Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow Review - Gameplay: Single Play
(Page 3 of 5 )
The gameplay is awesome and very immersive. I love stealth type games, though so I'm sure that has a lot to do with it. The controls are tight and easy to use with a very small learning curve involved. The weapon controls are simple but not too simple as with something like an auto-lock-on feature ala Grand Theft Auto.
Taking out lights and sticking to the shadows as much as possible is your best bet throughout the game as it should be since you are a spy. At times though, you'll be forced to use some sort of distraction and then simply sneak up and silently put your enemy out of his misery. You won't feel too bad about taking any of these guys out for the most part either, since when they kill you they say clever things such as, "There's another dollar earned" or "Plenty of room in hell for Americans." You'll likely hear these and other quotes pretty often to, due to what some might call one of the game's fall backs and that would be the try-die-retry method of gameplay. If you game a lot, then you're probably already familiar with this: can't see what's going to happen, get killed, try again or: kill someone, his buddy that you couldn't see or didn't know if he would hear you comes running, try again. There's a great deal of this, but as I said some might call it a fall back; I'm one of those on the other hand see it more as a puzzle-solving type of situation and found it enjoyable for the most part.
Above Sam carefully clings to the underside of a fast moving train as a stealthy way to get from one car to another. Unlike the first Splinter Cell, Pandora has a lot more outside missions which pose many obstacles that can make it difficult for Sam to remain unseen. This also adds a good deal of variety to the gameplay. Often times you'll be going in and out constantly looking out for various booby-traps in both areas such as these jungle trip wires which are really only visible when using your thermal vision.
In some areas you'll also need to keep an eye out for enemies of the canine persuasion. Get ready PETA: you can shoot the dogs and their owners don't seem to care at all unless they're standing right next to them when it happens and even then the alert they send out is, "Someone's shooting at me!!" not "Someone shot my dog!!"
The dogs will attack you though, and they can pick up your scent and sniff you out even if you're standing in a dark corner. They'll also sniff out the bodies of foes you have already knocked out or killed. To prevent this you'll need to pick up the bodies and hide them pretty well. On the right-hand side of your screen you will see a light meter that will basically tell you when you can and can't be seen, but when you're holding an unconscious body in your hands, it will flash when you are in a dark enough place to drop them so that they won't be discovered. If you know there is a dog around though, take the extra five seconds and stash the body far away. Below I have the basics of the in-game screen where you can get a good look at the Light Meter and other things...
The one truly disappointing thing I found in the single player mode was the ending. I won't give away specifics but for me the end of this game is severely disappointing. This is too bad really because to a certain extent the replayability relies on the games rewards and you'd think the grand finale would be better than this. Other than that I noticed several blatant spelling errors which should have easily been caught especially with a title of this caliber and the crack team of developers/programmers that UbiSoft no doubt employs. Now let's take a quick look at the multi-player portion of the game.
Next: Multi-player Tips >>
More Gaming Articles
More By Cyd
