GAMING

- reported by Osiris.


Veteran spy Sam Fisher returns in the fourth installment of the Splinter Cell series, and this time he is going deep undercover in a terrorist organization on US soil. Splinter Cell Double Agent was released on all major platforms, with a huge media emphasis being placed on the Xbox 360 version. However after reading the next review, you will realise why old is still the best.
















In the Xbox version, the game plays as a flashback of all the sequence of events which took place when you were a double agent. You start off with a routine mission in Iceland, but with a partner named Hisham Hamza, who is working as a agent for both the NSA and the CIA. Halfway through the mission, your boss Lambert suddenly calls off the mission and orders you to head to the extraction zone. Sam refuses to leave, and his partner follows suit. However Lambert tells Sam that he would not abort the mission if he did not have a good reason. ( Could it be due to the ongoing conflict between the Socialists and the Terrorists? )



Sam and Hisham rappelling down an icewall in Iceland.








Aboard the V-22 Osprey, Lambert informs Fisher that his daughter Sarah had been killed by a drunk driver. Fans who have played Splinter Cell since the first game, or read the books, will know that Sarah is the last closest kin to Sam, after his wife's early death. Fisher is unable to take the news well and breaks down, but Lambert needs him mentally fit for another important assignment, and perhaps the most dangerous of all - infiltrating a terrorist organization and pretending to be one of them while destroying the terrorists from within.



You will encounter many high-tech security measures when entering restricted areas in the JBA HQ.








Hence the NSA fakes a series of robberies to strengthen Sam's cover ( this part is not explained in the game ) and send him to Ellsworth Penitentiary, where he becomes acquainted with cell-mate Jamie Washington, a member of terrorist organization John Brown's Army aka JBA. After helping Jamie to escape from jail, the bespectacled man is grateful for Sam's help and offers him a place in the JBA. Sam of course accepts the invitation.

From here the tension begins to mount. You will receive objectives from both the JBA and the NSA, sometimes opposing, and you have to choose whose orders to follow. Your decisions will affect the trust of both parties, which is represented in the form of a slider trust meter. It is best to remain the slider in neutral, but too much trust on either side will either blow your cover or result in you being disowned by the agency. There are also moral decisions which you have to make in game. Aboard a cruise ship in Mexico, you can choose to detonate a bomb your partner has planted, or you can choose to sabotage it and save 2000 lives. In Africa, the JBA boss discovers that one of their partners, Hisham Hamza, is in fact a double agent and orders you to take him out. The NSA however wants you to extract him safely. It is these little decisions which may affect the outcome of the game.












Note I mention the word 'may'. This is because despite the emphasis Ubisoft has played on this new trust system, it really does not seem that important whether you choose "decision A" or " B". The impacts of these choices on the game seem so trivial that you can always easily change things around in the next mission. However you may miss out on certain cinematics or bonus missions depending on your decisions.




Sam has a love interest in the game.. ^^









The levels in Double Agent are clearly much bigger and longer than its predecessor Chaos Theory, with every mission being broken into two parts. However the graphics were a letdown, and in some cases, the 2005 game seemed somewhat more beautiful than its successor. All the missions take place at night, or in a dark environment, but in some missions Sam does not always have his trusty equipment like his SC-20K rifle or even his trademark goggles. This really tests the player on his stealth abilities and pushes the genre to the limit. The A.I is still disappointing, because at times when you are so close to the enemy you would think that they would spot you any moment, they just walk on. However when you are sneaking behind a guard to grab him, he suddenly whirls around and you might have to reload from a save-point just to retain that stealthy status in the game.



Sam proves that he is still as lethal even when only armed with a combat knife.








For the single-player part, the Xbox version features one exclusive single-player mission ( Money Train ) and seven additional minutes of cinematics which help explain the game more clearly than its next-gen consoles. Fans of Chaos Theory's co-op play will be pleased to know that co-op mode has returned with more missions. Ubisoft has also scrapped the Spy versus Mercenary mode for the new Spy versus Spy multiplayer. ( I admit that I have not played any multiplayer mode yet, because I do not have Xbox Live, but stay tuned for an update on the co-op offline gameplay. )

Yes, the Xbox version may not feature spectacular visuals or new gadgets as seen in its next-gen counterparts. However Ubisoft Montreal, which designed the current-gen versions, has managed to keep the key elements which has made the Splinter Cell franchise such a successful game series. The storyline could have been established further, but other than a few hiccups, this is still Splinter Cell, and perhaps the best on the Xbox console. ( Its closest competitor would be Chaos Theory. ) The different choices and alternate endings increase the game's replay value and you would want to try the game on a different route just to see how you can perform better or wreck the whole operation.

If you do not know, many gamers who have bought the Xbox 360 version have traded it for the Xbox version. Find out why in our next review on the PC version, which is a port of the next-gen console version.

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