Ubisoft is well known across the world as one of the leading developers in the video game industry. They’ve made various award winning titles such as Beyond Good & Evil (even though it did poorly in sales), Prince of Persia and the famous Rayman series. But one specific franchise Ubisoft has distributed for more than 5 years now is the Tom Clancy name. The well known writer has given his name to create many amazing video game franchises, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six and of course Splinter Cell. Splinter Cell first appeared back in late 2001 when it was released for the original Xbox and released later next year for the Playstation 2 and Gamecube. The series was a major hit offering a more efficient and in-depth stealth game. Now the Splinter Cell franchise has taken a soaring leap into the next generation of gameplay offering new innovative activities and a very unique way in using a balancing trust in members of your organization. The latest installment of Sam Fisher’s popular series hits all the last generation consoles, PC and the strong Xbox 360, how will the fourth console installment handle in the next generation game world?

Splinter Cell was one of the biggest hits Xbox received in the last generation and with the announcement of the next game in the series being exclusive to the Xbox 360 later next year, it looks like Microsoft really spotted a hit. The series has always been stronger on the Xbox platforms, the controller felt right and the hardware power lived up to the developers expectations. Double Agent is what it sounds like; you will be playing as an agent who has the choice of betraying his post and acting against his national organization. The game takes a large turn of events after the first mission in Double Agent; Sam Fisher is informed by Lambert that his daughter, Sarah Fisher was killed. After this Sam breaks down and finds himself picking unnecessary fights and uncivilized actions. With his break down and many months flying by, Lambert gives him one of the most dangerous assignments anyone has ever seen. Sam is now to be placed in jail and treated like a prisoner, no special treatment. Here Sam’s first mission is to help a member of the JBA (the terrorist organization known as John Brown’s Army) break out of depths of hell and back to his other members. Doing so, Sam gains a way out and into the criminal group, disturbing information to the NSA. The problem with working with the NSA, they’re very spectacle of you, and they’ll watch your every move because after your break down they began to have some disbelief over your actions and really thought as if you lost it. They cannot tell which side you’re working for anymore.

Splinter Cell has finally entered the next generation era and if you’ve played the previous titles, you’ll feel right at home. The game feels a lot similar to last year’s Chaos Theory both during the single player and multi-player modes. You can sense that the single player part of Double Agent is more of the same although after the first mission you will lose most of your gear and end up using just your wits to get by most levels. Heck some mission weren’t necessary built to hide in the darkness like the game is usually about, so you will have to run around in circles. The Multi-player experience, Ubisoft has taken a fantastic leap in incorporating new in-depth gameplay features to make it a more enjoyable and longer lasting experience. The new interactive feature that Double Agent will extend to the gamer is the trust meter. The trust meter is basically the amount of belief each organization has in you, if you don’t do something or even if you do something that one organization doesn’t like, it will either lower or higher that bar depending on the tasks given to you. Like previous titles in the franchise, you will be given objectives, but unlike the previous titles you have the choice of ignoring or accepting them. There will be two sets of objectives handed down to Sam, one from the National Security Agency (NSA) and one from John Brown’s Army (JBA) and the trust meter helps you decide whether or not you should complete a mission objective. Anytime any organization no longer trusts during the game, its game over and here you have to re-load from your last save point, with this you could be stuck at one part and possibly restart the entire game. Luckily I never ran into such problems. This new balance though can make things a little easier as you won’t fail the game if you don’t do one of the objectives but creates a new atmosphere of decisions and branches.

Most of the single player missions, like said before, will not take place in the darkness like previous games. Most levels actually take place in open daylight areas but like the one of the first missions where you have to infiltrate frozen tanker, the environments really helps in your stealthy approach as a snow storm will blind the enemies but your vision as well. The game also offers a variety of new ways to hide from your enemies such as going underwater and approaching your enemies from below. This offers a lot of new cool tricks.

Single Player

Gameplay in Splinter Cell seems very similar, because really it’s the same engine you’ve seen before with the same controls. One thing I would like to put out there is that I found controlling your character awkward when switching from aiming with your weapon to maneuvering your character. In single player you will be set with new and improved equipment, and like other games of the series you are able to choose your gear, but the thing is since you’re in a new organization, you will have to unlock each one based on your performance from the previous level. There are a lot of new pieces of equipment, some you probably won’t use in the heat of battle but interesting to try none the less. Sam is very athletic for his age (what a geezer); he can jump, climb and do various acrobatic moves. While this is a new Splinter Cell title, the game still features all of the same moves from previous titles in its name plus more.