PS2 Review: Hitman 2: Silent Assassin (2002)

My first exposure to the Hitman franchise came through the form of a demo disc that I got through a demo copy of the official Playstation magazine. In the beginning it was an experience not unlike learning to play Splinter Cell, where you gun down many enemies because to this point in your gaming career, you never learned how to be stealthy. Unlike Splinter Cell, this was a viable option in Hitman 2, at least on the easier difficulties, as Agent 47 tends to be much better armed than Sam Fisher. But this gaming experience was obviously quite different than the stealth tactics of SC: you are out in the open, wearing disguises to pass security. Also, Hitman 2 offers much more of an open-ended gameplay than the early SC titles.

This demo of the first mission of the game offered so many options of how to infiltrate the Mafia Don's Italian villa: did you want to take the clothing of the flower delivery man? How about the grocery delivery boy (which allows you to smuggle your weapons in the grocery crates)? Or you can sneak in as a bodyguard, though you'll be the only one whose bald with a bar code tattooed on his head. What then? Did you try to get to the Don's bedroom to off him with a golf club? Strangle him in his office? Snipe him with the rifle in the garage? Out of all the demos I've played, this might have been the one I played the most because of all its opportunity for experimentation.

Does the full version live up to the demo? Yes and no. Without a doubt, there are other missions in the game that have an open-ended character, where there is more than one way to skin that cat, but many of them don't. The latter group seem to have very few options, if there was, in fact, more than one, and they would be very specific and difficult to figure out. If you lack the patience to figure it out (or have too much pride to look it up online), you'll often find yourself getting a "Mass Murderer" rating for your performance (which is another issue: it often seems like there is but one method to achieve the coveted "Silent Assassin" rating for each mission). It was also disappointing that the demo offered features that didn't appear in the full version. One was actual names for the guns in the game ("Beretta" became "9mm pistol" and "Desert Eagle" became "Deagle"). Another was that 47 could punch people, which needed refinement, but was tossed out in the final release. Hand-to-hand combat skills seem like something necessary for an elite assassin, but they didn't find their way into the game until Hitman: Blood Money.

This isn't to say that Hitman 2 isn't a great game; far from it. It is a solid action game that offers an exceptionally high amount of replay value for this genre and also requires a relatively higher amount of patience to master (the very first FAQ offered on GameFAQs.com for this game literally advises the player to "Kill everyone in site [sic]."). But if the player takes the time to learn how to play the game as Agent 47 would do things, it can be a rewarding experience.

The Hitman franchise features an iconic character who isn't just a generic action star who blows up every vehicle he gets into and causes the ladies to swoon. As far as video game characters go, he is unique and one of the most recognizable with his bald head, black suit, red tie, leather gloves, and twin silver .45 pistols. He is an antihero, but one we can feel justified in supporting.

Thus, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin seems to be a complete package: an intense and interesting character, the uber-interesting world of global assassins, widely varied and open-ended gameplay, the option for 1st or 3rd person perspective, high replay value, a masterpiece of a soundtrack by Jesper Kyd, and an engaging story (if you can manage to follow it). It is a classic and deserves one of Code Redd Net's highest recommendations.

XBOX 360 Review: Splinter Cell: Double Agent (2007)

SC:DA was Sam Fisher's foray into the next-gen era. Was it any good?  Well, the most noticeable jump in quality is in graphics; the impression left on me was reminiscent of how I felt when I first saw the reveal trailer of the original Splinter Cell. The game play and animation remained largely similar to Chaos Theory, at least in most circumstances. Sam shows us the versatility of his skill set in various, short-lived, situations. You control him building land mines, hacking emails, skydiving, and swimming. Strangely, though, this doesn't seem to break up the monotony, which I didn't feel in any of the previous games. There are two reasons for this:

1. The missions are the shortest they've ever been.
2. Almost half of the game is spent at the JBA headquarters.

And being slightly monotonous, it was hard to feel the climax of the story; indeed, major plot events largely had no built-up anticipation and caught me by surprise. One thing that kept me interested in the story, though, was Sam's relationship with JBA member Enrica Villablanca. Was he just seducing her as part of the mission or did he actually have sympathy for her? But even this aspect of the story isn't fully developed or resolved. To be sure, there are several dramatic parts not seen in the other games and this is an improvement in the series. But for being a game with multiple outcomes based on player decisions, these happen seldomly and only really change one major element of the story. The ending (or endings) itself was disappointing and left too many loose ends and questions.

One of the other features worth mentioning is the return of the Mission Rating system from Chaos Theory. Unfortunately, it seems to provide more of a hassle than benefit, especially for those struck with the Curse of Completionism. Previously, the ranking system made a bit of sense: your rating would decrease for obvious blunders such as getting identified as an intruder or setting off alarms, but would also provide some added challenge by prohibiting lethal attacks if one wanted a perfect rating. DA goes overboard on this. Sam's bread-and-butter tactics, like shooting lights and and knocking out guards, now incur a penalty, as do breaking locks and forcing hacks of keypads. Though it may seem cool by forcing the player to essentially become a ghost, in practice it is an exercise of saving the game after every minuscule action and nearly endless trial and error. Trying to get past multiple guards in well-lit rooms has more to do with luck than skill. All of this works against having an engrossing gaming experience by reminding you that you are limiting the tactics in your toolbox for no other purpose than getting a "100%" to display on a screen.

In sum, SC:DA for the XBOX 360 was not my favorite entry into the series. Not that it is a bad game, but having nearly impossible expectations for 100% completion somewhat lowers replay value. Strangely, having missions where it's conceivable to make it through without being seen makes it much too easy if one decides to use a gun. Thus, there are really only a couple of ways to play.

Stay tuned. I will finish off our Splinter Cell review series with a comparison between the XBOX 360 and PS2 versions of Double Agent.

PS3 Review: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (2005)

As before, Thrasher's looking at Chaos Theory through the lens of the Splinter Cell Classic Trilogy HD collection. Even though the game looks stunning in HD, this evaluation of the game can nevertheless carry over to its original versions on PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube (except for its co-op and competitive mutliplayer elements, which were not included in the HD collection).

While Chaos Theory doesn't radically alter the Splinter Cell formula, it nevertheless perfects it. Almost all the nagging issues I had with the original and Pandora Tomorrow have been addressed: specifically, the linearity of the missions, the lack of a mission ranking system, the frustratingly inconsistent gunplay, the underdeveloped close-quarters and hand-to-hand combat, the awkward animations. I also found the plot to be just as difficult to follow as its predecessors, especially in its more minute elements, and there are just so many names and dates and places and alliances and double-agents to keep track of. At times I had trouble recalling exactly who did what and to whom and for whom, but I was never in doubt as to the broader consequences of the mission: you know, kill this guy to stop WWIII, for instance. I would've liked some in-game device for recapping the story, especially for those of us who may have played the game slowly and may have forgotten some of the details in the interim. Now, that's not to say that the plot isn't engaging, indeed far from it: the narrative stakes are immense, as tensions between China, North Korea, South Korea, and Japan come to military conflict following the capture of weaponized algorithms by a radical separatist group. As I noted in my Pandora Tomorrow review, this series does an amazing job of furthering the plot through gameplay and not through cinematics, so that while I may not have retained every piece of data thrown at me in a mission I played two weeks prior, the briefings and in-game chatter between Sam and Lambert et al. made the goal of any specific operation sufficiently clear. Episodically, each mission works on its own quite nicely, something which keeps any of them from becoming pedestrian affairs.

As mentioned above, Chaos Theory addresses many of the bugaboos I had with the two earlier games in the series. First, the missions, while certainly not open-ended by any means, have been opened up considerably. There are often several ways to overcome an obstacle, much less obvious and guided this time around, and seldom do the choices offered seem hierarchical: in other words, this route rarely appears strategically preferable over this other route. Second, Chaos Theory has a mission rating system that evaluates your performance immediately after extraction, based on accuracy, shots fired, number of alarms raised, bodies found, that kind of thing. It's something that adds a wealth of replay value to the game, especially for those perfectionist spies out there dead set on being 100% invisible and nonlethal. It also helps that you can finally pick the equipment you bring into the field via the mission outfitting screen. Third, though shooting has been improved somewhat, there still remains some frustrating moments of inaccuracy. It's maddening to plug an adversary with few choice shots to the chest or legs only to see him sprint to cover unharmed, or to wait patiently for that perfect shot to align itself, from a crouched position with a motionless target, only to watch the bullet innocently bounce off his head. Fourth, hand-to-hand combat has improved tremendously with the addition of a knife. It seems like a simple addition, but it adds a new wrinkle to the way you approach your enemies: should you give him a knife in the gut or K.O. that sucker with a palm thrust to the jaw? Each has strategic implications unfortunately absent from the two earlier games in the series. Finally, the new physics engine gives the animations of Sam and his opponents their proper physical dimensions. Gone (for the most part, anyway) are those instances in which Sam would slide to door handles, for instance, and gone are the bodies that would get stuck between walls, which often resulted in those bodies being spotted on camera. I think Chaos Theory, like every successive entry in the Splinter Cell series, improved upon its predecessors without making them obsolete. Even in light of Double Agent or Conviction, Chaos Theory can stand on its own, and that's the mark of a great series.

PS3 Review: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (2004)

For the record, Thrasher's part in this Splinter Cell series has been conducted via the Splinter Cell Classic Trilogy HD collection for PS3. Though the presentation has certainly been upgraded in terms of graphics, as well as the exclusion of any online game modes, these reviews nonetheless apply to their original PS2 versions.

Immediately after finishing Pandora Tomorrow, I switched right over to Chaos Theory and was somewhat startled by the differences between them. The shift is most obvious in terms of graphics. Even by PS2 standards, Chaos Theory is a beautiful thing. In terms of gameplay, too, Chaos Theory has a certain smoothness that its predecessor lacks. Now, that's not to say Pandora Tomorrow is clunky, indeed far from it. What you get with Pandora Tomorrow is a tense, rhythmical stealth experience that pairs up well with the original and improves upon it in virtually all aspects. My initial encounters with the Splinter Cell series were, much like Chicken Man's, more a process of reprogramming than anything else. I was used to twitch shooters like TimeSplitters where stealth, or anything approximating it, was disregarded if not actively discouraged. So imagine my frustration (and eventual gratification) with learning to rely on my wits rather than my trigger. Situational awareness, patience and improvisation carry the day in Pandora Tomorrow.

This time, our wearied hero is sent to intercede in the terrorist activities of Indonesian guerrillas following the bombing of a U.S. embassy. "Pandora Tomorrow" refers to the terrorist's scheme, the release of a biological bomb which could rapidly spread the smallpox virus across the country. Despite the intricate plot, chock full of vague alliances, political allusions, double-crosses and double-agents, Pandora Tomorrow does an amazing job keeping everything in check and keeping players informed not only of what they are doing, but why. Thus, the in-game ear-piece chatter between Sam and his boss Lambert carries special significance, simultaneously informing you of what you need to do, why you need to do it, and how each character feels about it. There's a great depth of characterization in that and the key to this depth is integration, so that while Sam is busy trying to nab a drug trafficker, Sam/Lambert/other voices in his head carry on a conversation about the political and ethical dimensions of this action without interrupting the game for a tedious cinematic. The most striking moment of this kind of storytelling comes when, after working with a female undercover agent for most of a mission, Sam is suddenly told by Lambert to shoot her, no hesitations, no questions asked. In a wonderful touch, players can either follow the orders or not, thereby giving a moral weight to the otherwise highly guided decisions made elsewhere throughout the game. Even though Lambert subsequently justifies this order by revealing her to be a double-agent, Sam argues against shooting an unarmed woman, double-agent or not. Point is, shooting her reduces the number of enemies you face in the final area of the mission, while not shooting her places snipers on the roof. It's a fascinating dynamic that I wish more games incorporated.

Unfortunately, most other missions in the game are quite linear and don't have the same degree of choice. There's often a preferable, and clearly marked, method of progression. Theoretically you could complete each area in any number of ways, but generally those other ways involve a much higher percentage of shooting in order to push through them. At times trial and error becomes the only way to figure things out, but there is some fun to be had in trying to find that preferred route or in improvising an escape as a result of mistakes made earlier. This is why I don't particularly enjoy missions in which a single alarm raised results in failure; as such, too much time is spent on learning the scripted paths of your adversaries. There's a few of those sprinkled throughout Pandora Tomorrow, but they are thankfully surrounded by more forgiving missions in which the escalating alarm stages result in progressively more armored and anxious guards, and  the results are undoubtedly more thrilling when you have adjust dynamically to the consequences of your initial sloppiness.

As far as the actual mechanics go, all aspects of gameplay have been retained from the original Splinter Cell, with a few key additions to improve things. For one, you can now open doors while carrying bodies; as I'm sure you remember how frustrating it was to hide bodies previously (when you would open a door and hurriedly heft the limp moron onto your shoulders, only to watch the door close itself by mystical force in your face) this is a small but welcome change. Similarly, it's nice to have a laser sight option for your pistol to insure greater accuracy, but despite this upgrade shooting is still problematic in Pandora Tomorrow. Too often clear short-range shots, taken from a crouched position, would either miss entirely or, upon hitting an enemy's head, fail to kill/incapacitate; they twitch, as if the bullet merely made them itch, then raise an alarm before returning fire. Besides the gunplay, however, everything else is tight as a drum. Sam is responsive to commands, and even though his animation is sometimes stiff he always does what he should. While I wish we could get a mission rating system of some sort in order to evaluate our skills, the game doesn't suffer without one. It's a little short on replay (and mission ratings would undoubtedly bolster that), but Pandora Tomorrow is part of a fine lineage.

PS2 Review: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (2003)

I remember being quite excited back when I learned that Splinter Cell was going to be made available for PS2 users. Being dazzled by the graphics, I eagerly rented it as soon as I was able. I'm not sure whether it was culture shock or shell shock, but the learning curve for me was quite a long one. I started playing it at about nine in the morning and didn't stop until seven in the evening; it is certainly a strange feeling to have spent all day with a game, especially one you are just getting to know. It was like I had never played a stealth game before and this was my extra long first date. Sure, they gave you a silencer in some missions in GoldenEye and the Hitman franchise can certainly be billed as a stealth series, but you know if you get exposed you can shoot your way out of problems in both. Not so in Splinter Cell; Sam Fisher put me through a boot camp where I was broken down and reprogrammed. I had to unlearn to shoot first. (This took me a long time. It is quite strange to play it today and think there was a time when I struggled with not having enough ammunition.) And when you spend this amount of time with a game, with all of the frustration and growing pains that go with it, you can only come out with a deep sense of connection to it. Sticking with it through the hard times is proof of one's love. In so doing, Splinter Cell came to define the stealth genre for me. And it became more than just a game, just like for many Star Wars is more than just a movie. People will dress up like Storm Troopers; I will climb pipes and do shoulder rolls. It was a world I wanted to play in. As well, Sam Fisher became iconic. He is brilliantly brought to life by Michael Ironside, which is made cooler by his nearly always playing the "bad guy" role (indeed, my first exposure to him during my more impressionable years of youth was his playing the villain in Free Willy). I loved the idea of a seasoned veteran, knowing that he could only have survived this long if he knew what he was doing. You can read more about my admiration for Sam here, when I talk about the upcoming Splinter Cell: Blacklist. Splinter Cell also undeniably bears the signature of Tom Clancy and his fascination with modern military technology, especially of the near future. This, in fact, is one of the many charming things of the series as a whole: the setting is always a few years after the actual release date. The story also behaves like one of Clancy's crafted novels of geopolitical chess games, and, as enjoyable as reading them can be, I had far more fun playing them. All in all, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell is a joy and the birth of a wonderful series (albeit one that needs to find its roots), and is a must buy at the prices for which it can be had today, particularly if one has not previously tried it.

Sad Day For Sam Fisher

I alluded to my disappointment with what I saw in the E3 trailer of Splinter Cell: Blacklist during our time of highlights. I would like to elaborate on such in the present. As you can see from the above "Fifth Freedom" trailer, Sam is quite different from what he used to be. Now, I'm not only talking about the unforgivable fact that he is not voiced by Michael Ironside or that he seems to have gotten younger. In fact, nearly everything that lead me to become a fan has been altered or eradicated.

Most obvious is the gameplay itself. The tagline of Splinter Cell originally was "Stealth Action Redefined." With Blacklist (though the trend already began with Conviction) they are going to have to redefine "stealth" if they still want to label the series as such. Hitler agrees.
But beyond the gameplay, one of the things that really led me to appreciate the legend of Sam Fisher was seeing his evolution as a character. From the beginning, he always seemed to have an irreverent attitude towards his superiors and the military chain of command, especially when it was contradictory with his own moral vision. For example, in Chaos Theory while in Seoul to recover the data of a downed spy plane, the player is given the option of putting himself in danger of turrets in order to rescue the unconscious pilots. If he does so, he is not only warned, but discouraged, by Colonel Lambert, being told, "You won't get a medal for this, Fisher. You don't exist." Yet Sam does it anyway, citing his desire to sleep at night, demonstrating that whilst military brass give a higher priority to personal ambitions than to the lives of those under their command, Sam plays the role of the honey badger when it comes to his career. Even more telling is in Pandora Tomorrow when Fisher is told to shoot an unarmed woman who has been helping him because she is a double agent. If the player chooses to do so, Fisher expresses his anger at Lambert, claiming that his actions seem indistinguishable from those of the terrorists he is fighting. This is highly relevant to the "Fifth Freedom" trailer, which I will discuss below. As a final example of how Sam grew both as a character and in his independence from US intelligence agencies, Double Agent leaves him divorced from Third Echelon entirely, Conviction showing him to be now fighting it directly. Personally, as one who has become disillusioned with the military-industrial complex and intelligence agencies' all out assault on civil liberties, Sam was elevated beyond the status of legend, displaying a level of heroism rarely seen on any video game. Fisher had seen the State for the corrupt entity that it is and took it on. Simply awesome.

You can imagine the crushing blow that Blacklist is to me. Rather than further taking on the State, Sam has once again become enlisted in its ranks, only this time in a far more nefarious role. The words spoken in the trailer, beyond being trite and utterly predictable ("Saving lives...by taking them."), show just how far Sam has fallen. In our actual world, the US executive has has declared himself to be above the law, all in the name of upholding "American values and freedoms". He claims the right to imprison without trial, torture, steal anything he deems to be of value in national defense, and assassinate anyone he decides is a threat. Likewise, the fictional president in Blacklist also claims the right to bypass the law, Fisher being her tool for doing so. We can see Sam using the same weapons, i.e. predator drones, that have killed untold numbers of civilians in Pakistan and elsewhere in recent years. We also hear Fisher engage in Orwellian newspeak, as mentioned above.

In one fell swoop, it seems, Sam Fisher has fallen from grace; his beyond legendary status exchanged for becoming a mainstream shooter look-alike. As Tyler Durden says, "Putting feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken." Likewise, putting on night vision goggles does not make you Sam Fisher. Whatever Blacklist is, it does not deserve to have "Splinter Cell" in the title.

Highlights from E3: Hitman: Absolution

It's been a long time since a Hitman game has been released. I like what I see. Here is an entire level play-through which shows many of the new features and abilities of Agent 47:



One of the things I found very interesting about this second video is how it seems more like Splinter Cell than the new Blacklist does, particularly at 6:55. 47 has increased his acrobatic skills, apparently. Also, it looks like there is the ability to anticipate the paths of patrolling guards (as well as a sonar-like ability to spot them through walls). But what I really like about it is that it makes some elements of the series more realistic, such as disguises not simply being immunity from scrutiny (not that they ever were, but it is cool how even with the disguise, 47 will still attempt to hide his face). He still has the uncanny ability to change his clothes unhumanly quickly.

One of the things missing from the earlier Hitman games, until Blood Money came around, was that 47 lacked hand-to-hand combat options, something that seems necessary for any elite assassin to have (though my demo of Hitman 2 did give the player the ability to punch, but I'm not sure why it didn't make it into the final version, at least not without a cheat code). Absolution seems to contain plenty of it, as well as the ability to use objects in the environment as tools and weapons.

Overall, I think it's very promising, though I hope the "silent assassin" concept continues to thrive, as neither of these videos has guaranteed it. Maybe my anxiety comes from Splinter Cell's seeming abandonment of the concept of stealth, but I can rationally hope that Hitman doesn't go down the same path. I also hope that it continues to reward discretion in who is killed, as I believe the earlier games would not award a "Silent Assassin" rating if civilian casualties occurred (you can read about my angst with Splinter Cell: Conviction for not giving the option for non-lethal takedowns). But Hitman looks as good as ever. I hope you are as excited as I am! Expect to see it November 20th later this year.

Highlights from E3: Splinter Cell: Blacklist

So there's the trailer, here is a gameplay demonstration:


As you can see, it's very similar to Conviction, and continues to take the series into a more action, less stealth-oriented direction. Needless to say, this leaves a lot of fans displeased. But perhaps even more displeasing is the replacement of Michael Ironside as the voice of Sam Fisher. You can see a video of the new actor (as well as Ironside) here. What I'm wondering is what purpose Ironside is serving, since he appears to be working with Ubisoft in the link's video. A highly-rated YouTube comment from Lightning Spartan caught the sentiment of much of the fanbase:

What ever happened to, "They'd always wanted someone a little older, more professional, more experience, you know. Not some young goof ball that you see in your typical shooter". What they do to you Sam ? 

Also of concern (to me at least) is the premise of the story:

The United States has a military presence in two thirds of countries around the world. A group of 12 have had enough and initiate a terror ultimatum called the Blacklist - a deadly countdown of escalating terrorist attacks on U.S. interests. Sam Fisher is the leader of the newly formed 4th Echelon unit: a clandestine unit that answers solely to the President of the United States. Sam and his team must hunt down these terrorists by any means necessary, and stop the Blacklist countdown before it reaches zero. 

What I really liked about Conviction was how Sam was the rogue agent taking down Third Echelon and its new leadership, which essentially was partnered with the military-industrial complex and wanted to get the U.S. government involved in more foreign conflicts so that the artillery manufacturers, plane makers, ship builders, etc. would stand to profit from increased military spending. It was Sam against the Man. Inevitably, the U.S.'s overseas military involvement leaves many less than copacetic, as the story in Blacklist acknowledges. Now, Sam seems to be joining the Man and protecting the interests of the military-industrial complex. Again, a huge letdown.

Hopefully these problems can be addressed before the Spring 2013 release date (remember the redesign and long delay Conviction had because of it?). It actually looks like a fun game to play, just not Splinter Cell. I won't be so quick to say the series is dead, but many of the games' fans seem to think so.