So, most of his mission objectives do not come from the NSA, but the JBA (John Brown’s Army – the terrorists). In Double Agent, Sam has to infiltrate a terrorist group and gain their trust. What I did like, however, was the new double loyalty mechanic. Sometimes it gets triggered randomly, without guards reacting at all, and sometimes enemies get alerted, but you’ll only know it once they’ve crept up from behind. The problem is that the change in the music is barely noticeable, and (even worse) acoustic cue is super inconsistent. Like in the previous games, when a guy notices something, a distinct cue will play, and a faster-paced beat gets added to the music. Where it gets really bad, though, is when it comes to sounds tied to the Stealth system, specifically when enemies take notice of you. Most of the time it’s just some sort of slow rhythm with a few distorted instruments fading in and out. They’re not even just cool background noise. But, at least to me, these songs did nothing to evoke emotions or expand on the levels’ themes.
Music-wise, it’s dark and moody, fitting the overall theme of the game. Most of the sound effects (shooting, enemies gasping, knife sounds,…) have been taken over from Chaos Theory.
The sound design ranges from bland to bad. But if you’re just tucked away under a work desk? It takes a special kind of blindness not to see you under there. After all, if you’re hiding in a solid locker, nobody will see you. These take some time to get into or out of, but once you’re hidden, they act as “safe spots”. Splinter Cell: Double Agent added the option to hide in lockers, under tables or under cars. Most of the time, enemies are pretty deaf, but sometimes they notice you even on your lowest walking speed. Moreover, the acoustic stealth system no longer has any form of consistency, no matter the running speed, noise level or underground material. There is no clear indicator of how far enemies can see you or how fast they recognise you as a threat, which is rather bad on its own. Which is the next bad thing: the detection system is pretty broken in this game. On the other hand, there are also times where you run around in relative darkness, but apparently can be seen by everyone in a 300-metre radius. Like I said earlier, the game is much lighter than the previous ones, so many of the spaces you can hide in will seem well lit to you. However, there are a lot of times where you’ll have no idea if you’ll be hidden in a place or not. I wouldn’t have much of a problem with that, because knowing if you’re invisible or not is all you really need. Yellow, meaning you are visible and red, which means that enemies are attacking you right now (I don’t know about you guys, but when people shoot at me, I don’t need a flashing red light to tell me I’m in danger…).
Instead of a gradual meter to show you how visible you are, there are only three states: green, which indicates that you are hidden, and people cannot see you. The Stealth system, in general, has been considerably simplified. Most of the missions take place in broad daylight, with only small amounts of cover or dark corners to hide in. There’s a mission in Antarctica, you sneak through a hotel in Shanghai, and you make your way through a luxury cruise ship in Mexico.īut this brings me to the first negative point of the game: there is not much in the way of stealthy options. No longer are the levels just grey and green, but shine in all the colours of the rainbow. One thing Double Agent did improve on (that I criticised in the last game) is the colour palette.
The majority of the animations, however, like walking, interrogating, and interacting, have been recycled from Chaos Theory. Most of the textures are much more detailed than in the previous games, and there are a lot more custom-made animations for cutscenes.
Splinter cell double agent pc error update#
For the PC-version, Ubisoft created a new engine, and the update clearly shows. The game came out in 2006, so it’s not exactly new.