Pong and Beyond

686th played so far

Genre: Action
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 2002
Developer: Ubi Soft
Publisher: Ubi Soft

Tom Clancy games have, in the past, left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter showed earlier that its politics feel quite objectionable. That’s probably because the past few years have left me more open to seeing it, but it still feels a bit gross.

Splinter Cellis a bit older, but takes us to an alternative Georgia where the president was killed and a dictator took power. Because the Americans need to come about to protect against that. Here we go again.

Our Thoughts

Setting aside politics for the moment – I’ve gone through some of it before, and I’m sure far more eloquent people have written about it – I mostly tuned out on plot beats. Be stealthy, don’t get noticed and make your way into places. Why? It’s a game, I don’t really care this time. It’s not interesting and a lot of the game feels interchangable between settings anyway.

You’ve got a lengthy enough tutorial to introduce a bunch of different systems – though mostly standard for the genre at this point. Then it’s tackling the different missions. Checkpoints are frequent enough, but there were a few that I absolutely needed. The first mission has you breaking into a house, sneaking in to find some information. I was killed several times from direct fire and needed to sneak in. Whether or not I was hidden was unclear – some bushes did it, but others didn’t. In the end, there was a combination of sneaking when I had a chance, but violence when there was trouble. Not really as the game seemed to intend, but it worked for now. The frustration was there, though, and too early for me to say I just quit. I have standards here, just barely!

Final Thoughts

Splinter Cell was decent, not my favourite stealth experience, but it sufficed. The series turns me off, and I don’t get much more about of the shooting, but what’s there seems to have been competently done.