Sam he is: Splinter Cell Double Agent:

Oh I know it wont help me, shit, nothing will help me, you’ve only played graw with me once or twice so maybe you dont recall, but I’m mr. liability. I swear I’ll probabaly find a way to accidentally kill my fellow spies even without weapons.

I want to hit SP first because I have limited gaming time this week , and just got The Godfather + lego Sw2 + getting SC:DA after work.

I’ll probably hop on anyways regardless of what I plan, the little ‘blahblah is online’ notifications make me play multi even when I dont plan to.

As far as the review/spoilers thing, no worries, I didnt feel like they were plot-spoilers, just that they would’ve been more effective when you arent expecting them. Even the daughter thing, which I already knew and had forgotten about. The other one was the pilot having a _____ ______, that sounds like an ‘oh shit’ moment.

Bill: not really applicable to this, but yes, sometimes. It ruined ‘6th sense’ for me when people said ‘OH YOU WILL LOVE THE TWIST!!’ Because in that case, just knowing there was a twist, you figure it out ASAP. I hated that fucking movie, it’s boring as hell when you know he’s dead.

NO IT ISN’T DON’T SAY THAT YOU’LL HURT M’S FEELINGS SOB.

Point taken, but sheesh. I ran not walked to see TSS (and subsequently suckered into seeing all of his rapidly-declining films), Fight Club, and whatever finding out there were surprises involved. I’m all about SC games anyway, and for me, hearing this stuff makes me more interested than less.

At the risk of belaboring the point so much that you won’t have a chance to forget about it again: No. That moment is seriously stupid and random.

They even try to explain it later, with a sort of, ‘Oh yeah, that thing that happened? Well, uh, hmm, yeah, here’s what the deal was. Yeah, that’s what it was.’

It’s very much a WTF? moment.

-Tom

Sweet, the local fred meyer broke the street date on Double Agent. I guess I know what I’m doing tonight!

I’m anxiously waiting to hear about hands on time with the PC versions co-op. I was a huge fan of the co-op in Chaos Theory, though not a giant fan of how poorly their online system worked for it. It was pure awesome when you could actually get it running, but annoying as hell the rest of the time trying to hook up with a friend. If they can fix the flaws and give me more of the fun that mode had I’d be sold for sure regardless of the rest of the game.

Broke street date? The game is out everywhere today around here…

Ok, I got SCDA yesterday so look for me online (when we’re not all having connection issues).

What the hell kind of emoticon is “;_;” ?

crying?

That’s how it makes me feel, yes.

After playing through two missions of SC:DA, I’ve figured something out.

The game looks great and is well designed. The gameplay is almost exactly like Thief. But, it’s not Thief. Half of Thief’s draw was atmosphere… and I just can’t get into this game’s fiction. Sure, the gameplay is solid, but I couldn’t care less about the drab, boring modern day settings and goofy stereotype bad guys.

There’s no fear of the unknown. There’s no scared shitless by what is happening around you. It’s all guns, metal and concrete generic. There’s a little humor, but no where near the writing of Thief.

I think I’d enjoy this game a lot more if Thief had never existed. Granted, I’m still into it… but I realize now what that nagging feeling I had was playing through the Splinter Cell games.

Taffer.

This is AWESOME. I might have a slanted viewpoint though, I skipped msot of the SC games, so the ‘more of the same’ syndrome isnt hitting me. And I prefer modern settings usually, though theif’s was wicked w/ the steampunk medeval era thing.

Ugh…minigames? Fail states? This sounds like more frustrating old style gameplay, or do I have it all wrong and safecracking and lock picking is really as fun as it doesn’t sound.

EDIT: and TIMED MISSIONS?! Ugh.

The lockpicking and safecracking aren’t bad at all. In fact, I really dug the safecracking.

As for the fail states, they’re not instants in the sense that as soon as you’re discovered, it’s game over. Splinter Cell District Attorney avoids that nicely. Instead, the game ends if you ever completely lose the trust of the terrorists or the NSA. It’s a long-term ongoing thing.

The really annoying minigames are the mine crafting and email decrypting. Luckily, they’re both optional. Well, except for one point, where you’re going to want to have practiced the mine crafting.

As for timed missions, dude, it’s a hallmark of these kinds of games. “Quick, do X before the bomb goes off!!!1!”

-Tom

From what i’ve seen, coop has been removed from Double Agent. SC:CT coop was amazing. Double Agent coop is the same as versus multiplayer, only with bots for the mercs.

I’m very disappointed.

Oh that’s complete shit. I pray you are wrong. :(

Yep. The co-op of Splinter Cell is multiplayer with mercenary bots rather than the awesome tailor-made story-line that was available in Chaos Theory. I haven’t unlocked the second set of missions yet, but I very much doubt they are different in this respect.

This is disappointing, but only because the previous game set the bar so high. The co-op in itself isn’t boring or anything. Though, it does make you wonder why they have a separate co-op section at all, because you can put bots in multiplayer.

As for the rest of the game, I am digging it. The map is a lot more useful than it was in CT, but still a little clunky in the way it operates. Strangely, the new night vision effect (in single player) is more distorting and disorientating than it was in the previous game. Not keen on the idea of the timed missions at the terrorist base, because Splinter Cell traditionally played into my OCD tendencies, allowing me to take things glacially slow and be painstakingly thorough.

I can read all the text on my SDTV (hi Capcom!) but I’m having a problem hearing character’s dialogue. Is there some kind of surround sound that my crappy TV isn’t capable of exploiting?

Yea, I can agree with this entirely. Also compared to Thief, this game or rather series, is a bit too scripted for my tastes. Some of the levels have the illusion of allowing a bit more freedom in approach and progression, but it tends to regress back to rigidness just when the game seems to give you a few options. Metal Gear does a nice job of allowing more creativity on the part of the player in pushing from point A to point B.

Still, it’s been an enjoyable game with pretty visuals and diverse environs. The multiplayer co-op challenges are probably worth the price of admission alone…though the ‘Double Agent’ challenges feel entirely out of place and end up getting skipped entirely among my group of players. The fun is in working together to beat out the rather tough AI and earn those golds, not compete. It’s like the mode is designed specifically for jerky gamers that teamkill and backstab and everyone hates to play with. We often end up just doing those missions a few times allowing everyone to get gold medals in each pass, which is kinda not the point.

Oh and I’d love to see the next Splinter Cell ditch Sam Fisher in favor of some new Ninja spy with the agility and acrobatics that the multiplayer spies handle.

Did you play the previous game? That was co-op. This is crap. It’s just the regular spies v. mercs but with merc bots, who are ridiculously better than human opponents. I’ve been working on them with a friend, and we pretty much hate it.

I’ve been having fun with it, but I havent played the previous game. Is that panda whatchamahooey or chaos something something?