Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
Developer: Ubi Soft Montreal
Publisher: Ubi Soft
Movement/Attack:There are several new, fun and necessary ways to move around in Splinter Cell including rolling, wall jumping, split jumping, mantling, climbing, shimmying, sliding down zip lines, peeking through doors, rappelling and hand-over-hand. You also have the ability, fortunately, to execute a soft, quiet landing.Attack modes are also interesting, including the always effective elbow to the head, drop attacks, and shooting from rappel, hanging, split jump and back to the wall positions. You'll use them all at some point during the game.When you're not attacking, you can use non-player characters (NPCs) as human shields, or you can grab and interrogate them.All of the movements and attack possibilities are very well done in Splinter Cell, and added to the stealthiness of my gaming experience.I'm not going to go through all of the weapons, gadgets and items found in the game (go read one of the other reviews for that info), but I will say that you get a relatively full assortment of what you might expect a 2003 special agent to have at his/her disposal.Why I'm The Only Press Person Who Doesn't Like Splinter CellWhen you get right down to it, there is one basic reason why I don't like Splinter Cell: it's LINEAR. Truly, unforgiveably, inevitably linear, to the point where, if you make one mistake, you need to go back to your last save point and don't make it again. Nothing branches out, there are no interesting sidebar things to perform. No, if you don't get everything EXACTLY right, you're screwed.Kill people when you're not supposed to, you lose. Take the left path when you should have taken the right, there is no real-time recovery; you need to revert to your last save point. Be seen once where you shouldn't be, there's no recourse other than to start that portion of the game over.Even when I completed missions, including the last one, there was no thrill of victory for me. No payoff that was meaningful, even the end of the game. After hours and hours of careful, stealthy, non-killing action (for most of the missions), I was left unsatisfied, wanting more. After dealing with the PC version sound going out time and time again in a deafening roar of static (using a plain, white, vanilla SB Live card here), not being able to enjoy what appears to be some good audio ambiance, I was left high and dry.I cannot imagine why people would enjoy playing Splinter Cell for more than an hour. The entire game is, basically, sneak around, sneak up behind guy, knock guy out (sometimes after interrogating him, using him as a shield, ramming his face up to a retinal scanner, etc.), then drag guy into a dark corner. Repeat step one. And so it goes, over and over again.I'm obviously in the minority of gamers, as Splinter Cell is wildly popular. A new Xbox level is coming out for it via Xbox Live! downloadable content, and I'm quite sure most people will like that too. You will excuse me if I don't join that group.Even linear games should have some other interesting things to do, should you want to stray away from the programmed storyline. Postal 2 was good in that regard. Yes, you had a set of things to accomplish, but not only didn't you have to do them in any order on a particular day, you could take hours running around the city setting elephants on fire, terrorizing the natives, etc. There's none of that available in Splinter Cell, which reminded me a lot like a Zork with cutting edge 3D graphics. Do what you're supposed to do, in order, or get stuck in one place.ConclusionI'm sure people will think I'm nuts, but due to the uber-linear nature of Splinter Cell, combined with the mundane things you need to do to get through all 10 missions successfully, topped off by the lack of a true reward once you do that, I'd have to say that Splinter Cell is one of the most overrated games I've ever seen in my many years of playing video games. After playing it, I'm certain I'll be passing on Splinter Cell 2, coming soon.Picture GalleryFor what it's worth, enjoy these 14 screenshots (click here for slideshow) I managed to grab before my brain melted...