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| I wonder what the NSA is up to now-a-days. |
Dear Internet,
"Tom's
Clancy's Splinter Cell" will be eleven years old come November. For some reason, it feels older, as if it was
back in the late 90's when it came out.
This might be because the seventh game in the series just released a
week or two back. That averages one
every other year if you add in the original development time, less if you do
not. The latest one looks like an action
shooter game by what the TV trailers are showcasing instead of a stealth based
one. The real kicker that got me
laughing was when they started to advertise stealth weapons available in-game if
you pre-ordered it. Does that mean
otherwise the game would not give you stealth accessories to complete a stealth
game? That is like admitting your game
is no longer about stealth. But never
mind my mindlessness or current trends of oversaturation from other genres. Right now, let us look at the original game.
"Splinter
Cell" follows Sam Fisher, espionage extraordinaire who works for the NSA
as part of a special enforcement group.
He sneaks into office buildings.
He creeps onto oil rigs. He slips
into foreign mansions. He pilfers files,
photos, and pass codes. Using a suppressed
gun, he shoots light bulbs, cameras, and guards. All the while, Sam uses night vision
goggles. He does this less because he
needs to see in the dark, but more because he likes the little electronic chime
that signals their activation, or maybe that is me. Either way, Sam is the go to guy for infiltration
while leaving no trace of his actions. Or
at least that is the general idea of the game.
"Splinter
Cell" requires the player to spend a significant portion of the game
sneaking in a crouched position, hiding in the dark. Thankfully, the game grants the player a
light sensor bar. On a scale of 0-4, the
bar indicates the amount of light that is hitting Sam. More light means that there is a better
chance for an enemy to spot Sam.
Sneaking in total dark, allows Sam to pretty much walk straight up to an
enemy before they figure out he is there.
The light gauge makes things a whole lot less complicated as compared to
other games that try to implement stealth aspects. Most games, now at least, will attempt to
shoehorn in stealth and disregard any sort of indication as to the game's
mechanics for the sake of "immersion." What ends up happening is the player never
knowing when he is safe or in danger because of the unsaid, grey, and fuzzy
line that the game sees when it computes the data. In "Splinter Cell," you know when
and where it is safe and where you should not dare set foot lest you kill
everything on site.
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| Notice the segmented bar above the gun logo on the right. If this screenshot was not taken with night-vision goggles activated, it would be pure black. |
Well,
you could knock the various guards, cops, and henchmen out by sneaking up
behind them, which is the proper way, considering that you can interrogate
certain individuals for information. If
you try to sneak up to a guard while the surrounding is pitch black from the
person's front, you will end up being pelted with a number of bullets before
Sam is able to stand up and punch them in the face. I am not sure if I am doing it correctly or
if there really is no proper method to take out guards from the front without
eating half a clip. In fact, half the
time I feel like I am not doing something the proper way at all.
Let me
take the various climbing mechanics first off to explain what I mean. There is a designated "jump" button
that makes Sam hop a little. At the same
time, it lets him climb up any waist high obstacles and grab onto ledges while airborne. You need to jump to grab ledges. You cannot just reach up to some ledges to
begin climbing unless they are ladders and a few very specific instances. This is all well and good. The problem arises when the game makes it
pretty darn finicky as to what you can and cannot do. For example, in one segment, I saw a ledge
decorating a side of a building. In some
segments, you can climb it. In the part
that I was in, the game would not let me grab on to the ledge and slide across
the building and avoid the guards below.
I would just jump up, and not grab on to anything at all. The problem is that the game does nothing to
indicate as to when you can or cannot do specific maneuvers in relation to the environment. See a ledge that would be good to climb up to
and walk on top of to avoid a guard? It
may be feasible, and it may not.
Then
there are the times that you can think beyond the abilities of the game, which
is where the game shows its age. One
time, I wanted to go out an open window and hang on the ledge. I planned on leading an enemy to the window
and hanging out the window, out of sight.
As I let Sam lower himself out the window to test my plan before trying
to lure the guard, the game would have him go down and then instantly pull
himself up. He would not passively hang
there and wait for player input to pull himself up. There went that plan. Another time, I wanted to shoot a light out to
let me sneak past an enemy. Sadly, the
light was apparently made of stone and could not be hit by a bullet. It swung on the wire it was hanging from, but
kept on shining.
Numerous
times today when I was playing, I found there to be only one single way to
solve each room's puzzle. Now, that is
not necessarily a bad thing. Puzzle
games only have one solution, but this is not a puzzle game. "Splinter Cell" gives the player a
bunch of tricks to get through the game, which also implies that there are a
variety of different ways to tackle each hurdle. It somewhat implies that there are different
ways to solve every problem, but this is not the case. If you are presented a room with three
guards, you should be able to assess the situation and determine the best
solution. What will end up happening is
a forth guard will show up from nowhere and fall over the bodies of the other
guards, which will in turn make him trigger the alarm. This extra guard will show what the one real
solution is. In "Splinter Cell,"
it feels more like a trial and error situation than a test of well planned
attack. Double checking all the corners
and looking under the doors to see what is behind them will only get you so
far. Throwing yourself into the fray to
see where all the enemies are will yield more information.
This
does not stop me from colliding with certain broken and buggy aspects of the
game. I spent fifteen minutes on a
single zip line. It was at the begging
of the oil rig level. In the game, you
are supposed to jump up to a zip line, ride it down, automatically fall, and
automatically cling to a ledge that you can pull yourself up. Did you notice those two uses of
"automatically"? Between those
two automatically parts, the game would refuse to line things up. Over twenty times, I had to repeat this
segment because Sam would refuse to grab onto that ledge and would fall into
the water. I had to look up guides
online to see if I was doing the right action considering that an explosion
also occurs at the same time. Because of
this broken obstacle, I started to abuse the quicksave feature and began to use
it with all the other aspects of the game.
Thankfully, the game allows the player to save whenever they wish
to. Otherwise, that single hurdle might
have taken more than half an hour to do.
Afterwards, I started to never go five minutes without quicksaving my
progress lest the game throw a screwball at me.
If the game is going to be picky with deciding whether or not it will do
what it is supposed to, I am going to take full advantage of a feature that
lets me insure my efforts.
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| I hate you, oil rig level. |
That
will be all for today. More come
tomorrow. Probably on what the game does
right.
Yours in digital,
BeepBoop
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