Splinter Cell (PS2)

There is nothing like surprising an unknowing guard on his routine

There has always been a lot of waiting to do for us PlayStation owners. Not least in these parts of the world, where we have a different TV-signal than the major game producing countries.

Luckily this time the wait for Splinter Cell has often been rewarded with extra levels, better frame rate and other goodies, and even though Splinter Cell is a bitterly obvious piece of evidence, that the Xbox is in fact technically superior to the PS2, there are good things in hold for the patient Sonyac as well.

Confessions of a filmlover

Movies are great for creating atmposphere and here Ubi Soft has added a lot of them

I have said it before and I’m saying it again: Just because the average gaming console is capable of generating some excellent ingame-graphics these days, you don’t have to abolish cinematic sequences. I always enjoy a cool FMV, which makes Ubi Soft’s choice to replace the Xbox-versions ingame-graphics based sequences with good old-fashioned and brilliantly animated cinematics an excellent one.

Ok, it might be a hint that the PS2’s powers can’t keep up, but the entirely new custom made PS2 intro engages the player so much more in the game, and gives a much wanted intro to the situation you’re in from the start, that no one should feel diminished.

The story won't just take you to Georgia but also China where Nikoladze has some seriously nasty plans rolled out

This way you’ll get more of that cinematic feeling the Xbox-version tried to accomplish, but never quite succeeded in projecting, while you follow two CIA-agents’ failed attempt to infiltrate the very suspicious president of Georgia - Kombayn Nikoladze.

The precarious situation forces NSA’s newly formed sub-agency Third Echelon to dig up old contacts, which is why you, in the personification of the otherwise retired agent Sam Fisher, are send to Georgia to track down the missing agents. Being a Tom Clancy based game, this of course leads to further information of some Georgian rogue state tendencies, and so you must hang around while you‘re further entangled in what turns out to be a corruption scandal of international proportions.

Total control

Even though it is pretty neat to be able to shoot around corners, it can be quite confusing to get back to full battleposition when you are exposed

Splinter Cell rolls out in third person perspective and the camera problems this has coursed so many times before, is elegantly solved by giving the player total control of the camera. This way you can control Sam’s movements with the left analogue stick and the camera with the right, making it easy to find your bearings in the environment, which is a very important part of the gameplay.

Supplementing this is a vast array of movements, giving you plenty of different ways to manoeuvre through each area. Having said that, you actually don’t have too much choice regarding your course of action, seeing that the game is strictly linear which doesn’t leave much room for creative solutions. Not a big problem the first time around but it seriously sets back the replay value.

Your suit is fitted with lightsensors which, via the gage in the right corner, shows you how visible you are

You can sneak, walk or run by pressing the analogue stick with differing force. You can make diving summersaults, rappelling, climb pipes, slide down wires and best of all: You can do split jumps, nailing yourself between two walls waiting for a guard to come by, not knowing that he’ll be waking up hours later with the scar of a military boot on his face.

Of course you can sneak along walls and peek around corners and shoot, and all these movements are excellently hand animated. This gives a far more floating movement than the normal Motion Capture technique gives you and even though the result is a more artistic than realistic feel it raises the overall cool factor of the game.

License to it all

Shoot out all the lights and put your night vision goggles on, and your opponents won't stand a chance

The nice part about being a top-secret agent in a top-secret sub-division of a top-secret American secret service agency is that you are in fact above the law. You don’t officially exist, what you’re doing never took place and therefore there is no reason to let ordinary legislation get in the way of the subjective.

But keeping in mind that one of the most important things in a secret agents life is to stay secret, even though you have a license to kill, this is seldom the smartest way to solve a situation. Sam Fisher has not a lot of weapons at hand, but is rather dependent on a lot of hi-tech stuff instead.

With a camera deployed to an area you haven't been to, you can check the surroundings and dispose of curious enemies

Striving to get as close to the enemy as possible without being noticed, you’ll be using nice gadgets like night vision goggles, thermal goggles, fibre optic cameras to peek under doors, lock picks, laser mics, electronic jammers disabling electronic equipment and last but not least some deployable niceties making your one man army seem bigger than it is.

These come in forms of distraction devices you can deploy with your rifle, after which they’ll be sending out a high-pitched sound undoubtedly attracting enemies. When a guard sticks his nose down to check out the source of the sound you can release a bucket of gas in his face, giving you one less enemy to worry about.

My personal favourite however is the deployable camera that sticks to all kinds of surfaces, giving you the chance to do some reconnaissance of areas you are about to penetrate. These cameras can switch between night- and thermal vision, making it impossible for anything to hide from you.

No eyes, no access

NSA's communication strategies pt. 1 - Place your gun right behind the ear...

Of course violence is unavoidable in your profession as a secret agent and a good handful of Russian soldiers will have fallen at the end of your silenced gun by the end of the day. Not because you hate Russians or people or just are a plain psycho, but because these guys have a tendency to put code locks on their doors. Ok, so you can find most of the numeric codes hidden away in e-mails in computers scattered around, but it’s just not that easy when a door is locked with an eye scanner.

This will evidently make it necessary to have a “conversation” with the proprietor of said eyes. Luckily you can just stick a gun to their head and force their eyes to the scanner, and this little hostage thing is also very useful should you at some point find yourself being the attention of too many hostiles.

Boss Lambert keeps you more or less up to date via radio, and he will instruct you not to leave bodies lieing around

The Russians are namely not very keen on the concept of “Friendly Fire”, but won’t hesitate to shoot if they find a clear shoot past their comrade, making it quite difficult to get away even though you have a hostage.

Another thing the enemy soldiers aren’t very keen on is a bleeding colleague lying around. Therefore it is of critical importance that you hide the ones you kill or someone will without doubt, and often at the most inappropriate moment, sound the alarm. While you might be able to get away with this a couple of times, neither your enemies nor your pals back at the office will let you get away with it too many times, meaning that you’ll fail the mission the fourth time an alarm goes off.

A clean kill

It takes stealth and patience to infiltrate the powerplant in the exclusive PS2 level but the atmosphere is intense

Splinter Cell is a sublime game on PlayStation as well as on Xbox. The gameplay is up there with the best in the genre and even though the graphical differences between this and the Xbox-version are very obvious the atmosphere is intact.

The excellent new cinematics and an entirely new mission, developed exclusively for the PS2, goes some way in minimizing the scars it gives in the soul of any PlayStation fanatic when the debated differences between Xbox and PS2 are so obviously displayed as here.

Smoke and reflections are apparently easier to do on PS2 than dynamic lighting

A lot has been shaved off. Almost all environmental detail has been removed to maintain full CPU power to the far less impressive lightning. The shadows are still dynamic but the light isn’t and this results in a much less accomplished colour depth of the overall game.

If you are in the lucky position of owning both an Xbox and a PS2 the choice is obvious – the Xbox-version exceeds the PS2-version by miles. If you however don’t have the luxury of both consoles the choice is just as obvious – Splinter Cell is an impressive game pushing the PS2 to deliver a gaming experience not to be missed. There’s no way around it…