Forum Overview :: Reviews :: Splinter Cell Double Agent (Wii)

[quote name="I want my £2.50 back."]This reviewer has played some of the <i>Splinter Cell</i>s before (on the PS2) and while they have serious faults, they're alright. Opportunities for messing around more are always wasted. For example you can't get the dead or unconscious bodies over even the smallest obstacles which really limits the fun you can have with them. However you can knock a man out and put him in a pond until he drowns, or shoot someone in the head then watch them going cold with the thermal camera. The levels tend to be extremely linear, often in an immersion breaking, forced way. The most egregious example is probably the doors which are "jammed" until a scripted event silently fixes them. On one occasion, in <i>Pandora Tomorrow</i> if remembered correctly, the reviewer managed to complete two tasks in what turned out to be the wrong order and it apparently broke a script or something, making progress impossible. Once you've been seen and enemies are actively looking for you they gain the ability to get an instant headshot on you if you peep round a corner in total darkness, which makes no sense no matter how alert they are. Overall though, pretty enjoyable. The Wii port of <i>Splinter Cell: Double Agent</i> should have led to somebody leaving game development to spend more time with the family. At first, it seems pretty good. There's a gimmick where sometimes you have a partner who you can tell to stay put or follow you. They can give you a leg up to get over a wall, help you shoot people, and you can bring them back to life using your first aid kit if they die. Some way into the first mission you start thinking, Where are the dark places? Are they leaving the whole "sneaking around in the dark" part of Splinter Cell - the entire premise - to be introduced later? Nope, it's just the display settings. Apparently you're already in the dark bits, but the graphics show everything clear as day; the night vision goggles are superfluous, they do nothing. Except making everything harder to see. Less than nothing. So there is a setting in the menu somewhere, where you can adjust brightness. It tells you to adjust the brightness until a shape on the screen only just becomes invisible. But the brightness setting only goes down so far, nowhere near far enough. There is a hint of this problem in the series anyway. The player learns to rely more on the light meter than what they're seeing on the screen. A few corners appear slightly more lit than they are. The background you appear against from the enemy's perspective is irrelevant. There are green lights on the player character's head which nobody can see except the player. Only the light meter matters. That's forgivable, and not at all the same as playing a <i>Splinter Cell</i> game where you have to imagine that it's dark. You can imagine any game you want without paying a penny for the privilege. Of course controls had to be rethought for the Wii remote, but perhaps "rethought" is too strong a word for what was actually done. As you would expect, the stick on the nunchuck is used for movement. Pointing the remote at the screen to aim is of course pretty good compared to using the stick on a pad. Controlling the camera with it when not aiming feels a little weird at first if you're used to using a second stick for that, but it works quite well. But then it all turns to shit when you try to use your gadgets. There is an electronic wotsit which you point at computers so you can access them remotely. This gives you some options, like read emails or whatever, that appear as icons surrounding the target. You have to move the pointer to the icon you want, but when you do that your aim is still moving, so now your gizmo is not pointing at the machine you wanted to use and the icons disappear. Surely someone played it at least a little bit and tried to use the compy-zapper at least once during testing? There was some kind of testing? It is <i>possible</i> to use the zapper, usually by deciding before zapping which direction your desired icon is going to be in, choosing your aim so you have as much visible computer available in that direction, and then selecting the icon as fast as you can. If you want a Splinter Cell game where the darkness is a purely abstract concept, and controlling the magic hack-o-tron ray gun is like trying to catch a fly with tweezers, <i>Double Agent</i> for the Wii is the game for you.[/quote]