Sam Fisher makes his first appearance on the Xbox 360 in Splinter Cell: Double Agent. Sam is devastated by the death of his daughter and with nothing left to lose he undertakes his most deadly mission yet – infiltrate a terrorist cell, become one of them and ultimately accomplish his mission to bring them down from within. The Double Agent concept is simply keeping your undercover status in the terrorist cell, known as John Brown’s Army (JBA) and balancing the trust between the JBA and NSA as you undertake missions for both parties. You will find on many missions that you will have dual objectives for both the NSA and JBA, some missions require extreme measures which both contradict each other as you have choices to make which ultimately effect the outcome of the game’s storyline. .

The Splinter Cell series is highly regarded the world over as the best stealth games available, and they probably are. The only down side I have found to all the Splinter Cell games is Sam Fisher himself; here we have such a great character and at the beginning of Double Agent it looks as if it will focus more on Sam and his problems. This is not the case though, there’s a glimmer of hope at the beginning of the game of a Splinter Cell more involved around Sam Fisher but nothing really contributes to the Sam Fisher story following on from the death of his daughter and being thrown in to prison to befriend a member of the terrorist cell. Regardless of my disapproval of the Splinter Cell series continuing to ignore the possibilities of a more involving storyline around Sam Fisher – I still think Double Agent is an excellent game at its core. The multiplayer mode has also been given a major revamp, which I had some concerns at first but its incredibly simple to get into and enjoy much quicker than the previous versions.

Gameplay:

The Gameplay mechanics remain almost identical to that of Chaos Theory with much of the same animations for a lot of the moves. There are however a few new deadly moves available to Sam to dispose of nearby enemies – mainly an under water move where you pull an unsuspecting enemy underwater and proceed to break his neck or give him a quick knife to the chest before proceeding further. The other new move, which is most useful and if like me you’ll find you use it more often than not. I like to call it the corner grab, you have Sam’s back pressed against a corner of a wall and when an enemy walks in your direction you can grab him and pull him around the corner to conceal him from any other nearby threats – from here you may be able to interrogate him, once done you can either break his neck or give him a quick judo chop to the neck and knock him unconscious.

One of the other new welcome features to Double Agent is interactive cinematic sequences – like during a cut scene a helicopter pilot will pass out and it’s up to you to gain control and level the helicopter out. Another welcome addition, perhaps it’s a page from Halo 2/Call of Duty 2 and that is no health packs, so your health will automatically slowly regenerate after a few seconds, this is good because its one less thing on your mind which brings me to the 3D map; this map is useful as sometimes its impossible to know where to go next so the map helps to point you in the right direction, however it is not the most intuitive of maps and has had me running all over the place a few times trying to find my objective, ultimately though it does serve its purpose of guiding you to where you need to be. There is another on screen mini map available during game play, this map is much more useful as it shows the locations of nearby terrorists, the map is not viewable when Sam is moving though – which is actually a good thing as it would make it far too easy if you knew where every nearby enemy was, it would take the suspense from the sneaking around.

Graphics:

The overall general look and feel of the game resembles that of Chaos Theory a lot but of course with obvious enhancements to the man himself; Sam Fisher and more noticeably some of the excellent looking day-light single player levels. At times though it does feel and look a bit too much ‘same old, same old’. Especially in regards to Sam’s movements and more specifically his moves/actions like the basic things like picking up and dropping bodies, which looks exactly the same way it did in Chaos Theory – not that there’s anything wrong with that but perhaps a new animation for his most frequently used movements would have been more welcome and certainly more refreshing. Regardless of the games similarities to its predecessor the game’s visuals do look stunning at times with fireworks going off in Shanghai as you rappel down the side of a building. However the game does suffer from frame rate or v-sync problems, which does knock its overall visual impact.

Sound:

There is some excellent voice acting in Double Agent with Michael Ironside voicing the part of Sam Fisher; he’s certainly not the most vocal character in video game history though. So his lines are usually very short and not so sweet and very to the point. The voice acting for all major characters in the game is really convincing and suits each individual character flawlessly. The tense, slow paced and all out panic soundtracks kick in at just the right moments in both single and multiplayer, which helps to create more tension and adds a positive spin to the overall bulk of the game.

Longevity:

The single player campaign is certainly more involving than previous incarnations and being able to unlock bonus missions and different endings – which are a direct result of your ‘choices’ in Double Agent; this alone will add some significant replay value to the single player along with the Hard difficulty setting, for players who are feeling a bit more sneaky – be warned though the A.I. at times becomes very superhuman like. It’s almost like all the enemies have their own on screen map and know when you are nearby, which can become extremely frustrating.

Overall:

Splinter Cell Double Agent tries to do some things differently, which is welcome in most cases. Seeing Sam out in daylight though does take some getting used to, as he’s always been shrouded in darkness since the release of the original Splinter Cell some years ago. Being out in daylight is odd and perhaps uncomfortable for most Splinter Cell veterans as we’re all used to creeping around in the shadows and more importantly avoiding the light where ever possible. Since the release of Pandora Tomorrow which was the debut of the VS multiplayer mode for Splinter Cell, it seems that the multiplayer portion of Splinter Cell is excelling and surpassing Sam Fisher’s single player escapades. Sadly the popular co-op mode from Chaos Theory did not make its return in Double Agent, I’m sure there are reasons but I am and no doubt many other fans of Chaos Theory’s co-op mode will be disappointed that it did not make its return in the new game. Regardless of non-scripted co-op missions, there is something that is called co-op in Double Agent – which just appears to be the VS multiplayer mode but the mercenaries are bots, the mercenaries for the most part put up a surprisingly good battle. Hopefully the fifth iteration of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell continues forward with Sam Fisher’s character and his story, as every great character has an equally great and compelling story that deserves to be told.