Ah, sweet Splinter Cell, how I love you so. Forget Jack Bauer, I wanna be Sam Fisher. And though I've been a huge fan of the series from the beginning, and Double Agent certainly has a few extra tweaks to take the game to the next level, it also features a few quirks that make the game take a few steps back as well. If Sam is really a double agent, am I really the one being played?

THE STORY SO FAR
It is business for usual as Sam Fisher, as you find yourself out on a mission, trying to stop the launch of a missile, and once the job is done, off you go into the wild blue yonder, looking for your next thrill and mission. However, this will be the last normal day of Sam's life, as he gets word that his daughter has been killed in an accident. With nobody in life to keep him grounded, Sam falls into a state of disrepair with nothing keeping him attached to his normal life.

With the opportunity presenting itself, Lambert asks Sam if he'd like to go undercover and infiltrate a terrorist organization called the JBA. In your new position, you'll find yourself working both sides, as you must determine do you help your trusted NSA members, or fall to the dark side and join the JBA fully. Along the way you'll be forced to make some drastic decisions, such as choosing to poison the gas vents of a boat's bridge to please the JBA or taking them out in a more humane way. And not to spoil the game in any major ways, but you'll have even more life and death matters, where the outcome rests in your hands.

Speaking of these dramatic moments, many of them come through interactive cutscenes, where you get to control the action. As you parachute, for example, your parachute gets tangled, and you must move your thumbstick around to untangle and pull the other cord. Also, there will be decisions where you'll have a more hands on job, such as choosing whether to kill someone as per instructed or suffer the consequences. If you think the choice between good and evil is black and white, be prepared to meet gray.

SINGLE PLAYER: GAMEPLAY
During the early years of the franchise, Splinter Cell was all about how sneaky you could be, sneaking through the shadows, and making as little noise as possible. Since many people complained (thanks a lot for ruining a great game complainers) a bit of ease and flexibility was incorporated into later games, so that for those who wanted to go guns blazing, they could do that too and still win at the game. The problem is the game was made too easy, as new weapons like the knife were added, taking away the complete skill that was needed in the old days to run up to an enemy and do away with them with limited ammo capabilities.

So the gameplay plays out with you being given a mission, and you having free reign to go about completing it however you want. The gameplay of Splinter Cell is completely linear, though the game does a good job at disguising this by giving you multiple ways to proceed through. In a way, the game features an adjustable difficulty level, as you determine how hard you want the game to be by how you choose to play it. If you try to make the game as hard as possible, you'll limit yourself to no killing, whereas if you simply want to beat the game, you can gun people down with no remorse as well.

The controls are very intuitive once you learn the placements and what does what, as you can shoot your weapon, sneak walk, place your back against cover, hang from pipes, rappel, you use zips lines, etc. One of the reasons the controls work so well it because of the context sensitivity of the various buttons. For instance, by holding down the A-button in certain situations, you can do things like choose to open a door, open it in stealth, or bang that sucker open and make a ruckus. The A-button is also your all-around button for grabs, computer hacks, etc.

New to the series, which is a whole new way to experience Splinter Cell, are the JBA headquarter missions. In these headquarter missions, you find yourself right in the thick of the terrorists, and if you choose to help the NSA, you must complete secret objectives behind the backs of the terrorists, rushing a clock to try and get all the secret objectives done, requiring you to do such things as head into restricted areas, where if you are caught your trust with the JBA will go down. Though you walk most of the time, these levels work so well because you'll also have JBA assignments to do, like crack an email, all the while you have a time limit, where you must be back to your starting location in time or you'll feel the wrath of the JBA. Very tight, very tense, and pulled off very well.

One thing that has always split Splinter Cell from the rest of the flock was on its goggles, which allowed Sam to see beyond his normal vision. There is the night vision so that you can see enemies in the dark, thermalvision so you can see heat signatures, and also a vision that allows you to see electronics. Now, the original early games relied on these a great deal, since the game was so dark and you spent a lot of your time in the shadows. With Double Agent, however, since so many levels are now bright, providing you with little cover, the modes are completely unnecessary, and sometimes plain worthless, such as one icy level in particular, the ice and snow reflects the sun so much, night vision can't be used expertly at all. In fact, I managed to completely work through the game without ever using my goggles once.

And that is part of what hampers the game – it doesn't feel like the Splinter Cell I first fell in love with. The goggles are but one problem, while another is the knife and ease of use that I complained about in the last game, and my hatred for it still remains in this game too. Also, it is possible to simply run through levels (or at least one that I know of) and that would be unheard of in a Splinter Cell game before. It came down to where I needed to quit playing, and I was trying to see how much more I had in the level, and so I just booked it, taking a few shots as I ran, but soon enough I found myself at the end of the level, and instead of going back and playing it properly, I instead just chose to move on ahead.

Another fault with the game is that it is over far too quickly. Yes, you can play through the game several times to try different paths or to follow the good or bad side (depending on which one you didn't choose to begin with) but it was only a few missions and it was all over it seemed like.

MULTIPLAYER: GAMEPLAY
Known for its revolutionary multiplayer, Splinter Cell: Double Agent has taken that beloved multi and tweaked it just slightly. In multi, players will choose from either the mercs or spies side. The spies side works just like the single player game, as your characters control like Sam Fisher and features many of the same gadgets. With the mercs, however, it is a whole other story, as you'll be able to play with different gadgets the spies can't use, but the biggest change is that the mercs play in a first person shooter mode. The only real downside to Splinter Cell's multi is that many people want to play as the spies, so it can be hard to get a team of mercs together to do battle.

If battling isn't your deal, you can also play co-op challenges, featuring a few different choices regarding how you play them: there are training courses (1-on-1 games against a bot), Files Race (download files within a time limit), Maximum Percentage (download as much as possible), 25% Max (download and secure two files for your team), Double Agent (secure two files against bots or players), and Best Agent (compete against other spies).

Anyway you cut it, the multi of Splinter Cell: Double Agent is quite fun, and will extend your gameplay time with the game once you've breezed through the single player.

GRAPHICS
Sam has never looked better, and part of it is because he no longer has to hide in the shadows, forcing you to overlook the wonderful graphics in favor of dimmed tones of green. Since Double Agent takes place in so many lighted areas, you'll really get to appreciate the level of detail in everything from the characters to the gritty and decayed streets of Africa. When it comes to graphics, Splinter Cell doesn't show a fault.

SOUND
Great voicework. Great sound. And great music. The holy trinity of sound work in videogames. The sound is where the game really excels, as it features a ton of ambient noise, which really help bring the world into reality, and a few scares when you'll suddenly hear something like footsteps or a door opening, and you quickly scurry to a hiding place like a coach roach running from the light.

IN CONCLUSION
The game is a beauty and sounds excellent, and though the multi is really fun, the single player is a tad lacking in regards to both length and enjoyment due to a few of the changes the game made since the early days. It is still a really well done game, but far from perfect, but if you are looking for a game to showoff your Xbox 360, you can't really argue against suggesting Splinter Cell: Double Agent.

Rating:
Our Scoring System