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Splinter Cell Essentials Review
Written by Justin Davis on Tuesday, April 4, 2006
The game looks pretty good, besides everything being so dark. And when nightvision is on.
Mostly recycled content. Poor controls.
Splinter Cell Essentials from Ubisoft Montreal is disappointing in a number of major ways, but what's most disappointing of all is how much potential the game had. This one could have been a PSP killer app. Instead the end product is a title that shows flashes of brilliance amid long stretches of gameplay that is both recycled and simply not very fun.
It just seems that some companies seem to take PSP development more seriously than others. Now that the system is over a year old here in North America I feel like I have to put my foot down and demand more original content and less "remixed" titles from the likes of EA and Ubisoft. If you're going to release a PSP port of a PS2 then that's one thing - you're just giving consumers the choice to play the mobile or home version. But when you're releasing "new" titles like Essentials that are primarily old content, to me that just shows a lack of respect for PSP owners.
As I mentioned earlier, the problem isn't so much that Essentials is basically a "best of" collection from the previous Splinter Cell titles, it's that this compilation doesn't appear to have been put together with much care. Burnout Legends is a franchise remix I could get behind, because it was a great product. Essentials ties these missions together in a way that feels more cheap than anything else. Uber-agent Sam Fisher has been captured in a twist that ties in with the upcoming Splinter Cell: Double Agent, and your captors have all kinds of beliefs about how his previous missions have gone down, painting Fisher as a traitor. Fisher inevitably responds with "that's not how it happened at all...." cuing a flashback sequence and another mission. It's a weak way to tie the game's narrative together at best, and worse than having no pretense for tying the levels together at worst.
The missions themselves are hampered by wonky controls. Fisher moves with the analogue nub, but to manipulate the camera you must hold down circle and also use the nub. This also means you have to come to a dead stop to rework your viewpoint. It was frustrating in the game's first mission and only got more upsetting with time. All of Fisher's sweet-ass moves are present, from creating human shields, performing split jumps, and using futuristic gadgets, but button pressed seem unresponsive, all too often. Fisher just feels clunky, this time around.
A few specific graphical decisions reduced the game's already-dwindling fun factor as well. The biggest problem is just that the game's too damn dark. As super-spy supreme I understand that the shadows are Fisher's friend. Lurking in the shadows and performing a fatal strike against an unsuspecting enemy is still a rush. But in Essentials it seems like everything is covered in a veil of darkness. I've had to go through entire levels with nightvision on, which reveals problems of its own. Nightvision's green and black display gets rid of the game's generally good texture work, and reveals the much less eye-pleasing blocky geometry underneath.
Essentials does get credit from me for including a save-anywhere function. It's a must for portable games, but should be the rule and not the exception for game design in general. Despite my numerous problems with the game, beneath them all it's still Splinter Cell, which is why this is a two star review and not something even harsher. The game is fun in spite of itself, sometimes.
I didn't touch on the game's multiplayer because its really, really bad. When Ubisoft creates a multiplayer mode that is passable enough that I don't have to force myself to play it long enough to review, then I will spend the time to rundown its options and features. Trust me, if you buy Essentials, you won't be playing multiplayer.
It's hard to recommend the game to much of anyone. The most hardcore Splinter Cell fan might want to try to overlook the game's problems for its new levels, I suppose. What's most upsetting is what could have been. It would have been nice to get an completely original side story to accompany Double Agent, instead of a rushed remix.
