are really pronounced in Splinter Cell, especially when in Night Vision mode. Hopefully you have a video card capable of anti-aliasing because the jaggies can be quite distracting. Third, numerous graphical bugs plagued the demo. The glow around light sources was frequently visible through walls and Fisher himself, in addition I frequently spotted some texture corruption. In the end though these technical issues didn't ruin the experience but be forwarned.

All in all, I highly recommend Splinter Cell, and Thief: TDP for that matter, to anyone getting tired of the Quake formula for action games. If Ubi Soft and Red Storm can iron out the technical issues the 2003 year for PC games will definately open with a big bang.

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