Pandora Tomorrow...honestly, what a nothing game. Even after finishing it, the events of the plot and the levels themselves escape me. It's like it all went in one ear and out the other, except this isn't some lecture from my high school algebra class.
Lambert has had a change in voice actor for this game, alongside a change of character. He and Sam are no longer cracking jokes at each other all buddy-buddy. In fact, Lambert's serious tone feels downright abrasive against Sam in many cases. There's a new guy on your team whom I cannot begin to remember the name of, he feels like such an afterthought (looked it up, his name's "Brunton"). Sam still keeps his mostly serious, occasionally sarcastic quips. Story is something something Indonesia, something something Smallpox, something something viruses. For some reason I really couldn't give less of a crap.
The game doesn't have any huge setpieces or interesting bits that come to mind. There were like, some frozen brains, a brief infiltration inside a submarine, and a section where you had to stay under a spotlight to prevent a guard with night-vision goggles from seeing you. I mostly remember how when the game asks you to do something highly context-sensitive, you know that section is going to be a real stinker. The alarm limits placed on you are extremely game-y in design, and not in a fun way. Far too much of this game is like playing Metal Gear Solid 2/3 on "European Extreme" difficulty; aka, being spotted is an instant game over. One of the ways the game raises the alert counter feels like it's downright cheating. If you don't bother to hide bodies in darkness, the game performs a rudimentary check as you pass certain points in the level, and raises security by one level. The problem becomes clear if you keep advancing after that happens: it'll keep happening at each subsequent point until your alert count fails the mission. On that note, a ton of the levels in this game take place in broad daylight, which feels weirdly unfitting for a sneaking game. In simpler terms, there are a lot less light sources you can shoot out to negate (unless you could shoot out the sun like a lightbulb this whole time, and I just didn't try to).
This game was made by Ubisoft Shanghai, Splinter Cell's "B-team". In the shadows behind Pandora Tomorrow, Ubisoft Montreal was working hard on Chaos Theory, giving it some extra time in the oven. I feel as though I enjoyed the first Splinter Cell more than this, so the A-team must have an understanding of Splinter Cell that the B-team clearly just couldn't grasp.
Lambert has had a change in voice actor for this game, alongside a change of character. He and Sam are no longer cracking jokes at each other all buddy-buddy. In fact, Lambert's serious tone feels downright abrasive against Sam in many cases. There's a new guy on your team whom I cannot begin to remember the name of, he feels like such an afterthought (looked it up, his name's "Brunton"). Sam still keeps his mostly serious, occasionally sarcastic quips. Story is something something Indonesia, something something Smallpox, something something viruses. For some reason I really couldn't give less of a crap.
The game doesn't have any huge setpieces or interesting bits that come to mind. There were like, some frozen brains, a brief infiltration inside a submarine, and a section where you had to stay under a spotlight to prevent a guard with night-vision goggles from seeing you. I mostly remember how when the game asks you to do something highly context-sensitive, you know that section is going to be a real stinker. The alarm limits placed on you are extremely game-y in design, and not in a fun way. Far too much of this game is like playing Metal Gear Solid 2/3 on "European Extreme" difficulty; aka, being spotted is an instant game over. One of the ways the game raises the alert counter feels like it's downright cheating. If you don't bother to hide bodies in darkness, the game performs a rudimentary check as you pass certain points in the level, and raises security by one level. The problem becomes clear if you keep advancing after that happens: it'll keep happening at each subsequent point until your alert count fails the mission. On that note, a ton of the levels in this game take place in broad daylight, which feels weirdly unfitting for a sneaking game. In simpler terms, there are a lot less light sources you can shoot out to negate (unless you could shoot out the sun like a lightbulb this whole time, and I just didn't try to).
This game was made by Ubisoft Shanghai, Splinter Cell's "B-team". In the shadows behind Pandora Tomorrow, Ubisoft Montreal was working hard on Chaos Theory, giving it some extra time in the oven. I feel as though I enjoyed the first Splinter Cell more than this, so the A-team must have an understanding of Splinter Cell that the B-team clearly just couldn't grasp.
A step above the original in almost every aspect. A damm shame Ubisoft keeps this one locked away in a vault for some reason. Sail the high Seas for this one.
Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow is a respectable sequel to the first game, but still retains all of its jank, making it equally frustrating despite its magnificent ideas.
There are some meaningful improvements from Splinter Cell 1. The swat turn is invaluable for staying unnoticed in certain indoor situations, and there is now an indicator for whether it's safe to hide a body. The laser sight on the pistol allows you to see exactly where your shot will land with the tradeoff that it's also visible to enemies. It's still ultimately a bandaid solution to the problem with Splinter Cell's shooting, though. The unpredictable bullet trajectory, which seems to exist to discourage shooting willy-nilly, can also completely blow your cover when you line up a seemingly accurate shot only for it to come out of your gun sideways and alert everyone nearby. Adding a sight made this issue less frustrating, but it just didn't need to be there in the first place and it took until the third game for Ubisoft to finally do away with it.
The lighting and atmosphere are superb as ever, and the level variety is much better than in Splinter Cell 1, with much more diverse and memorable locations.
Unfortunately the action sequences from the first game have been forced in again, though thankfully slightly fewer in number and I found them less annoying. But they also just didn't need to be there and it once again took until the series' third attempt to understand this. And even then, Chaos Theory didn't completely learn from the mistakes of its predecessors.
The detection system is incredibly janky, much like Splinter Cell 1, and was by far the most frustrating issue I had with this game. Even the tiniest movements could make the enemy turn around and start blasting while alerting everyone around immediately. This is the main reason, along with the bad combat sequences, that I can rarely recommend the first two Splinter Cell games.
There are some meaningful improvements from Splinter Cell 1. The swat turn is invaluable for staying unnoticed in certain indoor situations, and there is now an indicator for whether it's safe to hide a body. The laser sight on the pistol allows you to see exactly where your shot will land with the tradeoff that it's also visible to enemies. It's still ultimately a bandaid solution to the problem with Splinter Cell's shooting, though. The unpredictable bullet trajectory, which seems to exist to discourage shooting willy-nilly, can also completely blow your cover when you line up a seemingly accurate shot only for it to come out of your gun sideways and alert everyone nearby. Adding a sight made this issue less frustrating, but it just didn't need to be there in the first place and it took until the third game for Ubisoft to finally do away with it.
The lighting and atmosphere are superb as ever, and the level variety is much better than in Splinter Cell 1, with much more diverse and memorable locations.
Unfortunately the action sequences from the first game have been forced in again, though thankfully slightly fewer in number and I found them less annoying. But they also just didn't need to be there and it once again took until the series' third attempt to understand this. And even then, Chaos Theory didn't completely learn from the mistakes of its predecessors.
The detection system is incredibly janky, much like Splinter Cell 1, and was by far the most frustrating issue I had with this game. Even the tiniest movements could make the enemy turn around and start blasting while alerting everyone around immediately. This is the main reason, along with the bad combat sequences, that I can rarely recommend the first two Splinter Cell games.
Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow é um bom jogo na minha opinião, não exatamente o melhor da franquia, mas acredito que fica entre o meu TOP 5 da franquia que não sei se é devido à carga de nostalgia envolvida, pois joguei ele muito na época em que tinha um PC fraco ou se é porque ele é bem executado mesmo que para mim não envelheceu mal de forma alguma. Suas missões são muito bem feitas e divertidas, em que todas elas são bem marcantes (sendo 8 missões no total), e nenhuma na minha opinião é chata ou que dê aquela sensação de feita só para aumentar a duração do jogo, com destaque de valor na missão de entrar em um trem em movimento e se mexer tanto por cima dele, quanto pelos lados dos vagões em movimento, que mesmo que seja rápida eu achei muito divertida, que é o puro suco do clichê de filmes de ação com espionagem, mas que é muito legal essa ideia mesmo assim.
Os dois vilões do jogo são simples e funcionam no geral para a ideia e história do game, só o Soth que fica meio que sobrando onde nem a voz dele você escuta no jogo inteiro, e meio que ele só se torna relevante na última missão, onde a impressão que dá é que tinham esquecido completamente dele e só no final lembraram que tinham que fechar o arco desse personagem, mas o Sadono tem um visual legal de Che Guevara genérico e o enredo meio que gira em torno mais dele e do vírus biológico do que do Soth que seria um dos “cabeças” por trás de tudo. A ameaça do tal vírus biológico sempre funciona e é uma boa abordagem para esse tipo de temática de espionagem e tudo funciona muito bem, com uma jogabilidade bem detalhada dada à sua época, com vários “gadgets” legais e um que só fui descobrir pertinho do fim do jogo, que é o de desligar as câmeras com uma arminha específica lá do Sam Fisher. Outra coisa que eu gosto bastante é que o jogo não te priva de ter um limite de saves, onde você pode salvar a qualquer hora e eu fazia isso muito e recomendo para quem for jogar, mas claro que vai de gosto já que isso pode facilitar mais a jogatina de salvar o jogo a toda hora.
Me entristece saber que Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow é um jogo abandonado pela Ubisoft, onde não é mais comercializado de forma legal por nenhuma plataforma que seja, em que pelo que vi sobre, a Ubisoft não traz esse jogo em específico, pois seu porte antigo é "incorrigível" dos problemas de otimização para trazê-lo para os PC's atuais, já que esse game usava uma tecnologia chamada de “shadow buffers” que só tinham nas placas GeForce 3, 4 e FX e por isso trazem muitos bugs relacionados ao raio do jogo em uma missão específica e ele não exibe teoricamente luzes e sombras corretamente, mas injogável não é, já que você acha pela internet para ser jogado por meios “não legais” em sites de “jogos abandonware” como tive que fazer para revisitar esse game de que gosto bastante e consegui zerá-lo sem problema algum.
Enfim, é um dos meus jogos favoritos da franquia de Splinter Cell, que compraria sem hesitar ele na Steam se ele estivesse lá, mas uma pena que nem um porte pelo que parece pode ser feito mais, mas bem que podiam (por um sonho distante) trazer pelo menos uma remasterização ou quem sabe um remake.
Os dois vilões do jogo são simples e funcionam no geral para a ideia e história do game, só o Soth que fica meio que sobrando onde nem a voz dele você escuta no jogo inteiro, e meio que ele só se torna relevante na última missão, onde a impressão que dá é que tinham esquecido completamente dele e só no final lembraram que tinham que fechar o arco desse personagem, mas o Sadono tem um visual legal de Che Guevara genérico e o enredo meio que gira em torno mais dele e do vírus biológico do que do Soth que seria um dos “cabeças” por trás de tudo. A ameaça do tal vírus biológico sempre funciona e é uma boa abordagem para esse tipo de temática de espionagem e tudo funciona muito bem, com uma jogabilidade bem detalhada dada à sua época, com vários “gadgets” legais e um que só fui descobrir pertinho do fim do jogo, que é o de desligar as câmeras com uma arminha específica lá do Sam Fisher. Outra coisa que eu gosto bastante é que o jogo não te priva de ter um limite de saves, onde você pode salvar a qualquer hora e eu fazia isso muito e recomendo para quem for jogar, mas claro que vai de gosto já que isso pode facilitar mais a jogatina de salvar o jogo a toda hora.
Me entristece saber que Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow é um jogo abandonado pela Ubisoft, onde não é mais comercializado de forma legal por nenhuma plataforma que seja, em que pelo que vi sobre, a Ubisoft não traz esse jogo em específico, pois seu porte antigo é "incorrigível" dos problemas de otimização para trazê-lo para os PC's atuais, já que esse game usava uma tecnologia chamada de “shadow buffers” que só tinham nas placas GeForce 3, 4 e FX e por isso trazem muitos bugs relacionados ao raio do jogo em uma missão específica e ele não exibe teoricamente luzes e sombras corretamente, mas injogável não é, já que você acha pela internet para ser jogado por meios “não legais” em sites de “jogos abandonware” como tive que fazer para revisitar esse game de que gosto bastante e consegui zerá-lo sem problema algum.
Enfim, é um dos meus jogos favoritos da franquia de Splinter Cell, que compraria sem hesitar ele na Steam se ele estivesse lá, mas uma pena que nem um porte pelo que parece pode ser feito mais, mas bem que podiam (por um sonho distante) trazer pelo menos uma remasterização ou quem sabe um remake.
Just a note on the PS2 version of Pandora Tomorrow: this is a deeply cursed way to play this video game. The PC version was infamously on fire at launch, and I didn't feel like installing any mods to fix it (you also can't actually buy it digitally on any real storefront) - so I decided to try the PS2 version.
This game has maybe the worst loading I've ever experienced in a game. Almost every area is bookmarked by a load or a save; and saving isn't some quick thing with a little spinning icon on the bottom of the screen. You walk through a door, they throw a menu at you, you pick a memory card, you say 'yes I wish to save' and you sit there and watch it work. Then you walk into the next area and there's a load - and the loads are long.
Obviously some compromises were needed to get the beefy PC/XB version on PS2 but this is a bridge too far, to me. Especially having played the original game on PC and finding it to be a sleek, relatively modern experience despite its age.
Retiring this version forever, and I've decided I will jump through the hoops needed for PC because I don't want to skip this game outright.
This game has maybe the worst loading I've ever experienced in a game. Almost every area is bookmarked by a load or a save; and saving isn't some quick thing with a little spinning icon on the bottom of the screen. You walk through a door, they throw a menu at you, you pick a memory card, you say 'yes I wish to save' and you sit there and watch it work. Then you walk into the next area and there's a load - and the loads are long.
Obviously some compromises were needed to get the beefy PC/XB version on PS2 but this is a bridge too far, to me. Especially having played the original game on PC and finding it to be a sleek, relatively modern experience despite its age.
Retiring this version forever, and I've decided I will jump through the hoops needed for PC because I don't want to skip this game outright.
Wow....this game fucking SUCKS lol. I didn't wanna skip any games in the series on my replay but this game is just so damn annoying and broken. I played it the intended way so there's no bugs or anything that I encountered. THe game is just inherently broken.
As is the case with every Splinter Cell, the story is terrible. So I'm gonna focus on the gameplay. There's minor improvements compared to the previous entry but that doesn't save it from being genuinely one of the worst stealth games I've played. The levels are dull and the enemy AI is some of the worst I've seen in anything that isn't Thief 2014 and that says a lot.
As is the case with every Splinter Cell, the story is terrible. So I'm gonna focus on the gameplay. There's minor improvements compared to the previous entry but that doesn't save it from being genuinely one of the worst stealth games I've played. The levels are dull and the enemy AI is some of the worst I've seen in anything that isn't Thief 2014 and that says a lot.
Improves some things from the previous game like variety in levels or being able to open doors while holding bodies xd
Sam finds himself in many more scenarios in this game, which is really refreshing after the first game's levels, which were mostly just building (oil rig level was cool tho).
I think except for the last, the level design in this game was very solid :>
It does have a few issues of course.
The alarm system is just unfair and I can't imagine playing this game without save states/quick saves. Unfortunately, this makes the game very trial and error. This is my main reason as to why I recommend playing the game emulated, even if emulation isn't butter-smooth for this game.
Then there's the NPCs having a weird combination of being legally blind and having wall hacks. At some points they can't see you in kissing distance and at other points they spot you through objects.
Now, in case you're interested in playing this game, I recommend that if you want to play it emulated you either choose PS2 or Gamecube and if you want to play it on the real thing, then play it on Xbox (I've at least heard that the Xbox version is the best).
PC just doesn't work from my experience and isn't even worth a try, unless you have a PC from around 2004 xd.
Sam finds himself in many more scenarios in this game, which is really refreshing after the first game's levels, which were mostly just building (oil rig level was cool tho).
I think except for the last, the level design in this game was very solid :>
It does have a few issues of course.
The alarm system is just unfair and I can't imagine playing this game without save states/quick saves. Unfortunately, this makes the game very trial and error. This is my main reason as to why I recommend playing the game emulated, even if emulation isn't butter-smooth for this game.
Then there's the NPCs having a weird combination of being legally blind and having wall hacks. At some points they can't see you in kissing distance and at other points they spot you through objects.
Now, in case you're interested in playing this game, I recommend that if you want to play it emulated you either choose PS2 or Gamecube and if you want to play it on the real thing, then play it on Xbox (I've at least heard that the Xbox version is the best).
PC just doesn't work from my experience and isn't even worth a try, unless you have a PC from around 2004 xd.
this game might be better than the original.
While the original game was some shit about taking down a russ-dictator bent on warcriming the planet , this game has a much more James Bond type of setup thats about stopping armageddon.
You have some great levels here that strike a perfect balance between really pushing you to be stealthy and then a few segments where you can cut lose and use all your gadgets.
Overall much more memorable than the first and with a few improvements that seem really missing when you go back to splinter cell 1.
While the original game was some shit about taking down a russ-dictator bent on warcriming the planet , this game has a much more James Bond type of setup thats about stopping armageddon.
You have some great levels here that strike a perfect balance between really pushing you to be stealthy and then a few segments where you can cut lose and use all your gadgets.
Overall much more memorable than the first and with a few improvements that seem really missing when you go back to splinter cell 1.
Même si il a eu quelques améliorations par rapport au premier notamment le fait de pouvoir passer par plusieurs endroit et plus de verticalité dans les niveau, je le trouve moins bon techniquement (sans patch) notamment les ombres et lumière à certains endroits. Pour ce qui est de l'histoire c'est toujours classique mais avec des petits moment sympa ou on peut "désobéir" aux règles.
A solid sequel to the original SC, but unfortunately I only had the GC version to play. This played the worst of all the ports, with constant frame drops, ugly shadow rendering, and pitch black darkness all throughout. No multiplayer on the GC verison either, so I never got to experience Spies vs. Mercs. The game's definitely harder than SC1 so that was nice I guess. All the problems with this game make it hard to come back to it though.
Most Splinter Cell games are better than Pandora, but the levels still have some real high points.
PC port is terrible, but good game with forgettable story.
This needs a remake NOW
cool levels, just have odd objectives and checkpoints
A step down from the first game in many ways. The AI feels even less consistent and you'll often wonder how someone saw/heard you. Some cool setpieces but figuring out the very specific way you're meant to play them is frustrating to say the least.
The HUD is also kind of disgusting now, making it difficult to zone your crosshairs properly. It's clear this was made by a different team to the first while they were working on the much superior Chaos Theory.
The HUD is also kind of disgusting now, making it difficult to zone your crosshairs properly. It's clear this was made by a different team to the first while they were working on the much superior Chaos Theory.
This review contains spoilers
Coming from one of the most aggressively average games ever made, I didn't expect this to be much more than an expansion pack disguised as a sequel to give people something before the actual sequel got released. I mean, Pandora Tomorrow is exactly that (it wasn't even made by the same studio that made both Splinter Cell and Chaos Theory), but what I didn't expect is for it to be worse than the previous game.
First off, mechanically it is exactly the same. Yes, it has some new things but those are merely details or gimmicks used for certain situations, but not something meaningful. One good thing I'll say about this one is that it is less restrictive than the previous game. The three alert-limit is still there, but if you don't raise the alarm too continuously it will be reset back to 0, and now with each of the three stages of the limit before it's game over, enemies will start wearing bulletproof vests after the first alert and helmets after the second one. When you reach the third stage it is game over, obviously. And while this is a much better approach than last time, not only half of the levels are still “trip the alarm once and it's game over”, but also I find it really stupid how after having spotted the bodies of various of their comrades, they still decide to reset the alert level to 0 like nothing happened.
I don't know how, but they fucked up the enemy AI. For some reason, if you kill someone, regardless if you killed it in the shadows or under the light, if there's another enemy around, he will know where the body is and go there to raise the alert level, or they will even spot the body from afar anyways, who cares. These time they are way too sensitive to anything you do. If you knock-out someone in the shadows they'll STILL notice it if it's somewhere near, even if there's a wall in-between. In the original Splinter Cell, the enemy AI could be exploited in some ways that made them look stupid, but it worked since it was a really, really straightforward and linear experience. Don't get me wrong, it's still straightforward and linear, it's just that now they've gotten smarter. They also used to move erratically and unpredictably when you alerted them, which is something more notorious this time around. The whistle button is, probably, the only useful addition this game has is necessary to walk past certain enemies, and will come in handy for these moments, and they happen very often, so now you'll need to become best friends with the whistle button, and if you don't you'll get many, many game over screens.
It still has a lot of gimmicky set-pieces (although maybe less than in the previous game), and it still has a lot of trial and error. Especially this last one. It has a fuck-ton of trial and error. More and more annoying than before. Since enemy AI is smarter, now you'll need to make millimetrical movements and follow the script without failing just once if you don't want to get noticed. This wouldn't be so problematic if enemies didn't drain all your health and effectively kill you so goddamn fast, but they do, and when the alarm goes off, soldiers will come from out of nowhere to kill you. This got to a point of annoyance where I dreaded about the simple thought of inserting the game disc. I didn't want to play this.
All this makes an already bad game an even worse one, but what is significantly worse is the story. The story in the first Splinter Cell was so ridiculously basic, uninspired and generic that I wasn't paying much attention to whatever super-serious crimes were being committed by super-serious terrorists with super-serious plans. It was cheesy more times than anything, but it did get me interested enough to finish it. This made the patriotic propaganda more bearable. But this time the story is bad, it's really bad, and the propaganda levels are off the charts. If we decide to look at this as a simple story, putting the propaganda aside, it is bad. No character has any personality or development, the conflict is poorly told and extremely overdone, the enemy leaders are so cartoonishly evil that it's ridiculous. Nothing about it works. But then, there's the propaganda. Every character is constantly reminding you that you're working for THE GOOD GUYS™ while the other factions are THE BAD GUYS™. Obviously, what THE BAD GUYS™ want is to destroy the free world, end democracy and kill a lot of innocent people in the way. Of course that's what they want! That's what real life leaders against American interventionism have always wanted! To kill people! Mindless murderers! How barbaric those third world leaders are, and how great are we, Americans who fight for the freedom of the world! I think I might need to rethink the ratings I gave to all those COD games. I know this isn’t strange considering the Tom Clancy label plastered on the title, but like, it's so blatantly morally corrupt that it becomes genuinely disgusting. It's black or white, no greyscale, no good intentions, no nuance, no nothing, they're just bad because bad.
After the main conflict starts with the takeover of the American embassy in Indonesia by generic third world revolutionary leader in protest of having an American military base in their country (something I also happen to have here where I live, relatively close to my home in fact, and I wish was gone), it is revealed they have stolen smallpox from a cryogenic lab in France to threaten the US with releasing it and then you go to Israel and get betrayed by the Israeli Secret Service and the you go to Indonesia to do a bunch of stuff and then you capture the bad guy and in the last level you kill the other bad guy in an extremely anticlimactic shootout where he dies unceremoniously despite planting a virus-bomb in the L.A. Airport. There, I summarized the 10-hours plot. It is as generic as it sounds. Everything is so anticlimactic that it feels like they forgot what was even the point of all this halfway through and just gave up. I didn't connect to anything I was presented to the point where I really, really did not care about whatever happened to any of these characters or if the entire world blew up.
One of the worst things that can happen to any narrative in general, is having yourself in the situation where you actively think to yourself “I do not care about whatever happens to these people” while playing. And that's the feeling I had during the entire game. I just wanted it to be over. Nothing about it engaged me. It is miserable as a game. It is miserable as a story. And still, someone will compare it to Metal Gear just because it's a stealth game and there's a guy in a sneaking suit or whatever superfluous details. But this is indeed the perfect Metal Gear-like for all the people who entirely missed the point of Metal Gear.
First off, mechanically it is exactly the same. Yes, it has some new things but those are merely details or gimmicks used for certain situations, but not something meaningful. One good thing I'll say about this one is that it is less restrictive than the previous game. The three alert-limit is still there, but if you don't raise the alarm too continuously it will be reset back to 0, and now with each of the three stages of the limit before it's game over, enemies will start wearing bulletproof vests after the first alert and helmets after the second one. When you reach the third stage it is game over, obviously. And while this is a much better approach than last time, not only half of the levels are still “trip the alarm once and it's game over”, but also I find it really stupid how after having spotted the bodies of various of their comrades, they still decide to reset the alert level to 0 like nothing happened.
I don't know how, but they fucked up the enemy AI. For some reason, if you kill someone, regardless if you killed it in the shadows or under the light, if there's another enemy around, he will know where the body is and go there to raise the alert level, or they will even spot the body from afar anyways, who cares. These time they are way too sensitive to anything you do. If you knock-out someone in the shadows they'll STILL notice it if it's somewhere near, even if there's a wall in-between. In the original Splinter Cell, the enemy AI could be exploited in some ways that made them look stupid, but it worked since it was a really, really straightforward and linear experience. Don't get me wrong, it's still straightforward and linear, it's just that now they've gotten smarter. They also used to move erratically and unpredictably when you alerted them, which is something more notorious this time around. The whistle button is, probably, the only useful addition this game has is necessary to walk past certain enemies, and will come in handy for these moments, and they happen very often, so now you'll need to become best friends with the whistle button, and if you don't you'll get many, many game over screens.
It still has a lot of gimmicky set-pieces (although maybe less than in the previous game), and it still has a lot of trial and error. Especially this last one. It has a fuck-ton of trial and error. More and more annoying than before. Since enemy AI is smarter, now you'll need to make millimetrical movements and follow the script without failing just once if you don't want to get noticed. This wouldn't be so problematic if enemies didn't drain all your health and effectively kill you so goddamn fast, but they do, and when the alarm goes off, soldiers will come from out of nowhere to kill you. This got to a point of annoyance where I dreaded about the simple thought of inserting the game disc. I didn't want to play this.
All this makes an already bad game an even worse one, but what is significantly worse is the story. The story in the first Splinter Cell was so ridiculously basic, uninspired and generic that I wasn't paying much attention to whatever super-serious crimes were being committed by super-serious terrorists with super-serious plans. It was cheesy more times than anything, but it did get me interested enough to finish it. This made the patriotic propaganda more bearable. But this time the story is bad, it's really bad, and the propaganda levels are off the charts. If we decide to look at this as a simple story, putting the propaganda aside, it is bad. No character has any personality or development, the conflict is poorly told and extremely overdone, the enemy leaders are so cartoonishly evil that it's ridiculous. Nothing about it works. But then, there's the propaganda. Every character is constantly reminding you that you're working for THE GOOD GUYS™ while the other factions are THE BAD GUYS™. Obviously, what THE BAD GUYS™ want is to destroy the free world, end democracy and kill a lot of innocent people in the way. Of course that's what they want! That's what real life leaders against American interventionism have always wanted! To kill people! Mindless murderers! How barbaric those third world leaders are, and how great are we, Americans who fight for the freedom of the world! I think I might need to rethink the ratings I gave to all those COD games. I know this isn’t strange considering the Tom Clancy label plastered on the title, but like, it's so blatantly morally corrupt that it becomes genuinely disgusting. It's black or white, no greyscale, no good intentions, no nuance, no nothing, they're just bad because bad.
After the main conflict starts with the takeover of the American embassy in Indonesia by generic third world revolutionary leader in protest of having an American military base in their country (something I also happen to have here where I live, relatively close to my home in fact, and I wish was gone), it is revealed they have stolen smallpox from a cryogenic lab in France to threaten the US with releasing it and then you go to Israel and get betrayed by the Israeli Secret Service and the you go to Indonesia to do a bunch of stuff and then you capture the bad guy and in the last level you kill the other bad guy in an extremely anticlimactic shootout where he dies unceremoniously despite planting a virus-bomb in the L.A. Airport. There, I summarized the 10-hours plot. It is as generic as it sounds. Everything is so anticlimactic that it feels like they forgot what was even the point of all this halfway through and just gave up. I didn't connect to anything I was presented to the point where I really, really did not care about whatever happened to any of these characters or if the entire world blew up.
One of the worst things that can happen to any narrative in general, is having yourself in the situation where you actively think to yourself “I do not care about whatever happens to these people” while playing. And that's the feeling I had during the entire game. I just wanted it to be over. Nothing about it engaged me. It is miserable as a game. It is miserable as a story. And still, someone will compare it to Metal Gear just because it's a stealth game and there's a guy in a sneaking suit or whatever superfluous details. But this is indeed the perfect Metal Gear-like for all the people who entirely missed the point of Metal Gear.
Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow: This lousy follow-up is deservedly forgotten by Ubisoft, but every bizarre thing about it added enough sickening 'charm' to get me to (regrettably) complete the thankfully-brief thing. It's somewhat hard to get a copy, but Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow proves that scarcity does not equal value. TL;DR at the end.
I say "hard to get a copy" but truly, if you'd like to play Pandora Tomorrow for yourself (which I do not recommend), some light Googling will have you downloading it in no time. What I mean is you cannot buy the game on Steam nor Ubisoft's own Uplay: the only 'legit' way to play Pandora Tomorrow is buying a disc and I'll bet you'd have a tough time finding a copy at Gamestop. Say you buy it, though, a copy of Pandora Tomorrow for PC or the Splinter Cell Classic Trilogy HD for PS3 off Amazon or something: you're still in for issues. After paying about $15 or $70 (respectively, at time of review), you will either need to apply your own patches to get the game running or see the not-so-HD textures that fans didn't appreciate in the PS3 version. Word on the 'net seems to be Ubisoft couldn't be bothered to fix graphical issues in the PC version (though there's gotta be more to it than that), so they've just seemingly pretended the game never happened and let some random guy on the internet fix their mess for them. There's a close-up of Lambert drinking from a mug with the Ubisoft logo in a cutscene. Disgusting.
But the game! Once you finally got everything going, is it worth it? Absolutely not. I see strange praise for this game online to this day and I'll simply never understand it. Apparently the big development focus this time around was improving the lighting and shadows, but I could barely tell. Nothing about the game looks too special, just servicable and maybe slightly better than the original, and in fact many areas that looked dark had my sensor telling me I was standing in a floodlight. This combined with hair-trigger guards and their near-instant "sound the alarm" reflexes just brews up painful tedium. They can somehow report you to HQ from the grave, too. Expect lots of save-scumming and prayers of patience to the quick-saving/loading gods, because brother? You'll need it. There's no score of any kind at the end of a level, and most let you trip three alarms before game over; but if you're like me, you'll see that 1/3 alarms on the garbage HUD and sigh before going back to painfully do it 'correctly' this time.
Pandora Tomorrow's story will wash over you and leave nearly no trace behind. You may as well be asleep at the wheel just as the writers, voice actors, and animators were, because you won't really know what's happening while it's happening. Is anything even happening? Well, some guy named Sadono is planning on smallpoxing America and only his daily dead man's switch-like phone calls are keeping the virus at bay. Third Echelon is running out of patience and Sadono is running out of anytime minutes, so Sam Fisher and his team have to dunk on 'dono before PANDORA TOMORROW. There's a train level that's kind of neat but can be completed in like 4 minutes, clearly shoved in there to get a return on the art team's budget, sort of like with Uncharted 3. The final cutscene and Sam's solution to a smallpox bomb is hilariously stupid and I could never spoil such a 'great' moment. There is zero replay value.
Tonally, this game feels feverish and directionless and not much like the previous nor future Splinter Cell games. There's a literal on-rail shooting gallery segment (a NEW breed of stealth). At one point Sam is urgently messaged and told to murder the unarmed woman in front of him and if you do so, you're never told why, but given a "Trust me, bro." This sort of bothers Sam, who brings it up again later, but is just told nothing again. It's weird, though, because Lambert is supposed to be a good friend of Sam's, you'd think he'd give him something, but Sam stops caring at this point. 'Trust the feds', yeah fucking right.
It plays like a Splinter Cell game, for the most part. Everything feels pretty flimsy this time around, I could trip up enemy scripts by walking into a room they were breaching from the other side and just leaving it quickly (from whence I came). They paused in place and didn't know what to do anymore, apparently. There were other issues, like alt-tabbing out meant you'd never be able to fullscreen the game again. I had a hard crash during a level's intro cutscene (these all look like old GI Joe commercials), and of course the autosave for the level is immediately after said cutscene, making me repeat the end of the previous level. Sadono killed me once and, during the subsequent game over screen, he grabbed for a radio that wasn't there and said "Radio Sadono, he'll wanna hear about this." I know the timelines don't match up, but if you had told me this was an eight-year-old mobile game ported to PC, I'd believe you.
Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow is not a good game. The stealth and mechanics surrounding it are flimsy, many times Sam is required to shoot his way out of a situation - yet, like the first game, shooting more than one bullet is sort of a nightmare - and the plot is dull and hardly there. I don't see how anything about this game could captivate you other than wondering the eternal question, "How the hell did this get made?" Trust me when I say no one needs to bother finding out. Let Pandora Tomorrow stay forgotten, we're all better for it.
TL;DR: If you want a good stealth game, it's barely here, and if you want a fun shooter, it certainly isn't here. Pandora Tomorrow is unsure of what it wanted to be, but one thing's for certain: it's best left forgotten and unplayed. Never played it and are still curious? Just play Chaos Theory again, trust me.
I say "hard to get a copy" but truly, if you'd like to play Pandora Tomorrow for yourself (which I do not recommend), some light Googling will have you downloading it in no time. What I mean is you cannot buy the game on Steam nor Ubisoft's own Uplay: the only 'legit' way to play Pandora Tomorrow is buying a disc and I'll bet you'd have a tough time finding a copy at Gamestop. Say you buy it, though, a copy of Pandora Tomorrow for PC or the Splinter Cell Classic Trilogy HD for PS3 off Amazon or something: you're still in for issues. After paying about $15 or $70 (respectively, at time of review), you will either need to apply your own patches to get the game running or see the not-so-HD textures that fans didn't appreciate in the PS3 version. Word on the 'net seems to be Ubisoft couldn't be bothered to fix graphical issues in the PC version (though there's gotta be more to it than that), so they've just seemingly pretended the game never happened and let some random guy on the internet fix their mess for them. There's a close-up of Lambert drinking from a mug with the Ubisoft logo in a cutscene. Disgusting.
But the game! Once you finally got everything going, is it worth it? Absolutely not. I see strange praise for this game online to this day and I'll simply never understand it. Apparently the big development focus this time around was improving the lighting and shadows, but I could barely tell. Nothing about the game looks too special, just servicable and maybe slightly better than the original, and in fact many areas that looked dark had my sensor telling me I was standing in a floodlight. This combined with hair-trigger guards and their near-instant "sound the alarm" reflexes just brews up painful tedium. They can somehow report you to HQ from the grave, too. Expect lots of save-scumming and prayers of patience to the quick-saving/loading gods, because brother? You'll need it. There's no score of any kind at the end of a level, and most let you trip three alarms before game over; but if you're like me, you'll see that 1/3 alarms on the garbage HUD and sigh before going back to painfully do it 'correctly' this time.
Pandora Tomorrow's story will wash over you and leave nearly no trace behind. You may as well be asleep at the wheel just as the writers, voice actors, and animators were, because you won't really know what's happening while it's happening. Is anything even happening? Well, some guy named Sadono is planning on smallpoxing America and only his daily dead man's switch-like phone calls are keeping the virus at bay. Third Echelon is running out of patience and Sadono is running out of anytime minutes, so Sam Fisher and his team have to dunk on 'dono before PANDORA TOMORROW. There's a train level that's kind of neat but can be completed in like 4 minutes, clearly shoved in there to get a return on the art team's budget, sort of like with Uncharted 3. The final cutscene and Sam's solution to a smallpox bomb is hilariously stupid and I could never spoil such a 'great' moment. There is zero replay value.
Tonally, this game feels feverish and directionless and not much like the previous nor future Splinter Cell games. There's a literal on-rail shooting gallery segment (a NEW breed of stealth). At one point Sam is urgently messaged and told to murder the unarmed woman in front of him and if you do so, you're never told why, but given a "Trust me, bro." This sort of bothers Sam, who brings it up again later, but is just told nothing again. It's weird, though, because Lambert is supposed to be a good friend of Sam's, you'd think he'd give him something, but Sam stops caring at this point. 'Trust the feds', yeah fucking right.
It plays like a Splinter Cell game, for the most part. Everything feels pretty flimsy this time around, I could trip up enemy scripts by walking into a room they were breaching from the other side and just leaving it quickly (from whence I came). They paused in place and didn't know what to do anymore, apparently. There were other issues, like alt-tabbing out meant you'd never be able to fullscreen the game again. I had a hard crash during a level's intro cutscene (these all look like old GI Joe commercials), and of course the autosave for the level is immediately after said cutscene, making me repeat the end of the previous level. Sadono killed me once and, during the subsequent game over screen, he grabbed for a radio that wasn't there and said "Radio Sadono, he'll wanna hear about this." I know the timelines don't match up, but if you had told me this was an eight-year-old mobile game ported to PC, I'd believe you.
Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow is not a good game. The stealth and mechanics surrounding it are flimsy, many times Sam is required to shoot his way out of a situation - yet, like the first game, shooting more than one bullet is sort of a nightmare - and the plot is dull and hardly there. I don't see how anything about this game could captivate you other than wondering the eternal question, "How the hell did this get made?" Trust me when I say no one needs to bother finding out. Let Pandora Tomorrow stay forgotten, we're all better for it.
TL;DR: If you want a good stealth game, it's barely here, and if you want a fun shooter, it certainly isn't here. Pandora Tomorrow is unsure of what it wanted to be, but one thing's for certain: it's best left forgotten and unplayed. Never played it and are still curious? Just play Chaos Theory again, trust me.
É um jogo legal, mas eu esperava tão mais do que ele entrega que no final é só decepcionante…
Pandora Tomorrow, tal qual muitas sequências atuais da Ubisoft (e até a elogiadíssima por esse que vos fala, trilogia Hitman World of Assassination), pega tudo que foi criado de positivo em seu antecessor, replica, muda uma coisa ou outra e então o lança como algo novo. No caso de Splinter Cell isso não é ativamente ruim, já que, como dito em minha review anterior da franquia (recomendo a leitura), Splinter Cell 1 é realmente incrível. E justamente por eu ter me impressionado com o jogo de 2002 eu esperava algo a mais do que simplesmente uma nova história com os mesmos gráficos e uma jogabilidade quase que 1:1 com seu antecessor.
Pandora Tomorrow infelizmente abandona os poucos elementos de Immersive Sim que o primeiro tinha para dar lugar a uma ação mais desenfreada, dando um ar ainda maior de linearidade pra esse jogo já curto. Não é como se o jogo saísse de um Arma (hiper realista) e fosse abruptamente para algo mais exagerado entupido de explosões ala Velozes e Furiosos, mas em comparação ao primeiro (que já tinha elementos presentes de ação), este apresenta muito mais características do gênero.
Em 75% da campanha, ao longo de suas 8 missões, esse título é mais fácil que seu predecessor, e tal qual sua interação de 2002, em dado momento aqui a dificuldade se eleva de maneira artificial. O problema disso é que essa elevação na dificuldade é muito grande. Durante as 2 missões finais, não só qualquer ação fora do que o jogo esperava me causavam falha na missão, como também ao longo dessas missões em específico, além de existirem mais inimigos por metro quadrado, estes se tornam muito mais sensíveis a passos, seja de forma coerente, graças a detalhes do cenário, seja de forma extremamente artificial.
Pelo o que eu li de outras reviews, o maior alicerce de Pandora Tomorrow está no seu multiplayer (que eu não joguei) e eu não duvido que seja. A gameplay é uma evolução EXTREMAMENTE tímida. A história não é (pra mim) algo que eu foque em um jogo do gênero - por mais interessante que esta é, já que aborda tópicos minimamente atuais como fake news e guerras biológicas -. Os momentos cinematográficos voltam a aparecer mas não são tão impressionantes como no título inicial. A HUD é só uma versão piorada e mais feia da de 2002. Musicalmente este jogo é legal, porém, por algum motivo as músicas são extremamente intrusivas nas fases, literalmente começando do nada e terminando do nada e de maneira estridente.
No final é difícil comparar este com o primeiro jogo de Sam Fisher. Enquanto Splinter Cell 1 é quase uma obra prima do gênero Stealth e totalmente mandatório, o segundo título é no máximo uma sombra do que poderia ser de fato.
Pandora Tomorrow, tal qual muitas sequências atuais da Ubisoft (e até a elogiadíssima por esse que vos fala, trilogia Hitman World of Assassination), pega tudo que foi criado de positivo em seu antecessor, replica, muda uma coisa ou outra e então o lança como algo novo. No caso de Splinter Cell isso não é ativamente ruim, já que, como dito em minha review anterior da franquia (recomendo a leitura), Splinter Cell 1 é realmente incrível. E justamente por eu ter me impressionado com o jogo de 2002 eu esperava algo a mais do que simplesmente uma nova história com os mesmos gráficos e uma jogabilidade quase que 1:1 com seu antecessor.
Pandora Tomorrow infelizmente abandona os poucos elementos de Immersive Sim que o primeiro tinha para dar lugar a uma ação mais desenfreada, dando um ar ainda maior de linearidade pra esse jogo já curto. Não é como se o jogo saísse de um Arma (hiper realista) e fosse abruptamente para algo mais exagerado entupido de explosões ala Velozes e Furiosos, mas em comparação ao primeiro (que já tinha elementos presentes de ação), este apresenta muito mais características do gênero.
Em 75% da campanha, ao longo de suas 8 missões, esse título é mais fácil que seu predecessor, e tal qual sua interação de 2002, em dado momento aqui a dificuldade se eleva de maneira artificial. O problema disso é que essa elevação na dificuldade é muito grande. Durante as 2 missões finais, não só qualquer ação fora do que o jogo esperava me causavam falha na missão, como também ao longo dessas missões em específico, além de existirem mais inimigos por metro quadrado, estes se tornam muito mais sensíveis a passos, seja de forma coerente, graças a detalhes do cenário, seja de forma extremamente artificial.
Pelo o que eu li de outras reviews, o maior alicerce de Pandora Tomorrow está no seu multiplayer (que eu não joguei) e eu não duvido que seja. A gameplay é uma evolução EXTREMAMENTE tímida. A história não é (pra mim) algo que eu foque em um jogo do gênero - por mais interessante que esta é, já que aborda tópicos minimamente atuais como fake news e guerras biológicas -. Os momentos cinematográficos voltam a aparecer mas não são tão impressionantes como no título inicial. A HUD é só uma versão piorada e mais feia da de 2002. Musicalmente este jogo é legal, porém, por algum motivo as músicas são extremamente intrusivas nas fases, literalmente começando do nada e terminando do nada e de maneira estridente.
No final é difícil comparar este com o primeiro jogo de Sam Fisher. Enquanto Splinter Cell 1 é quase uma obra prima do gênero Stealth e totalmente mandatório, o segundo título é no máximo uma sombra do que poderia ser de fato.
Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow can basically be seen as an expansion of the first game. Same great gameplay, just with a new story and levels. I'm not complaining as I love the first splinter cell and think it's one of the greatest stealth games, and getting more of that is not a problem at all. Some say the levels here are weaker than the first game, but I feel like they're just as good.
It played to its strengths in the train mission, but for the most part it's yet another linear and unmemorable Splinter Cell. And it has a hilariously dumb ending.
This game has some of the most inspired level ideas in the entire series--the train, Jerusalem, LAX--but the whole thing is riddled with little issues that bring the whole experience down. Granted, some of that is on the PC port (I was playing with the shadows fix, don't worry) but some of it isn't. Hair-trigger guard AI, occasionally illogical level design, and a half-baked story make the whole thing feel significantly less polished than the original. The story is truly bizarre and the game just kind of ends all of a sudden. I still don't know why it opened with a close-up shot of someone in handcuffs, and the ending made me laugh out loud.
Still! It's very much worth it if you really like Splinter Cell. When it hits, it really hits. And you get to play Chaos Theory afterward!
Still! It's very much worth it if you really like Splinter Cell. When it hits, it really hits. And you get to play Chaos Theory afterward!
It's pretty solid stealth.
The story is quite garbage though.
The story is quite garbage though.
messy collection of thoughts
Somewhat better than the original (maybe?). The level design feels less restrictive than what I remember from there, though it's still incredibly rigid and doesn't attempt to hide to it. Guards, cameras, light, shadows, all objects, really, are set up in such an artificial manner that the developers may as well have put a big blinking arrow telling you where to go. It ends up feeling less like sneaking and more like instinctively following the clear path created for you.
I'm not expecting Thief or Hitman levels of openness either, just some interesting bits of level design, Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2 are both fairly linear stealth games and provide more interesting scenarios than anything here. I know Splinter Cell is capable of it too, the last mission shows it. You enter an airport to take down some terrorists, standard stuff, but you suddenly get notified that some are disguised as civilians. Now you're actually challenged by having to stealthily take out specific targets, keeping yourself and their deaths hidden from the real civilians. It's far more exciting than anything the game has done before, and I had a spike in joy before realising this was only happening in the last level.
Mechanics here are fine, mostly the same as the original but with a couple new additions. The gunplay is still terrible, however. "Aiming in" is slow and spread is wide, even reaching beyond the crosshairs at maximum accuracy. Quicksaving before any attempt at shooting a light is practically essential. I still don't understand either why Ubisoft have created an accuracy system that discourages you from playing this like action game, yet there are several forced shooting sequences.
Pandora Tomorrow also has real issues with not utilising its mechanics enough too. Sticky cams and rappelling and shooting upside down from pipes and sneaking through gaps by hugging walls and that weird split jump thing that you can climb from, those are all cool but they're barely used. When they are it's usually because they're the only thing you should do. This makes the existence of the boring level design just that bit more frustrating. The mechanics needed to give it flavour are there, just not implemented enough.
Somewhat better than the original (maybe?). The level design feels less restrictive than what I remember from there, though it's still incredibly rigid and doesn't attempt to hide to it. Guards, cameras, light, shadows, all objects, really, are set up in such an artificial manner that the developers may as well have put a big blinking arrow telling you where to go. It ends up feeling less like sneaking and more like instinctively following the clear path created for you.
I'm not expecting Thief or Hitman levels of openness either, just some interesting bits of level design, Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2 are both fairly linear stealth games and provide more interesting scenarios than anything here. I know Splinter Cell is capable of it too, the last mission shows it. You enter an airport to take down some terrorists, standard stuff, but you suddenly get notified that some are disguised as civilians. Now you're actually challenged by having to stealthily take out specific targets, keeping yourself and their deaths hidden from the real civilians. It's far more exciting than anything the game has done before, and I had a spike in joy before realising this was only happening in the last level.
Mechanics here are fine, mostly the same as the original but with a couple new additions. The gunplay is still terrible, however. "Aiming in" is slow and spread is wide, even reaching beyond the crosshairs at maximum accuracy. Quicksaving before any attempt at shooting a light is practically essential. I still don't understand either why Ubisoft have created an accuracy system that discourages you from playing this like action game, yet there are several forced shooting sequences.
Pandora Tomorrow also has real issues with not utilising its mechanics enough too. Sticky cams and rappelling and shooting upside down from pipes and sneaking through gaps by hugging walls and that weird split jump thing that you can climb from, those are all cool but they're barely used. When they are it's usually because they're the only thing you should do. This makes the existence of the boring level design just that bit more frustrating. The mechanics needed to give it flavour are there, just not implemented enough.
It is with a heavy heart that I also slap an 'ABANDONED' on the PC version of Splinter Cell 2. While functionally much, much better than the PS2 version, my first two hours with it were pretty dull -- feeling like a samey retread of the first game, but with much less interesting level design.
A cardinal sin came for me at the end of the Paris level. You crawl through an air vent, into a locked room some enemies are trying to get into. After some brief story dialogue, you see enemies priming a bomb to open the locked room. I died on my escape (they heard me trying to crawl through the vent), so I quick loaded and had an idea! Before entering the room, I dropped a smoke grenade from the vent to the floor below! So the enemies trying to break into the room passed out, and were no longer a threat! I played through the same dialogue as before, but this time there was no bomb-prep cutscene because I had dispatched the enemies.
HOWEVER! The level is unfinishable without the bomb. You need the bomb to blow open the door to allow you to extract. And I had already used up my one quick save slot after taking out those enemies, so my only other option was to REPLAY THE ENTIRE LEVEL AGAIN, AND NOT BE AS CLEVER! Why the enemies are killable when they are needed for story progress I do not know, AND the game doesn't even give you a proper 'hey you messed up, here's a checkpoint' fail state. It's insane that innovative play like that in a stealth game just lets you fuck yourself in that manner.
Anyway, I have no desire to replay the entire level, so we're calling it quits here.
A cardinal sin came for me at the end of the Paris level. You crawl through an air vent, into a locked room some enemies are trying to get into. After some brief story dialogue, you see enemies priming a bomb to open the locked room. I died on my escape (they heard me trying to crawl through the vent), so I quick loaded and had an idea! Before entering the room, I dropped a smoke grenade from the vent to the floor below! So the enemies trying to break into the room passed out, and were no longer a threat! I played through the same dialogue as before, but this time there was no bomb-prep cutscene because I had dispatched the enemies.
HOWEVER! The level is unfinishable without the bomb. You need the bomb to blow open the door to allow you to extract. And I had already used up my one quick save slot after taking out those enemies, so my only other option was to REPLAY THE ENTIRE LEVEL AGAIN, AND NOT BE AS CLEVER! Why the enemies are killable when they are needed for story progress I do not know, AND the game doesn't even give you a proper 'hey you messed up, here's a checkpoint' fail state. It's insane that innovative play like that in a stealth game just lets you fuck yourself in that manner.
Anyway, I have no desire to replay the entire level, so we're calling it quits here.
Not quite as good as the first game, but still a nice experience for those that miss and crave the splinter cell formula.
Improvement over the first game, better story too. Aiming is improved too though not perfected. Stealth and movement more refined. Pretty much a better version of the first game, they're both very similar.
They called it "Pandora Tomorrow" because "Killing All Terrorists Today" wasn't well received by marketing
Splinter Cell is one of my favorite genres of game (Stealth!) and a series that holds a pretty special place in my heart, despite not being super on top of the series in general. One of my fondest memories of my old Xbox was playing through the first VERY difficult Splinter Cell game and being entranced by the tactical gameplay and slowed down pace of action. The main character is a gruff old goat voiced by Michael Ironside who very much brings his A-Game in terms of growl and depth. The first game I replayed very shortly prior to my first 52 game challenge so I do have a decent memory of it and decided to skip it in a Splinter Cell series playthrough. So I decided to buy 3 games on my Xbox One because they're on sale and backwards compatible and started with the second game in the series - Pandora Tomorrow. I never actually got to play this back in the day, I skipped right to Chaos Theory.. so how was this very old stealth game to start off with?
Actually pretty darn good!
Sam is back for another generic adventure with a Bad Guy of the Week, this one an East Timor 'freedom fighter' who plays himself as a new Che Guevara trying to lead a revolution against the US on the world stage. He's basically just a jumped up terrorist and drug dealer however who has a major edge - several smallpox bombs he has smuggled into the US. Plus, he has a dead man's switch on all of the bombs - if he goes down, they go off. So how do we settle this? Sam sneaks about a bunch of a BROAD variety of locales, konking folks over the head and snooping around to get the thing that Lambert snidely wants! While the in-mission goals don't vary too much, the level designs themselves and the art directions for each are pretty wildly different. There's a dense jungle you're sneaking through in the late evening (that sun is still up don't you worry..), a fast moving train that's quite a stand out, a base leading to a fricken' submarine you get to fight your way out of, LAX airport!, and a couple others that were all at least decent if not pretty good? Quick aside as well on the art style - friggen' outstanding. There is such an EXCEPTIONAL use of dynamic lighting in every single level, it makes the darkness you are supposed to be hiding in feel good to make use of. There were several spots in each level where I'd say "Damn this looks tight for a 15+ year old game)
While the maps are solid, and the gameplay fundamentals themselves are good (the light/shadow and sound mechanics are fuckin' rock solid stealth systems, they give the player the perfect amount of info on how concerned the player needs to be on being discovered) sadly the levels a bit too linear to be genuinely great.. 90% of the time there is a very clear path the devs wanted you to take and no derivation from it is acceptable or will be rewarded. There were plenty of low fences I wanted to hop over, doors I wanted to go through out of order, or areas that just respawned bad guys for no reason other than the plot needed to. It was very unfortunate knowing that the sequel (we'll get to that one soon!) does such a great job with it, but honestly I was shocked when I replayed the original a couple of years ago to discover it had the exact same issue.. Well it was one of the first real attempts at the stealth genre on console, you gotta' start somewhere! Also the game lacks a proper save system other than checkpoints, and there were some damn ANNOYING sections I had to do 5+ times to get exactly right because I really had no fuckin' idea where the game wanted me to go or do so I had to wander around - and in a few of those places one mistake period meant going back to the damn load screen... very frustrating.
I don't often love replaying older games - the clunkiness, the graphics, the voice acting and storytelling are just not up to our standards... and in a lot of ways, Pandora Tomorrow has all of that. Picking up items and objects are rote animations, abysmal checkpoint system, voice acting is BAD except for Lambert and Ironside, the story/villain are pretty one-note and simple with no real overarching plot for the series... all of these things are true, but ultimately I had a damn good time just exploring these levels, marveling at a work more than 15 years old and being delighted to lurk in the shadows and pounce on some unsuspecting mercenary goon then slink back off into the shadows to strike again...
Actually pretty darn good!
Sam is back for another generic adventure with a Bad Guy of the Week, this one an East Timor 'freedom fighter' who plays himself as a new Che Guevara trying to lead a revolution against the US on the world stage. He's basically just a jumped up terrorist and drug dealer however who has a major edge - several smallpox bombs he has smuggled into the US. Plus, he has a dead man's switch on all of the bombs - if he goes down, they go off. So how do we settle this? Sam sneaks about a bunch of a BROAD variety of locales, konking folks over the head and snooping around to get the thing that Lambert snidely wants! While the in-mission goals don't vary too much, the level designs themselves and the art directions for each are pretty wildly different. There's a dense jungle you're sneaking through in the late evening (that sun is still up don't you worry..), a fast moving train that's quite a stand out, a base leading to a fricken' submarine you get to fight your way out of, LAX airport!, and a couple others that were all at least decent if not pretty good? Quick aside as well on the art style - friggen' outstanding. There is such an EXCEPTIONAL use of dynamic lighting in every single level, it makes the darkness you are supposed to be hiding in feel good to make use of. There were several spots in each level where I'd say "Damn this looks tight for a 15+ year old game)
While the maps are solid, and the gameplay fundamentals themselves are good (the light/shadow and sound mechanics are fuckin' rock solid stealth systems, they give the player the perfect amount of info on how concerned the player needs to be on being discovered) sadly the levels a bit too linear to be genuinely great.. 90% of the time there is a very clear path the devs wanted you to take and no derivation from it is acceptable or will be rewarded. There were plenty of low fences I wanted to hop over, doors I wanted to go through out of order, or areas that just respawned bad guys for no reason other than the plot needed to. It was very unfortunate knowing that the sequel (we'll get to that one soon!) does such a great job with it, but honestly I was shocked when I replayed the original a couple of years ago to discover it had the exact same issue.. Well it was one of the first real attempts at the stealth genre on console, you gotta' start somewhere! Also the game lacks a proper save system other than checkpoints, and there were some damn ANNOYING sections I had to do 5+ times to get exactly right because I really had no fuckin' idea where the game wanted me to go or do so I had to wander around - and in a few of those places one mistake period meant going back to the damn load screen... very frustrating.
I don't often love replaying older games - the clunkiness, the graphics, the voice acting and storytelling are just not up to our standards... and in a lot of ways, Pandora Tomorrow has all of that. Picking up items and objects are rote animations, abysmal checkpoint system, voice acting is BAD except for Lambert and Ironside, the story/villain are pretty one-note and simple with no real overarching plot for the series... all of these things are true, but ultimately I had a damn good time just exploring these levels, marveling at a work more than 15 years old and being delighted to lurk in the shadows and pounce on some unsuspecting mercenary goon then slink back off into the shadows to strike again...
Una buena apuesta en lo referente a los juegos de espionaje y sigilo. Pandora Tomorrow llega a la Game Cube de Nintendo con las mejores gráficas en lo referente a sus múltiples ports entre consolas y con nuevas misiones que solo se pueden encontrar en el pequeño disco del cubo nipón. Es un juego que hace honor a la paciencia y la táctica, implementando mecánicas que no les serán de mucho agrado a los jugadores acostumbrados a disparar en todo momento. Un título muy bien concebido, con un diseño de niveles bastante sorprendente y una historia que logra convencernos. Recomendado para todos, solo es cuestión de probarlo para darse cuenta de su calidad.
Was crashing and I didn't feel like trying to troubleshoot.