Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow : Web Wombat : Games

I have been influenced by this new game, Pandora Tomorrow, to the point where I think a career redirection is in order to satisfy my newly acquired taste for heart-thumping danger and a complete disgust for the mundane.

My next step in this self-imposed career change is to equip myself with a pair of night vision goggles, a lock pick and a well-wicked black stealth suit.

Now, the next step needs a bit more work. All I have for my plan at the moment is a vague theory about a warehouse, a pimp, some bubble wrap, and a Labrador.

And all this is because I’m intrigued with the idea of stealth and subterfuge, which was not of my own thinking. Oh no. I blame it on Ubisoft’s new game, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow.

Sequel to the award-winning Splinter Cell, Pandora Tomorrow is essentially more of the same, but I think the creators have finally found their feet with this second outing. That’s not to say the original game was naff, it’s just that this sequel is more extreme in almost every aspect, and particularly the stealth aspects.

In the game, you play Sam Fisher, a field operative of a secretive "black-ops" NSA sub-agency called Third Echelon. With all the latest high tech stealth gear Sam must be ready to penetrate high-security areas, snatch critical intelligence, wipe out threatening data and defuse the enemy – all without leaving a trace.

Improvements to the second game in Tom Clancy's series are pretty much in your face. It’s definitely not one of those sequel projects designed for maximum income from minimal effort.

From the word go you’re pretty much dropped into in the thick of the action. Your HQ liaison, Lambert, is still barking orders at you (and sometimes giving you helpful advice) as your mission takes you to East Timor to investigate terrorist activities.

I feel that Pandora Tomorrow is best described as a stealth action game, in that you are given limited ordnance, but plenty of non-lethal gadgets to get the job done quickly and quietly.

"Is it true godammit!? Tell me you
didn't just fart on me - tell me!!"

Night vision goggles are now your lifeline and luminosity is your enemy.

Consistent switching between normal, night and thermal vision is now a crucial part to the game, while it's interesting to note that I managed to get through about 80% of the the first edition without using night vision.

Spending bullets taking out the lights, for example, is a much more effective ploy than shooting your foes dead, because without the lights they are blind, while you are but a deadly ghost, ready to open a can whup-a$$ on your unsuspecting enemies!

To begin with, my goal for Pandora Tomorrow was to get through it without being slain or setting off alarms with my first try. So there I was, creeping along ever so quietly through this little village, thinking everything is cool, homes. Everything is calm and quiet. I’m almost at the level's completion when BOOM! I explode.

Well I wasn't expecting that to happen, but that’s the joy of this game – expect the unexpected, and be ready for high doses of suspense, a la Agatha Christie.

After five or six more experiences exploding, I realised there was a chemical bomb implanted in the ground, and the only way this can be seen is via thermal vision.

Fisher’s stock standard black stealth suits have been updated with a variety of fresh and hip designs to suit the new theatre of stealth, such as urban and jungle environs. Ergo, some very high-tech looking threads exclusive to the underground fashion industry now line this trendy little mercenary’s wardrobe, and why not too?

I mean, Fisher interacts with the odd female throughout the game and it never hurts to look your best. I really think fisher needs a woman; otherwise he's just going to get himself seriously hurt.

He’s a good-looking guy too. He must have been lifting some weights on the weekend as he has bulked up quite a bit for the new Pandora assignment. He now appears bigger and bolder on the screen and has a bit more power and mobility.

Part of being a splinter agent
involves knowing where to hide

Fisher’s more sculpted body is a result of a graphics tweak. I don’t want to say he’s been hitting the 'roids, or that the game has had a complete graphical upgrade, but certain aspects have been tightened, that's for sure.

The lighting effects, for one, have been given more realistic parameters and the linear falloff, or the way the light spills into rooms, results in mucho eye candy.

In addition to the higher quality visuals, level design has gone down a more exotic path when compared to the original, particularly in the outdoorsy sections.

The indoor levels have also been painstakingly hand crafted by skilled 3D architects, hence the authentic Middle Eastern décor and other structural features that make you go ‘wow’.

Walking through this one level, I forgot I was a part of a lethal splinter cell on a top-secret mission to save the world, and was unavoidably distracted by this really tasteful, nouveau chic dining room with a gorgeous gothic chandelier. Look out for the new show soon - Queer Eye for a Lethal Spy…

Moving right along, and it has to be said that the soldiers throughout the game are still not the sharpest tools in the shed. Every time you shoot the lights out with the silenced pistol in order to make the room darker the soldiers sometimes get their scripts mixed up and blame the shadows or their imagination. It detracts from the realism.

No sequel is complete without a variety of new weapons, and though Ubisoft didn’t go troppo inventing new fictional stuff – it’s just not the Clancy way – there are a few new tools in this second outing. Silenced machined guns and wall mines make their appearance very early on in the game, as opposed to the first Splinter Cell that left more powerful weaponry until quite late in the game.

Anyway, here's some of items you can use in the game:

Weapon	Attributes
SC-20k	Flash and sound compressing machine-gun. Multipurpose launcher equipped. This little beauty packs heaps of firepower and keeps the acoustics to a low level.
Ring Air Foil Projectile	Zero penetration. Best used for those casualty free missions.
SC Pistol	A silenced pistol. Effective at close range and useful for popping light bulbs and turning off the TV.
Wall Mine	One off my personal favourites – stick it on a surface (wall, door) and wait for the fireworks. It’s Motion activated too, so be careful detaching these things.
Sticky Shocker	Was once Will Barker's nickname, but in this application it's actually a high-voltage projectile device for shocking your enemy. You can even fire it into pool of water to shock multiple opponents.

The gadgets in the game are very cool, and anyone whose read a Tom Clancy book will know of his love of guns and gadgets, and one of the most useful non-lethal doodads in the game is the optic fibre camera. I tell ya, if I could have just one high-tech gadget to improve my life, it'd be that optic cable camera that you can shove underneath doors.

Imagine that, being able to scope out your old man's secret flower-eating fetish or being about to find out if your best buddy really is taking a dump on the dunny, or is actually feeding in his crack habit.

This is the beginning of the multiplayer stealth
game - and it could spawn a huge following

Other fresh ideas to the game include new moves, such as the dangling and crawling techniques that give the game more versatility. Fisher proves that there’s more than one way to skin a cat as he can now dangle from horizontal beams and pull his gun on unsuspecting victims below.

Another cool feature is a little enhancement to the wall creep. This new stealth move lets Fisher swiftly and covertly cover door-sized gaps without alerting enemies to his presence.

Gameplay has not only been improved thanks to the new moves, new items, prettier graphics and less frustrating level design/enemy placement, but the interface and controls also appear more intuitive.

The much needed interface improvements, or M.N.I.I, allow for easier weapon selection, and this new feature alone has saved my scalp a number of times.

All told, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow is a long game, and the base difficulty level is no pushover either. The Tom Clancy-crafted story really pulls you into the game and delicious plot twists add tension, and while the game is essentially very linear, it’s still incredibly playable.

The multiplayer modes address the issues levelled at the first Splinter Cell – those of shelf-life and the lack thereof – and when all things are considered, Ubisoft's Shanghai and Annecy studios have managed to code an absolute masterpiece that will please Clancy fans and action-stealth aficionados for years to come.

Game: Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow
System: Xbox
Players: 1-multi
Online: Yes
Developer: Ubisoft Shanghai
Distributor: Ubisoft

Rating: 90%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow is on the shelves now.

	Announcement

Weapon

Attributes