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> Results: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Essentials
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The Splinter Cell series of games are established on consoles and PC as excellent stealth shooters. They are beginning to establish themselves on handheld systems tooﾗas lousy ports of those excellent games with terrible controls. While the controls are not as bad as last year's Chaos Theory for the DS, Splinter Cell Essentials fails just as badly. An interesting plot tells the history of Sam Fisher through a series of missions. The graphics in the cutscenes raise expectations to true console visual quality. Unfortunately areas are often too dark and the night vision washes out more than it illuminates, making the graphics seem uninspired. Critical items like climbable walls are difficult to spot in the environment, but the controls hurt worse. Individual controls are clear, but the combination of controls needed to accomplish most tasks is cumbersome and occasionally result in death as you fumble for the correct key. Even stealth moves, which should be a core element for this game, are difficult to accomplish.
While the game shows the designers have a great deal of respect for the history of the series, the respect manifests itself by packing in too much stuff and making it all unmanageable. Splinter Cell Essentials shines in a few brief moments, but is largely forgettable and frustrating, occasionally infuriating, and the only essential thing about the game is that you not waste your money on it!  
Splinter Cell Essentials is full of the ratcheted-up violence that earned Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory the first M rating for this series from the ESRB. Close range stealth kills, quick headshots, and using a knife for brutal quick-kills are critical to progressing through the game. This is one area where the graphics do work wellﾗthe visual killing effects are visceral and effective. Levels and environments are immersive and provide high tension.
The missions tend to be mature in content. For example, Fisher retells the story of what happened on a mission where he was reported to have killed civilians. Language is also typical of a violent M-rated game, with the addition of whatever profanities the player utters while trying to manage the controls or see anything in the darkened environments. The very nature of the seriesﾗeven the earlier T-rated gamesﾗis on the mature end of the teen spectrum, and it is advised that this game be left to adults with a high threshold for bad controls and long load times. This review edited by Dave Long Comments? Chat about it in our forums! Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Browse Amazon.com's selection of "splinter cell" themed games Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Essentials |
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