Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell® Reviews

Even it is a quite old game. The fun and excitement factor is still high and magnetic. Especially when you are one man army ;-)

Fantastic game. Terrible company. In desperate need of an update to allow controller support.

One of the best games of all time IMO. While it does show its age in some spots, it still holds up very well 20+ years later. Give the series a shot! what's the worst that could happen ;)

The concept and story is cool, but the mechanics are completely awful to play around, especially with the later missions being less interesting and more of a tedious slog

Good game even considering its age. Stealth mechanics are very simple: stay in shadows, don't walk too fast, don't shoot near enemies - and you can get anywhere you want. The main difficulty comes from NPCs having great hearing and sight, which allows them to hear any step except the lightest and slowest ones and detect player even if they showed themselves only for a fraction of moment. And even though it creates a lot of bullscheize moments, fighting against enemies that actually have eyes and ears is very refreshing in our times of games with dumbest NPCs that barely notice presence of player even when they stand in front of them. Other thing that deserves mentioning is movement: character's speed can be set with great precision because it is regulated with a slider. It adds a lot to the immersion and allows to move quickly even while crouching, making it much more comfortable than in other stealth games, in which crouching usually means being irritatingly slow. Possible interactions with surroundings are also impressive: character can roll, hang on edges, pull himself up, press against the walls - or even do the splits in the air between the walls -, and then fall on the enemy from above to knock them down. Such variety makes gameplay much more engaging, and enables player to be able to find a solution to almost any situation. But being flexible and acrobatic isn't enough to come victorious in the end of every encounter. When hanging and doing splits isn't enough - to help comes arsenal of different spy devices: multi-vision goggles, camera jammer, explosives, smokes, fiber optic camera - and also sticky cameras, shockers and foil rings (for knocking down enemies) that can be launched from the gorgerous rifle that's possessed by main character. Also there is a sidearm with silencer that has zero accuracy if character moves even a bit, but even that abomination is handy for destroying bulbs. And although all these valuables are limited, great feats can be achieved if they are applied thoughtfully! Level design is also pretty nice: every location has distinctive style, music and enemies to better fit part of the world in which they are set. Moreover, each level is nicely detalized and feels like a real place, most of the time. The only downside is that sometimes levels are done like little mazes, and it can be disorienting. The worst part of the game is AI. It's smart, but in unfair way. Sometimes it just knows where player is, shoots with great accuracy, can bug out and get stuck in constant "alarmed" mode, and sometimes doesn't react to distractions unless is hit with something in the head. Trying to get to enemy from behind to knock them out can be infuriating because they tend to look around a lot and can hear player if they are not moving with the slowest speed possible. And to reach NPC while moving in the slowest speed possible - it needs to be standing still. And of course, most of the time they don't stand still. So either you get lucky and time everything just right, or you'll need to hope that this time NPC won't turn around with the speed of light because you try to move a bit faster than a snail. Overall, it's not making gameplay more challenging, just tedious because of how much you'll need to wait for the NPC to stand just right, or to load a save because of its super reactions. And that will happen a lot. Ah, and the last thing: plot. Just forget about it, okay? It's so typical "Save the world, all hope is only on you, super secret super agent!" and lacks so much of logic that there is really nothing to talk about. Characters aren't deep or memorable either, though sometimes funny. In the end, I would say that the very first Splinter Cell is at least worth a try. It's a good stealth action, and it's a nice reminder of how games in this genre should be done.

It's like MGS but without the wack-ass, anime characters and story. 10/10 I've played it countless times before the review, but the CD has too many scratches so I had to grab a digital copy.

The starting point of the Splinter Cell series, this is still a very good game. No widescreen support and controls are a bit funky to accommodate the need to control move speed with kb+m, but still pretty solid. My one major complaint that isn't due to its age is that, despite being a stealth game, they threw in forced combat sections where enemies can just know where you are in pitch black darkness. Playing on hard difficulty, that led to some very annoying deaths. Minor complaints are the inability to interact with things like doors while carrying a body, the almost total uselessness of the split jump, and the pistol being inaccurate even when you sit still. Also that the game doesn't tell you to use the scroll wheel when the SC20k is out so you can snipe/right click while sniping to hold breath and steady your aim. Overall, a bit jank, but worth a go, especially if you plan on getting Pandora Tomorrow or Chaos Theory so you have a frame of reference for how the series improves.

It was ok, and a great intro to Sam Fisher as a character. Wish they gave a better tutorial on your godforsaken SC-20K because I went through the whole game without knowing how to zoom in on the rifle until the last objective lmao

So, this really was a blast from the past! I remember playing this game a lot on my Playstation 2 when it came out, but it was so long ago that I only remembered some bits here and there. With that said and after finishing the game once again in the most stealthy way that the missions would let me, I definitely recommend this game. It didn't age terribly, but it still aged and to me it was great playing it again because I knew what to expect. It's hard to recommend this to newcomers especially with the high gaming standards nowadays... I'll sure recommend it to people that like retro gaming, but if you're looking to play something new to you, have in mind that this is an old game. It's good, but it didn't come out yesterday. Just a heads up, it is possible to fix the missing shadows by adding "-shadowmode=projector" without the quotes to the Launch Options in the game's Properties. It is also possible to play at any resolution you want by editing the line "Resolution" inside the file "...\Steam\steamapps\common\Splinter Cell\SplinterCellUser.ini" present on the game's folder.

A message to UBISOFT. Guys, this was the golden era. The two coolest things on this planet in no particular order are; The Matrix and Splinter Cell. What a fantastic game, its over 22 Year old and destroys anything you have made in the last 15 years... If you want to save your company... you know what to do ... OVER AND OUT