TOM CLANCY'S SPLINTER CELL DOUBLE AGENT

GAME DETAILS :-

Developer : Ubisoft Shanghai, Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft Annecy & Ubisoft Milan

Publisher : Ubisoft

Engine : Modified Unreal Engine 2.5

Genre : Stealth And Modern Action-Adventure

Release Date : November 7 , 2006

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS :-

Operating System : Windows 2000 / Windows XP

CPU : Intel Pentium 4 Processor / AMD Athlon 2800+

Memory (RAM) : 1 GB

Graphics Hardware : DirectX 9.0c Compatible Video Card with Memory 128 MB

[NVIDIA : GeForce 6800 Series
ATI : Radeon X1800 Series]

Hard Disk Space : 10 GB

GAME FEATURES :-

Double Agent gives the impression that it might buck this trend. Early on in the game, Fisher loses his cool and winds up in prison after he's given some very bad news. Unfortunately there's no real follow-through on this plot point because Fisher's incarceration turns out to be a setup for him to get in good with an upstart terrorist group oddly called John Brown's Army (JBA). The JBA tentatively accepts Fisher as one of its own...but he's still working for the National Security Agency (NSA), which orders him to play nice and learn what makes these terrorists tick. The terrorist leaders have some personality, but they've got a pretty conventional blow-stuff-up plan. The game's whole premise wears thin as Fisher keeps getting crucial assignments from the bad guys, who inexplicably supply him with the experimental government-issue assault rifle he's always used. Eventually you'll wonder why Sam can't just kill them all and be done with it. But your patience will be rewarded, as there's an action-packed finale and multiple endings to look forward to based on the choices you make along the way. The controls are complicated to learn if you don't already know them, as even the simple act of opening a door presents you with multiple options: slam it open, use an optical cable to see what's on the other side, and more. But a couple of slick training missions make the learning curve more tolerable. Once on a real mission, enemy forces will respond to you by using the same tactics and behavior you'll probably recognize from the previous games, which still can't be considered a remarkable display of artificial intelligence. If you move too quickly, nearby guards will wander around searching for you. And if they spot you, they'll run behind cover and open fire. That's really about it. While the game's environments are all new, and some are very impressive, seeing all of the recycled moves, animations, and sound effects makes Double Agent's campaign feel like an update rather than a full-on sequel. There are also moments during the campaign when Fisher must make some sort of tough moral choice to stay in the JBA's good graces, though you could count these moments on one hand. The trust system mostly forces you to be more careful. Getting spotted by enemies will cause you to lose some of either the NSA's or the JBA's trust, and if either of your two trust meters runs out, it's game over.

The trust meters carry over from mission to mission, but by completing optional mission objectives for both the JBA and the NSA, you can remain in the good graces of both organizations. In practice, on the default difficulty setting, it isn't difficult to maintain your trust with both sides. The JBA base missions are a new concept for Splinter Cell, and they're hit or miss. You get about 30 minutes to snoop around and try to accomplish as many different objectives as possible. Sam can't attack his foes during these sequences, and if he's caught sneaking by his JBA brothers, their reactions just aren't believable. Getting through undetected is tense and feels rewarding, though these open-ended, pure-stealth missions will have you frequently reloading saved games until you can find the right way to slip through the JBA's security. The first couple of visits to the JBA base are entertaining, but because you'll return here between almost every major mission, it's less exciting after a while. And during one such mission, you're forced to decrypt an e-mail by completing a 3D sudoku puzzle, which seems oddly out of place. Fisher's main assignments in Double Agent take him everywhere from a massive tanker caught in a freezing-cold Russian winter to a sweltering-hot African town that's wracked by war. Interestingly, most of these missions take place in broad daylight, so Fisher will need to hide behind cover much more often than he'll need to slink through the shadows. In fact, you could go through most of the campaign without ever using his signature night vision goggles, and he won't even have them half the time anyway. The spies are even less like Sam Fisher than they used to be, which is great. They move about twice as fast as Fisher and have a number of their own unique moves and animations. What they don't have anymore is any kind of conventional weapon, though they can still use smoke grenades and other gadgets, as well as their high-tech wristband for neutralizing mercenaries' weapon systems. This same device is used for taking out lights, breaking glass, and downloading those precious files--a process that takes dangerous number of seconds. As soon as a spy starts downloading files from a terminal, the mercenaries are alerted to it and may follow an onscreen minimap to quickly get to the action. However, tracking down those pesky spies can still be difficult because most multiplayer maps in Double Agent are very, very dark, unlike the single-player missions.

Spies can't withstand much damage from mercenary machine guns, but they can still take out mercenaries by dropping on their heads or sneaking up behind them and snapping their necks. Mercenaries, in turn, can slam spies to the ground with a swing of their rifles and finish them off with a powerful head butt. It's great fun to pull off these types of moves in a multiplayer match, though there's a lot more sneaking and stalking in a typical match than full-on combat. As you play and win successive matches, you can unlock some bonuses, like a few alternate outfits for the spies and mercenaries, to help reward your continued effort. Because coordination is the key to success in this game, you may also form a squad with some of your friends and compete against other squads. Interestingly, Double Agent optionally lets you play with or against computer-controlled bots on the mercenary side, but not the spy side, presumably because the spies have too complicated of a job for the artificial intelligence to handle. The mercenary artificial intelligence is available in three difficulties and provides a respectable challenge. Double Agent also features a series of cooperative missions, which cast you and up to two other players as the spies and put you up against computer-controlled mercenaries. Some of these missions even have a competitive twist to them. Double Agent for the PC is a fine choice if the marginally better Xbox 360 version isn't an option for you. Sam Fisher is the star of the Splinter Cell series, so it's odd that the multiplayer portions of these games, which he's in no way a part of, seem to be evolving more rapidly than the solo campaigns. Double Agent's few keen twists on Splinter Cell's single-player gameplay don't result in a remarkably different experience from the previous games, though that doesn't mean it still isn't some of the best stealth action out there.

GAME REVIEW :-

8/10

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent Trailer :-