Pick your side carefully, now.
My track record with Splinter Cell games isn't exactly what you'd call spotless. I eventually made my way through a chunk of Splinter Cell, but it wasn't pretty. I absolutely didn't manage to get through much of Chaos Theory, but I was eager to find out more about both games, and the series as a whole.
Now we've got another instalment to add to the 'must get better at or die trying' list of Tom Clancy titles, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent.
Sam Fisher is not in a good place and needs to please both the NSA who employ him and the JBA terrorists that he's been placed undercover with. How far do you follow your orders? How do you keep both the terrorists and the counter-terrorists happy? Who will you side with when the credits roll?
It certainly sounds interesting enough for me to find out.
Fun Times
Don't worry, Splinter Cell hasn't gone too wacky, this is just its explanation for the training mode, all taking place inside Sam Fisher's mind. I'm playing the PC version, which is somewhat important because the story of Double Agent actually differs depending on which generation you're playing the game in.
It's also important for having controller support, but absolutely no indication of which button does what. You better learn in the safety of your own brain, otherwise, you'll be translating "The Action Button" and whatnot until you've got it all down.
On a mission in Iceland, Sam Fisher and rookie operative John Hodge mumble their way through an introduction. If there's ever a need for subtitles, it's in a secret whirlybird on a covert mission. Should have looked at the menus before hitting New Game, shouldn't I?
Frustrations
And we've frozen. Double Agent is not responding. What an ominous start. Blind controls, no subtitles, no backstory, even, but that which we can pick up from the mumbles and the menus. Ok, well, let's try our best.
We're infiltrating a geothermal plant for reasons unknown. My concentration isn't on Lambert on the radio, but what on Earth the underwater controls are, so I miss it all. But I do bumble my way through the tubes towards our objective.
It was very much a bumble, as instead of patiently waiting for an unsuspecting guard to come close enough to be pulled through the ice hole, I faffed around with the controls to pop up through the ice hole, actually climbed out in front of the guard who, by some miracle, saw nothing, dropped back into the water and, after two contextual prompts, dragged him into an icy grave. Smooth, Fisher. Smooth. No alarms, though, so we're doing something right, or at least, 'not wrong'.
Popping out into the plant, I manage to grab a shot of the absurd way that the tooltips and other important messages appear in view: slowly. I have to stop just to wait for them to be readable because without subtitles, these messages might be the only way I'll understand what's going on, and I don't know when they'll disappear.
Further Fun Times
As I slowly get my bearings, I'm able to get a feel for Double Agent, and I have to say that I like how it feels. Each game seems to be an improvement over the last, which I guess is somewhat obvious, but it also gives me hope that, at some point, I'll be able to find a Splinter Cell game for me.
Could it be Double Agent? Sneaking into a room with a contextual 'open door' prompt, it could well be. Fisher feels nice to control, he's responsive, he hasn't done anything weird, not out of the water at least. A light meter on your character model, and on the minimal HUD, tells you how exposed you are, visually. There hasn't been any mention of sound, so maybe that's no longer an obstacle to contend with, I'm not sure. Either way, this guard is sleeping, blissfully unaware that I'm using his laptop.
Blimey, these screenshots are dark, aren't they? It didn't feel this dark when playing, thankfully. I'm cutting the power with a knife, which seems incredibly dangerous, but what do I know about electricity? With the power out, everything but the electric fence continues to work. No idea what that's about, either, but it means making progress through the level.
We help Hodge up a fence and then proceed to just climb it ourselves, so I'm not sure why he couldn't do that too. Either way, we have found our way into the bulk of the geothermal plant, where all the shenanigans we're here to investigate have been taking place.
What will we find, after we action hero our way down this zipline?
Blink and you'll miss it, what we find is that we've gained some favour with the NSA, which is weird, considering they employ us. Actions you do throughout the game will either please or displease the two main groups, the NSA and the JBA. We don't know the JBA exist yet, so this element of the game comes and goes with little indication of what it will mean as the game goes on.
Again, I'm still at much of a loss as to what is going on, because I just can't keep up with the radio chatter, the tooltips, and simply playing the game, trying to remember the controls before I have to use very specific controls within a very specific time limit, like shooting someone who has the drop on me.
The map is rotatable and scalable and highlightable and feels awful, at first glance. The contextual menu uses both icons and text to tell you what your options are, but often the text seems to briefly flash up as you perform the action, which isn't ideal. It is nice and easy to sneak up on guards, though. They must be exceptionally ignorant in this opening level.
Ooh, better take that back. I don't know how he was alerted. Did he see a body on the floor? Did he notice the door was open? Are there windows I can't see? Security alarms I missed? Does accessing the computer and opening the gate trigger a warning to these guys?
Interestingly, I interrogated a guard who spilt the beans and told me the keycode to the gate, so there are multiple ways that I could have made progress. I wonder how open Double Agent will be in these regards.
Through the gate, we hear over the radio Lambert telling Hodge to cover me as we link back up (he was opening an air vent for us to use), but Hodge has other ideas and decides to go off-script. Crawling through the air vent, we hear the outcome to that decision - gunfire. Then we can swing the camera around and see the outcome, too.
We're alone, and there's a rocket about to be launched. Definitely not something you tend to find in a geothermal plant. I guess that's why we're here, and Fisher being Fisher, the best way we can deal with this situation is to sabotage the rocket and make sure it blows up here and now.
Stalking through the shadows as best I can, I find a convenient computer with emails of how to work on the rocket and a camera feed of where to be to work on the rocket. This is how I'm going to be saving the day. Go to the bottom of the rocket to open the top of the rocket (video games, am I right?) so that we can hack it to explode. Clock's ticking.
Hacking a rocket involves a little mini-game of spot the number. These columns all show masses of changing numbers, some of them pausing and repeating over time. Hit the paused number to freeze the column, freeze all four columns before the time limit runs out to hack the rocket. Simple, flashy, over the top. I'm not going to complain about this.
Further Frustrations
I will complain about having a minute to get out of here before the rocket explodes, and having zero indication where to go. A helicopter. Cool. Back out in the geothermal plant? But the air vents are spinning again, can't get out that way. Do I head to the front door after everyone else has run out of it?
On the second attempt, knowing where to go and what to look for, we can see Hodge actually get shot. Or we should, but it's not animated. He just falls over dead. Really strange. If you could see the outcome, surely you would see the whole event if you're quick enough. Not here. Not vitally important, either, but immersion breaking, damnit.
After fiddling with a newly discovered button, I move an entire walkway closer to the rocket, but then proceed to fall through the end of it and get stuck, half in, half out, unable to jump to free myself. Load from Checkpoint? Yes, please.
Attempt number three goes much the same as the first attempt. I know what to do to stop the rocket. It's the getting out before it explodes that I'm having trouble with. I've absolutely no idea where to go, but each time I play, I've got an opportunity to have a look around. Do I have to climb out of the roof? This is like Edge of Tomorrow. I need to learn my route before death comes and time resets.
Or I get annoyed, quit the game, and have a look on YouTube.
Spot the rope. Turns out, on my last attempt, I ran right passed it. There's a contextual menu to grab it and escape to safety that I never triggered. This was all I needed to find to get out of the level and learn that Fisher's daughter has been killed by a drunk driver and that we're being removed from active duty.
Oh my. Wasn't expecting that. And we've not even been put undercover into a terrorist organisation yet.
Final Word
But because of that faff with the rocket, the lack of subtitles, and the confusion with the controls, I've come out of Double Agent a little miffed.
Thankfully, it's only a little. I think I may well have finally found a Splinter Cell I'm capable of playing and maybe even enjoying without living in fear over guards or having to rely on night vision. Oh shit! I completely forgot about using my night vision goggles! Ugh, I'm going to have to go back and play it again sometime, aren't I?
Well, of course I will. I haven't seen anything of the plot. I've not touched the mechanic of trying to please two conflicting parties by picking up side-objectives on each level, and other, more obvious ways I'm sure.
Multiple endings are the order of the day here, and multiple stories if you're playing on older ports. That strikes me as rather weird. Do I need to play Double Agent for the plot, or the gameplay? For both plots? Just the gameplay?
Let's see how far I get through Double Agent before deciding. This PC version has its flaws, some of which can be fixed, I hope, but it's certainly playable, and I'm definitely capable of playing more of it. Providing I can find a rope in the darkness...
More to come from this one, for sure, and an early recommendation even having failed so early, yet again.
Fun Facts
The two versions of Double Agent, 360/PS3/PC and Xbox/PS2/GameCube/Wii, aren't just a little different, but radically different. And I don't know why they bothered. If the game couldn't be done on older/weaker consoles, should it be done on older/weaker consoles at all? (Does it make money? Yes. There we go then.)
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent, developed by Ubisoft Milan, Ubisoft Shanghai, first released in 2006.
Version played: PC, 2006.