It’s hard to say whether the Splinter Cell series should be characterised as being revolutionary or evolutionary. On the one hand the original tapped into the graphical power of the Xbox in a way no other game had, Pandora Tomorrow added a unique cat’n’mouse twist on multiplayer, and Chaos Theory took it one step further with the inclusion of co-operative multiplayer – each game revolutionary in its own right. Yet on the other hand, it’s obvious that each iteration in the Splinter Cell franchise has carefully built upon the experience, its creators purposefully crafting their vision and honing it into the ultimate gaming experience within its genre. So with Splinter Cell: Double Agent on the horizon, the question is whether Sam Fisher’s latest outing is revolutionary or evolutionary. The answer, you will find, is both.

From its most basic premise, Double Agent takes the established framework of a Splinter Cell game and smashes it to pieces, taking its protagonist – the clandestine Third Echelon’s elite agent, Sam Fisher – into territory the game has largely steered clear of; this time, it’s personal. Following the hit-and-run slaying of his only daughter, the once ice-cool, relentless and unshakeable Fisher spirals out of control, exhibiting self-destructive behaviour and drinking to dull the pain. Ubisoft hasn’t shied away from conflicted characters in the past, and it’s hard not to feel Fisher’s agony during the gorgeous opening cinematics…after all, to anyone who has played all three Splinter Cell games prior to Double Agent, Sam Fisher is more than just a vanilla character on the screen.

So when Fisher accepts a deep, deep cover assignment unlike anything in his career to date, you can almost understand why he’s doing it. It’s ironic, then, that Sam’s first adventure in broad daylight is easily his darkest yet. Much has been made of the unique double-agent dynamic that sees Fisher – and the player – making some pretty tough choices, including a good many that are very much within a moral grey area. What a simple preview cannot convey is just how much impact these can have on you as a player…when you’re told to shoot a hostage, you aren’t given much warning and even less time to make your mind up. All of a sudden there’s a pistol in your hand and one of the lieutenants in John Brown’s Army telling you to prove yourself and murder a man in cold blood.

Choices like these are hard enough to make on the fly, but when you’re thrown into a mission situation with two masters with ideologically opposed objectives and desired outcomes, it’s easy to see why Sydney Bristow always had so much angst! In fact, Splinter Cell Double Agent is very much the balancing act, walking the fine line between terrorist and hero, ensuring you maintain the trust of both your NSA handlers, and the clear and present dangers you’ve been tasked with infiltrating.

It’s nice, then, that the opening mission goes a little easy on you, setting the scene for the game and gently introducing the trust system. In the first mission, Sam and a Splinter-Cell-in-training are ordered to infiltrate an allegedly disused facility in Iceland the NSA believes is harbouring weapons of mass destruction. By way of a simple introduction to the trust meters, Fisher is ordered to make the infiltration undetected; failing to do so will see that meter drop, and if Sam starts to get too trigger happy, Lambert’s confidence will be entirely lost, the mission aborted, and the game will be over. In later missions, you’ll be balancing these sorts of NSA objectives with those of the terrorists, and at numerous times, the two will be diametrically opposed. It adds a whole new level of tension to what is already an edge-of-your-seat franchise.

After the mission in Iceland and a period of grieving for Sam after being informed of his daughter’s death, you’ll find yourself in your first deep cover mission: maximum security prison. Your mission: busting out yourself and one of the JBA’s top men out of the prison by staging a riot. Fans of the TV series ‘24’ will be familiar with this particular trust-building device, although the rest of the game feels more like the ‘Sleeper Cell’ mini-series. At any rate, the prison is huge, quite well lit, and within about ten minutes there’s a full-scale riot going on around you…it’s not a typical day in the world of Sam Fisher and Splinter Cell. Like previous titles, the visuals are amazing, helped along enormously by the Xbox 360’s superior tech, but the Xbox version should look as good as Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory did. Light and shadows, always the staple of Splinter Cell, have gotten a big overhaul, particularly for brightly lit areas or daylight missions. Up close and personal, Fisher looks amazing, with some of the most realistic skin textures and facial modelling to date. But it’s the details that impress; the way light shines through ice, the natural shadows, or the meticulous level design.

In fact Splinter Cell Double Agent’s locations are stunning. Like previous games, Fisher is something of a globetrotter, but for the most part, he has spent his time in the dark, often skulking around government or military facilities. In Double Agent, however, Sam spends a lot more time in the great outdoors, even during the day time. In fact, part of being a double agent is hiding in plain sight, and as such, creeping around in the shadows can arouse more suspicion than standing around normally. In between missions, Fisher is inside the John Brown’s Army HQ, where he can interact with the terrorists, and engage in intel-gathering missions for the NSA. In these missions, Sam will be trying to access restricted areas without arousing suspicion, yet at the same time, everyone is already suspicious of him, and acting normally, being seen and chatting casually with the bad guys is a necessity.

While the various HQ objectives sound like a heap of fun and quite challenging, the bread-and-butter of the game still sees Sam travelling from one location to another for individual missions. We saw Sam in Iceland, the US-based prison and also in Kinshasa, the war-torn capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is the location you’ve probably seen a lot of: sandy, dusty, and in broad daylight while a war is waging all around you. It’s Splinter Cell like you’ve never seen it before, and like that girl who seemed mighty fine at the bar last night, Sam is almost unrecognisable in the daylight hours. It’s a jarring experience, and it’s hard not to be on a knife’s edge because for the last three iterations, in Splinter Cell light = death.

Chaos Theory went a long way from taking that edge off to a certain extent, given its forgiving mission parameters, and allowing people to load out Fisher with assault gear. Double Agent continues down this path too, allowing Sam to use unsilenced automatic weapons if he needs to without it instantly being game-over, but of course the trust system comes into effect: kill too many people, and the NSA will think you’ve gone to the dark side and take you out. You can always win back their trust by completing bonus objectives (like helping civilians in the Kinshasa mission), but on anything but the easiest of difficulty settings, Splinter Cell Double Agent will still require being stealthy and mindful of your surroundings, which is no easy feat when you’re out in the open in broad daylight.

Overall, Splinter Cell Double Agent should be a stunning follow-up to a series that goes from strength-to-strength with every new game. The double-agent dynamic brings a fresh angle to the traditional Splinter Cell gameplay, and the multiplayer (which we didn’t get to see unfortunately) sounds like it’s better than ever.

Article by Dominic Rozenberg