Dear Internet,
You
know, Internet, I really wanted to have fun playing "Splinter
Cell." I really wanted to like this
game, but that is not saying much. It
would not have been on the Backlog if I did not want to play it and like it. If I did not think I was going to like it at
all, I would not force myself to watch it.
The only reason for doing such a thing is to justify an argument against
the work. The last time that I did that
was with "The Notebook," and I would not like to go through that
again. "Splinter Cell" is not
a bad game in most sense, but it is a frustrating game to say the least. But I said in my last entry I was going to
say something about the game's story, so I will start there.
"Splinter
Cell" has got a pretty generic story even if it is a bit confusing. Basically, Sam Fisher is brought out of spy retirement
to serve his country. Beginning with the
disappearance of two NSA agents, Sam follows breadcrumbs that lead him to terrorists. The terrorist leads him to the head of a
former Soviet country. The head of the
country leads him to a WMD. Throw in a
few Communists, inter-spy agency spying, and a few paramilitary organizations
and you have got all the trappings of a by the book secret agent adventure
story. It is all a lot of very overdone clichés. There is nothing really wrong with using clichés,
recycled tropes, and old story techniques.
The problem is that "Splinter Cell" does a rather poor job in
presenting these story elements to the player in a way that minimizes
confusion.
The
story definitely felt confusing, and not in the suspenseful manner that it was
going for. Lots of names and countries
get thrown around at the player in a way to justify the various settings that
the game uses. Sam goes pretty much
around the world twice, sneaking all the way.
However, the game's plot made no real impression on me in the end. None of the very few characters are given any
depth short of Sam who is shown to have a daughter. When one character is shot dead, the game
tries to invoke sympathy, but seeing as the character had only appeared twice
or so, and only to transport Sam around in the back of a van, I did not really
care about that character kicking the bucket.
It is even pushed harder upon the player when the game tries to show Sam
hiding his grief over losing that character.
Then there is the plot's McGuffin, which appears late in the game. The cast does not know what it is until the
final hour or so, and when it is revealed it comes as no shock to the
player. The worst part about how the
game handles the story is that it is all shoehorned into bookends. In between missions, the player sees a series
of news clips made to show the effects of what the mission accomplished. While this is a neat way to show the story,
the problem is that it occurs rapidly and after a long stretch of
gameplay. Just as soon as one news clip plays,
another one cuts in. They go by so fast
that they do not have time to sit and be absorbed by the player. It is made worse by the juxtaposition of the
slow gameplay that the game revolves around.
Instead of being sources of information, they speed by and break any
sort of flow that is occurring before and after.
The
locations in the game are varied, but they all felt similar. I know I was in Myanmar at one point for some
reason, but do not ask me why. You could
even break the various locations down into three key groups. There is the outdoor location, with
streetlights and no ceiling. There is
the indoor location, which is just narrower than the outside locations. And then there is the building on fire, which
seems to happen a lot and is just hotter than the other two. The only other variable to the location
equation is whether or not you can kill the people that populate the
location. Eventually you get to the
point where you can kill some but have to wait until they punch in the passcode
to a security door, which led to a number of aggravating sections of the game
where I was chastised and failed the mission because I killed out a guard that
was supposed to unlock a door, but I had reflectively killed him when he came
around a corner. How was I supposed to
know that he was going to unlock a door when I had neither seen the door nor had
trigger the scripted event when he turned around instead of walking straight
towards me? Bah, at least the game told
me why I should not have killed him, but it is an annoyance when the game
forces you to fail to tell you something or to advance the game.
The one
thing that irked me the most is probably the gameplay itself, or at least parts
of it. I have already talked about the
various gadgets that the game has and how they are fun to use, but let me talk
again about the moving mechanics. Trying
to find a hidden ladder is frustrating, especially when it is in the corner of the
kitchen of a Chinese restaurant. The
idea that Sam and the NSA just knew that there would be a ladder placed
specifically there that could get them into an embassy is silly. If anything, it shows that the NSA is just
winging it at that point and has no idea what to do. But then there is the collection of side
jumping points where you are more likely to jump off a cliff than reach the
desired platform. In the last mission,
there is a really annoying part where you have to climb up the side of a
cliff. It is done terribly because of
how awkward the game handles platforming.
Maybe this is because of how games since "Splinter Cell" have
refined climbing and jumping mechanics to the point where it is a selling
point. Take the "Assassin's
Creed" franchise which mostly gets climbing and free running down
perfectly, buggy recent games not counting.
The non-stealth movement found in "Splinter Cell" is like
handling a potato on a string made worse when you try to jump to a pole that
you cannot climb, fall, make a noise, and have everyone start shooting at you.
 |
| You see that scaffold? I am supposed to be able to walk over to it. Instead, the game makes a six inch gap that I have to jump over and alert all the guards. |
The
gameplay is slow. It has to be
slow. "Splinter Cell" is a
stealth game. You have to creep past
enemies without being seen or making a sound.
To do that, you generally have to go slowly and monitor the
situation. However, did some of the
missions have to take an hour or two to finish?
Could the game have broken the missions up into smaller bits to make
more missions and make the missions easier digestible instead of pushing for long
session plays? Perhaps, but I found
myself getting frustrated and tired with how long some of these missions
got. It gets worse when the game tells
you to do something and refuses to gives bad hints as to how to accomplish
it. One time, the game told me to meet
up with an individual for extraction.
The person did not say where the extraction was going to take place, so
I looked at the abstract map that the game gives to where the extraction would
take place. I figured that I had to
leave through the front gate that was being operated by a soldier. I tried time and time again to knock unconscious
all three guards so I could get into the security booth, hoping to find a lever
or switch to open the gate. There was no
switch. I was supposed to have climbed
up a pole that I had walk right past at least two times to get into an alley
that I did not know existed. I am not saying
that these things should be as obvious as having a glowing outline, but a game
needs to have some sort of visual identification to show available interaction.
 |
| An effort in futility. |
In the
end, "Splinter Cell" is a unique game that frustrated me to the point
that I tried everything to just get it over with. Terms like "Invisible 1" and
"Playersonly" will help you understand what I mean. I wanted to get into this game, but it
frustrated me too much. Perhaps the game
is just showing its age. The graphic
quality is a testament to this, even if I do not count graphics as a strike
against it. There is plenty wrong with
the game, but there is plenty right with it as well. I am just so underwhelmed by certain aspects
of it that I found myself forcing myself to finish it. Maybe it is enjoyable to someone else, but
not for me. I would rather go back and
play "Deus Ex: Human Revolution" or "Batman: Arkham Asylum"
if I want fun sneaking rather than this.
Yours in digital,
BeepBoop
P.S. Tomorrow is "Valkyria Chronicles."
No comments:
Post a Comment