God Damn It Fisher! The Mission Is Over!

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow

With the all the tension and debate about global politics these days, it'd be a good time to release a game that explored all these issues. I've always liked it in games like Deus Ex or Planescape: Torment that let you make moral choices about not only what you do, but how you do it, and these sort of things would suit a present day spy game perfectly. Initially it looks like Pandora Tomorrow might go in this direction, at least a little bit, but in the end it does nothing of the kind.

As in the first Splinter Cell you play the part of Sam Fisher, a covert operative for the US government. All the missions you're sent on involve sneaking around, stealing, kidnapping and killing without being detected.

I played the original Splinter Cell several years ago on the PC and enjoyed it immensely. I ended up buying the PS2 version of Pandora Tomorrow, and I found it quite hard to get used to. The PS2 controller works well with the third person perspective, but as soon as you go first person it becomes an exercise in frustration. So my awkwardness with the controls greatly impeded my getting into the game. The gameplay itself is generally pretty good, but a little too similar to the first game. There are some new gadgets and stealth techniques to use, but they don't change the gameplay much, and I didn't use them that much anyway.

The story starts out quite interesting, and quickly dissolves into an incoherent mess. The general gist of it is that a group of Indonesian terrorists are planning a biological attack against the US. Near the beginning there are a few parts where Sam questions his superiors, and comments unfavorably on what other branches of his government are up to, but none of that goes anywhere. In the middle of the game we encounter a whole lot of random plot threads that also go nowhere. What was up with the Shin-Bet agent? And the pilot in the jungle who tells you some dude's name which isn't safe to tell your superiors? None of that stuff ever gets explained. I don't mind games with no story, but a pointless story is just annoying.

The level design is very good though. Highlights include sneaking through (and over and under) a moving passenger train, sneaking over the rooftops of Jerusalem and infiltrating LAX while avoiding both the legitimate security and the terrorists who got there before you.

Graphics are pretty rubbish, but about as good as you can expect from the creaky old PS2.

Music is quite forgettable too. The track for the Jerusalem level is very nice and in a traditional middle eastern style, but other than that there's nothing special.

At it's heart it's a good game and I enjoyed it (once I got past the annoying interface), but it could have done with a bit more work on the trimmings. I'll probably buy the next one at some stage but I'll make sure it's the PC version.