Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow
One of the best single-player stealth and multiplayer experiences on the PlayStation 2 in the same game? Um, yes please.
Published: August 10, 2004
PlayStation 2 gamers let out a simultaneous geeky squeal of delight when we learned that previous Xbox exclusive heavyweight Splinter Cell was actually coming to our little black box. Unfortunately, while Ubisoft employed a crack team of programmers, artists and magical design faeries up in Montreal that crafted quite the eye pleasing treat in SC Xbox, the PlayStation 2 port was handled by the slightly less experienced Shanghai development offshoot, and the result was a game that played nearly as well, but sure as hell didn't look as good.
With the sequel, Ubisoft wisely chose to shoot for all three platforms at once this time, and the result is a set of Xbox and PS2 games that are far closer to each other in presentation than the first efforts (though, there's still no comparing the PS2 version to the Xbox or especially PC versions, but at least it's better than the bastardized version GameCube gamers will get). If it seems like I'm harping on Splinter Cell's looks, it's because, well, I am. The game is just a looker, plain and simple, and unlike other stealth hits, the subtle play of light and shadow off the environment means the better the game looks, the more engrossed you are.
That's not to say the graphics are the sole crutch Pandora Tomorrow rests on. Quite the opposite, in fact; with a storyline that's even more eerily reflective of what's going on in the world these days, the narrative in the game is even tighter and more refined this time around. Add to this level designs and an overall difficulty approach that makes the game more accessible to the average gamer as well as a multiplayer mode that good enough to sell by itself, and you have a very, very good way to spend $50.
When a particularly nasty and virulent strain of smallpox is stolen by a guerilla general with aspirations of charming the world into his cause by force, it once again falls to Sam Fisher to creep in, work invisibly, and then sneak out without the world at large ever knowing anything was wrong. Things are made particularly complicated by the terrorists' level of complexity in executing the plan to release the plague here in the States; the biological agent is scattered all over, and multiple contacts can release it into the public should the leader fail to report in with the daily Pandora Tomorrow code phrase.
If you've never played the original Splinter Cell, there's not a whole lot to know. Sam is a Splinter Cell, meaning he's a completely autonomous unit of a government agency that on paper doesn't even exist. His job is to enter and exit an area where he's vastly outnumbered and outgunned without alerting anyone, and it's this kind of stealth gameplay that makes the game so fun. Fisher's greatest weapon is the shadows, and the game plays off this with a graphics engine that balances light and shadow, allowing you to hide in the shadows (as well as hide bodies of dropped foes) to avoid detection. Taking out light sources can instantly render you invisible, so the search for splotches of darkness quickly become the focal point of the gameplay.
Fisher is loaded with the same basic weapons he had in the first game, meaning a silenced pistol and an experimental assault rifle that files normal bullets, or an assortment of gadgets like remote cameras, grenades, sticky tazers and non-lethal rounds. Loose grenades, flashbangs, wall-mounted mines, camera jammers and laser mics help add to the feeling of a near-future James Bond world. Sam's also able to toggle between different visual modes, boosting low-light views with night vision or going thermal to detect head signatures in a Predator-style view. While Fisher is keenly adept at taking lives, the game often stresses low- or no-casualty situations, making incapacitating innocents all the more important. Aside from skulking around the shadows, he can also perform a split jump, Van Damme-style, or hang and shoot from pipes.
Even with all this variety, the game can still come across as a sequence of trial and error, where you slowly learn the various patrol routes enemy AI takes through the level, or a baiting cat and mouse game where you simply lure an enemy or two at a time away from their posts into the dark and then dispatch them. The level designs, while certainly more ornate and impressive than the first PS2 effort, still don't use light levels as effectively as the Xbox or PC versions, and as I mentioned before, in a game that stresses visuals so much, that's an important shortcoming.
There's also the matter of the engine itself, which could certainly use a bit of an upgrade. While the characters look great, and the environmental detail is as good as ever, there are still a number of glitches. At one point in the otherwise brilliant train mission early on, the audio for a particular character dropped out, and then when I should have been able to walk over to the rope hanging from the helicopter, I instead watched as Fisher crept out into midair for about 15 feet, then grabbed onto nothing and swung there, crashing the level until I restarted it from the beginning.
Still other problems that were excusable in the first game are still here. AI-driven characters that get hung up on Fisher when he's too nearby, animation popping and wonky collision abound, jumping is still oddly cumbersome and clipping issues (enemies heads routinely pop through walls or doors if you lay them too close, laying bodies on stairs results in an amusing inadvertent levitation act) still haven't been addressed. If ever there was a game crying out for ragdoll physics for lifeless bodies, this is it.
Again, the visuals in the game have to be noted, both because the overall visual design is so unique, and because the PS2 just doesn't seem up to the task of kicking out what the Xbox and PC do so well. It's not so much the level of detail, which is more or less there, it's the gradients in lighting and the pacing of the levels. Quite literally, the colors lack depth, with the engine displaying notable dithering across the board. Through better use of a limited palette and ingenious level design, the effect isn't as bad as what was noticed in the first game, but it's still there.
Fortunately, most of the effort in upgrading the gameplay seems to have gone into the multiplayer experience. Unlike anything else found on the PS2, Pandora Tomorrow's online four-player matchups are a brilliant mix of first- and third-person stealth and traditional deathmatch. While it's really only referenced once (or at least that I picked up on) in the single-player game, PT's multiplayer takes a page from No One Lives Forever 2 on the PC in that it fleshes out a part of the game only hinted at from the single-player storyline.
Two major groups are tasked with getting the same bioweapon as Sam's trying to track down in the main game, the SHADOWNET spies and ARGUS mercenaries. The spies play more or less like a more agile ninja-like version of Fisher. The world is viewed in third person, and they're able to use the same vision modes he can, but they can run up walls and have an arsenal almost exclusively devoted to distraction and incapacitation. The mercs on the other hand are almost all brute force, with decent armor, a multi-purpose automatic weapon, mines, level-wise alerts to help track down spy activity and vision modes made more for detection and stalking, all presented in first-person.
The two sides are, in theory, rather well, matched, since the mercs can see when spies are moving or operating in enhanced vision modes, and can lay out lots of firepower, while the spies are well equipped to play the stealth card, and can counter all the mercs' might with a nice, handy neck snap. In practice, however, it seems a lot more fun to be a spy for most players, as evidenced by the fact that most will play a game as spies while giggling like schoolgirls, then bail once the tables turn.
Some of the darker, more expansive levels can also present a rather tough challenge, and seem better suited for a specific multiplayer mode, be it Neutralization's more standard deathmatch, Extraction's capture the flag style or Sabotage's king of the hill capture-and-hold variant. For players first starting out, it's also mercilessly difficult, with experienced players often just unloading spy gadgets and running circles around hapless mercs. It's actually bad enough to make a newbie chuck his controller into a wall and never play again. Given enough time, though, and some players that don't resort to cheap tactics, multiplayer mode is a game unto itself.
Luckily, even with the added graphical detail, the framerate stays far steadier than the first game's PS2 port. Slight upgrades like better lighting glows and blooms, and a better eye for balancing shadow and light from more complex sources means you won't be limited to oohing and aahing the same basic shafts-of-light-streaming-through-fan-blades-or-shutters that felt a bit gimmicky in the first game after a while. The shadows cascading off Sam in the jungle missions and in particular the initial look of the water in-game is quite impressive (though actually entering it betrays the almost photo-realistic veneer).
The audio fares a bit better, but not by much. Sam Fisher is still one of the coolest video game characters ever created, due in no small part to the fact that his gravelly deadpan is just so friggin' cool. Michael Ironside's pipes have never been better used, and it's his performance in the game that gives the character so much, well, character. The other voices from the main players are decent, but the fact that almost all the enemies in the game speak perfect English ruins a lot of the sense that you're scouring the globe to track down a bio-terrorist.
Perhaps the most even-handed bit of audio in the game comes from the music. Splinter Cell's soundtrack has always been vaguely industrial, lightly electronic, mostly ambient pieces strung together with accents of more peppery action music that kicks off when you're spotted or major plot points are revealed in-level. The mixing on Pandora Tomorrow's musical cues seems even more refined this time around, usually punctuating events with more gusto then retreating faster and with less repetition than the first game, though the overall audio mix can sometimes mean the action music can overpower important conversations.
All told, Pandora Tomorrow is a solid sequel. Refinements in story, level design and narrative pacing have helped the single player experience fall at least on par with the first game, but the addition of an evilly addictive multiplayer mode that plays differently depending on which side you choose makes it a must-buy. It may not hit with the same visual wow factor as when it was first announced, but there's plenty here to keep you grinning. Head out, pick this up, and then watch out for huge chunks of missing time when you finally get deep into the single and multi-player modes. Hey, at least saving the world without ever getting credit is anything but boring.
With the sequel, Ubisoft wisely chose to shoot for all three platforms at once this time, and the result is a set of Xbox and PS2 games that are far closer to each other in presentation than the first efforts (though, there's still no comparing the PS2 version to the Xbox or especially PC versions, but at least it's better than the bastardized version GameCube gamers will get). If it seems like I'm harping on Splinter Cell's looks, it's because, well, I am. The game is just a looker, plain and simple, and unlike other stealth hits, the subtle play of light and shadow off the environment means the better the game looks, the more engrossed you are.
That's not to say the graphics are the sole crutch Pandora Tomorrow rests on. Quite the opposite, in fact; with a storyline that's even more eerily reflective of what's going on in the world these days, the narrative in the game is even tighter and more refined this time around. Add to this level designs and an overall difficulty approach that makes the game more accessible to the average gamer as well as a multiplayer mode that good enough to sell by itself, and you have a very, very good way to spend $50.
When a particularly nasty and virulent strain of smallpox is stolen by a guerilla general with aspirations of charming the world into his cause by force, it once again falls to Sam Fisher to creep in, work invisibly, and then sneak out without the world at large ever knowing anything was wrong. Things are made particularly complicated by the terrorists' level of complexity in executing the plan to release the plague here in the States; the biological agent is scattered all over, and multiple contacts can release it into the public should the leader fail to report in with the daily Pandora Tomorrow code phrase.
If you've never played the original Splinter Cell, there's not a whole lot to know. Sam is a Splinter Cell, meaning he's a completely autonomous unit of a government agency that on paper doesn't even exist. His job is to enter and exit an area where he's vastly outnumbered and outgunned without alerting anyone, and it's this kind of stealth gameplay that makes the game so fun. Fisher's greatest weapon is the shadows, and the game plays off this with a graphics engine that balances light and shadow, allowing you to hide in the shadows (as well as hide bodies of dropped foes) to avoid detection. Taking out light sources can instantly render you invisible, so the search for splotches of darkness quickly become the focal point of the gameplay.
Fisher is loaded with the same basic weapons he had in the first game, meaning a silenced pistol and an experimental assault rifle that files normal bullets, or an assortment of gadgets like remote cameras, grenades, sticky tazers and non-lethal rounds. Loose grenades, flashbangs, wall-mounted mines, camera jammers and laser mics help add to the feeling of a near-future James Bond world. Sam's also able to toggle between different visual modes, boosting low-light views with night vision or going thermal to detect head signatures in a Predator-style view. While Fisher is keenly adept at taking lives, the game often stresses low- or no-casualty situations, making incapacitating innocents all the more important. Aside from skulking around the shadows, he can also perform a split jump, Van Damme-style, or hang and shoot from pipes.
Even with all this variety, the game can still come across as a sequence of trial and error, where you slowly learn the various patrol routes enemy AI takes through the level, or a baiting cat and mouse game where you simply lure an enemy or two at a time away from their posts into the dark and then dispatch them. The level designs, while certainly more ornate and impressive than the first PS2 effort, still don't use light levels as effectively as the Xbox or PC versions, and as I mentioned before, in a game that stresses visuals so much, that's an important shortcoming.
There's also the matter of the engine itself, which could certainly use a bit of an upgrade. While the characters look great, and the environmental detail is as good as ever, there are still a number of glitches. At one point in the otherwise brilliant train mission early on, the audio for a particular character dropped out, and then when I should have been able to walk over to the rope hanging from the helicopter, I instead watched as Fisher crept out into midair for about 15 feet, then grabbed onto nothing and swung there, crashing the level until I restarted it from the beginning.
Still other problems that were excusable in the first game are still here. AI-driven characters that get hung up on Fisher when he's too nearby, animation popping and wonky collision abound, jumping is still oddly cumbersome and clipping issues (enemies heads routinely pop through walls or doors if you lay them too close, laying bodies on stairs results in an amusing inadvertent levitation act) still haven't been addressed. If ever there was a game crying out for ragdoll physics for lifeless bodies, this is it.
Again, the visuals in the game have to be noted, both because the overall visual design is so unique, and because the PS2 just doesn't seem up to the task of kicking out what the Xbox and PC do so well. It's not so much the level of detail, which is more or less there, it's the gradients in lighting and the pacing of the levels. Quite literally, the colors lack depth, with the engine displaying notable dithering across the board. Through better use of a limited palette and ingenious level design, the effect isn't as bad as what was noticed in the first game, but it's still there.
Fortunately, most of the effort in upgrading the gameplay seems to have gone into the multiplayer experience. Unlike anything else found on the PS2, Pandora Tomorrow's online four-player matchups are a brilliant mix of first- and third-person stealth and traditional deathmatch. While it's really only referenced once (or at least that I picked up on) in the single-player game, PT's multiplayer takes a page from No One Lives Forever 2 on the PC in that it fleshes out a part of the game only hinted at from the single-player storyline.
Two major groups are tasked with getting the same bioweapon as Sam's trying to track down in the main game, the SHADOWNET spies and ARGUS mercenaries. The spies play more or less like a more agile ninja-like version of Fisher. The world is viewed in third person, and they're able to use the same vision modes he can, but they can run up walls and have an arsenal almost exclusively devoted to distraction and incapacitation. The mercs on the other hand are almost all brute force, with decent armor, a multi-purpose automatic weapon, mines, level-wise alerts to help track down spy activity and vision modes made more for detection and stalking, all presented in first-person.
The two sides are, in theory, rather well, matched, since the mercs can see when spies are moving or operating in enhanced vision modes, and can lay out lots of firepower, while the spies are well equipped to play the stealth card, and can counter all the mercs' might with a nice, handy neck snap. In practice, however, it seems a lot more fun to be a spy for most players, as evidenced by the fact that most will play a game as spies while giggling like schoolgirls, then bail once the tables turn.
Some of the darker, more expansive levels can also present a rather tough challenge, and seem better suited for a specific multiplayer mode, be it Neutralization's more standard deathmatch, Extraction's capture the flag style or Sabotage's king of the hill capture-and-hold variant. For players first starting out, it's also mercilessly difficult, with experienced players often just unloading spy gadgets and running circles around hapless mercs. It's actually bad enough to make a newbie chuck his controller into a wall and never play again. Given enough time, though, and some players that don't resort to cheap tactics, multiplayer mode is a game unto itself.
Luckily, even with the added graphical detail, the framerate stays far steadier than the first game's PS2 port. Slight upgrades like better lighting glows and blooms, and a better eye for balancing shadow and light from more complex sources means you won't be limited to oohing and aahing the same basic shafts-of-light-streaming-through-fan-blades-or-shutters that felt a bit gimmicky in the first game after a while. The shadows cascading off Sam in the jungle missions and in particular the initial look of the water in-game is quite impressive (though actually entering it betrays the almost photo-realistic veneer).
The audio fares a bit better, but not by much. Sam Fisher is still one of the coolest video game characters ever created, due in no small part to the fact that his gravelly deadpan is just so friggin' cool. Michael Ironside's pipes have never been better used, and it's his performance in the game that gives the character so much, well, character. The other voices from the main players are decent, but the fact that almost all the enemies in the game speak perfect English ruins a lot of the sense that you're scouring the globe to track down a bio-terrorist.
Perhaps the most even-handed bit of audio in the game comes from the music. Splinter Cell's soundtrack has always been vaguely industrial, lightly electronic, mostly ambient pieces strung together with accents of more peppery action music that kicks off when you're spotted or major plot points are revealed in-level. The mixing on Pandora Tomorrow's musical cues seems even more refined this time around, usually punctuating events with more gusto then retreating faster and with less repetition than the first game, though the overall audio mix can sometimes mean the action music can overpower important conversations.
All told, Pandora Tomorrow is a solid sequel. Refinements in story, level design and narrative pacing have helped the single player experience fall at least on par with the first game, but the addition of an evilly addictive multiplayer mode that plays differently depending on which side you choose makes it a must-buy. It may not hit with the same visual wow factor as when it was first announced, but there's plenty here to keep you grinning. Head out, pick this up, and then watch out for huge chunks of missing time when you finally get deep into the single and multi-player modes. Hey, at least saving the world without ever getting credit is anything but boring.
