Splinter Cell – WTF?

I finished the new Splinter Cell game on my 360 this weekend, and while I really dig the new “Double Agent” gameplay, where you have sets of conflicting goals for each mission–both the NSA and the terrorist organization you’re infiltrating will tell you to do stuff, and you actually have to make tough choices. The addition of tons of hiding places throughout every map is also a major improvement. In every room there’s at least one place to hide, but many rooms have three or four desks and beds to crawl under and lockers to hide in. Forcing the player to make tough choices is definitely something I can get behind.

There are a few things I really strongly dislike. First, the ending is really abrupt. Like Halo 2 abrupt. There are multiple endings depending on the choices you’ve made, but the game basically just stops. That’s weak, especially considering the events of the game. However that problem’s minor compared to the hack-job that they ran on the multiplayer portion of the game.

The 360 version has no narrative-driven co-op levels that I can find (12 missions shipped on the original Xbox version of Double Agent). Instead it ships with a bunch of co-op training missions that feature insanely difficult AI with perfect aim and knowledge of your every move, whether it can see you or not.

I really enjoyed playing co-op in Chaos Theory, when I managed to get another person available with an hour or two to spend on a mission. I’m not the first person to talk about this, but the removal of the booby-trap gadgets (and the motion sensor vision mode) from the mercs takes away a lot of the fun of the merc portion of the multiplayer game. The new mode is much faster paced, but it lacks a lot of the sublety of Chaos Theory and Pandora Tomorrow’s sublime and complex multiplayer game.