Man, this game is just cool you know. The sleek presentation, the cool spy-thriller story, it's all just nice to play.

I actually went to this one straight from Chaos Theory, skipping Double Agent and Conviction (both have less-than-ideal PC ports). The lighting thing being binary rather than having a meter like before is such an unneeded change, and so is the removal of the sound meter.

And Sam's voice, oof. Like, I get it: Ironside was treating cancer at the time and that fucking sucks. But then... why still do it with Sam Fisher? He not only sounds different, he acts and looks different too. He's kind of an asshole in this one, and with every passing game he somehow gets younger, huh. For crying out loud, just use a different character and say that Sam is fishing somewhere. A lot of the fanbase dismissed this game because of that, and that could've been easily avoided.

And this game is sometimes guilty of modern AAA trappings, like "immersive gameplay" (sections where all you do is walk forward and could've easily been a cutscene...). But credit where credit is due, this game handles the action setpieces quite well. They're not too frequent to be annoying or pace-breaking, and end up feeling electric and exciting, and plenty of them still have room for a stealthy approach.

While it still sucks that we lost Chaos Theory's beautifully methodical stealth, this certainly manages to be a better stealth AND action game than Conviction by a country mile.
For my money, Panther is easily the best playstyle - I adore the animations as you run past and slash people to bits with the Karambit knife, then just keep running while everyone is busy getting distracted by the new corpse you've created.
Unfortunately it doesn't always feel consistent - there were many times where I was somehow seen or heard when I didn't mean to, it makes the insta-fail side assignments a real pain when they had so much potential - some of the best level design is found in these.
Unnecessary progression systems are sadly here as a concession to Ubisoft's staple design philosophy to keep those gamers gaming!!!!11
Story was never much more than a backdrop to back up the stealth gameplay with a fitting conspiracy narrative, but they really didn't give a shit here. They somehow managed to make it even more basic with another TERRORISTS WITH EVIL DEATH GAS plot that you've seen a thousand times before. Sam's new voice actor sounds like a pitched up Joe Swanson. Grimsdottir once again looks pretty nice when the lighting doesn't reveal her freaky facial bumpmaps (sadly a preventable disease).
This just needed some tightening up and this could've been the smoothest stealth experience going. Still had a fun time even if this is barely the same series anymore aside from the green goggles.