Splinter Cell: Double Agent review

The original Splinter Cell was an Xbox exclusive so it’s quite fitting that Sam Fisher makes his next generation debut on the Xbox 360. But this time round Sam isn’t just working for the government, now for the first time he’s gone undercover and is working for the terrorists as well, hence the games name Double Agent.

Decisions, decisions...

It’s the whole undercover aspect that makes this different from every other Splinter Cell game, before you were given your mission objectives and you had to get on with them. But this time you’ve got choices, every mission gives you a choice somewhere along the line, you can either do what the NSA asks, or do the terrorists bidding. Whatever decision you make will affect, another of the games new features, your trust meters, go with the NSA option too many times and your terrorist buddies may well end up killing you, but take the terrorists side too often and you’ll end up on the wrong end of a special forces gun barrel.

You have to balance out your decisions throughout the game, try to keep trust constant on both sides. No matter how much fun it is popping a cap in the good guys to keep your cover intact, you don’t want your real employers labelling you as expendable. It’s quite tricky getting the balance right, and it’s probably better not to risk blowing your cover as you spend about half the game in the terrorists HQ, doing as much to sabotage them as you do help.

Out of the darkness, into the light

Another change the series is taking is bringing the game out of the shadowy environment that has been so prevalent in past instalments. There’s still a fair bit of sneaking around in the dark to be done, but you’ll also be creeping around in more brightly lit locales. You’ll get to don some Arctic camouflage to sneak around a ship trapped in the ice, masquerade as a punter on a casino ship cruising the sunny seas and infiltrate a bombed out hotel in the middle of a war zone. This is a real departure for the series and makes a nice change from all the darkness. It makes things a bit more challenging when you have to worry more about what direction the guards are looking in, rather than what the light levels are.

Ubisoft has made the game a bit more forgiving to compensate for it though, now the only ways your game ends is if you die or your trust level drops to nothing. This doesn’t make it any easier though, it just gives you more of a chance to survive a mission if anything goes wrong. If you want things any easier you’ll have to adjust the difficulty levels, which are pretty balanced. If you’ve never played a Splinter Cell game before (there must be some of you out there) you best try things on the easy level, but for everyone else normal will be challenging without getting too frustrating. If you can finish the three previous games in your sleep though, best stick things on the expert level.

Some things never change

Despite the additions to the gameplay Double Agent remains the same as previous instalments in the series. You’ll play through a series of missions, each with its own objectives, both primary and secondary. Some of these are given to you by the NSA, the others by the terrorists, as usual you’ll have to complete the primary objectives, but the secondary ones are optional. There’s also the choice objectives mentioned earlier, usually you only get two, and usually it’s a choice between killing someone for the terrorists, or not killing them, but their one or two other choices, which will allow you to foil the terrorists and frame one of them for your actions.

Following the first mission you are sent to prison to free one of the terrorist as to achieve your cover. Missions then alternate between the terrorists HQ, and on locations around the world, at the terrorists HQ you’ll be given equal chance to gain further trust with them, as well as doing as much as you can to undermine them. There’s less sneaking to be done there, as you are meant to be there, but to achieve NSA objectives you’ll have to enter forbidden areas that are reserved for the upper echelon. But at the end of the day it’s all pretty much standard Splinter Cell fare, with a few tweaks.

Room for a couple more

Multiplayer too is largely unchanged from its introduction in Pandora Tomorrow, except this time round it’s six player instead of four. But it’s still the same spies versus mercenary style, there’s only the one game type though, and there is no option to host your own game, so it’s a little more limited than it was previously. Co-operative mode also returns, and now has more missions than previously in Chaos Theory and like the multiplayer supports an extra player.

There are now eighteen co-op missions, split in to groups of six, the first of which have to be completed before the next group are unlocked. All multiplayer modes are playable on either system link or over Xbox Live. As with the games previous incarnations the Live games run with nary a hitch and have remarkably stable net code for a Ubisoft game, no lag here or getting dropped from a game for no reason.

Never looked better

As with every other aspect of the game, little has changed on the presentation side, there has been a slight graphical upgrade, but it’s barely noticeable from Chaos Theory. This is more of a testament to how good that looked though and not a real criticism of Double Agent's visuals. Everything’s a little more polished, but I guess we’ll have to wait till next year's Xbox 360 exclusive instalment before the series gets some real next generation visuals.

The audio side is, as usual, outstanding, Hollywood veteran Michael Ironside returns again to voice Sam Fisher and is backed by a more than capable cast of voice actors. Sound effects are also extremely well done, as before, but there’s very little in the way of music, but you really don’t need it in this sort of game. Menus have also been given a slight overhaul, and now look better than ever, and use of the action button is now indicated with some funky new icons rather than the old text boxes. Overall the game has never looked better, with everything presented in high definition with Dolby surround sound and is almost as much fun to watch as it is to play.

One for the collection

If you’re a fan of the series, or stealth games in general this is a must have game. If you're not, with its more forgiving gameplay, Double Agent is the perfect place to give the series a try. With a good ten hours plus of single player game, even on the easiest difficulty, and the multiple endings the choice system provides adding to that, and a great co-op and multiplayer game on top this should provide you with plenty of enjoyment doe your money and keep you sneaking around for a long time to come.