Splinter Cell Double Agent on PC
A short review by: Michael Adames

Splinter Cell Double Agent on PC is, for the lack of better wording, an experience hard to describe, difficult to endure, but also somewhat worth all the trouble.

First things first, Double Agent for the PC was developed by Ubisoft Shanghai, the same studio that is infamously known for their development of Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow. That said, Ubisoft's Shanghi team had a lot to prove with Double Agent and unfortunately, it looks like they've dropped the ball.

The "current generation" versions for XBOX and PS2 were developed by Ubisoft Montréal and feature additional dialogue and full motion video that was for some reason cut out of the PC and XBOX360 versions.

Again, the XBOX and PS2 versions are current generation, featuring additional material and extra missions while the "next generation" versions of PC and XBOX360 are identical with the PC version being a direct XBOX360 port.

On to the review…

Background

As we've all heard by now, Double Agent takes off with Fisher being assigned an undercover mission by Lambert following the death of his daughter in an accident. To keep himself sane, Fisher takes on the most difficult job he's ever undertaken. By staging mock crimes, the NSA lands Fisher in a prison in Kansas with the intent of befriending a terrorist organization’s member by the name of Jamie Washington. The plan is to help Washington to escape and then infiltrate the terrorist organization (known as the John Brown’s Army, or JBA) while playing the role of a double agent. In summary, the storyline sounds solid, but for some reason, once the gameplay starts it begins to fall apart.

Presentation

One of the most noticeable presentation weaknesses in the game is the lack of answers. So many things are left unexplained or not covered in enough detail. For instance, in the last three Splinter Cell games, Fisher has had a very stable demeanor, showing himself not to be easily intimidated or to react with emotion. In Double Agent however, following his daughter's death, we watch Fisher's entire life "spiral out of control" in a short thirty second cinematic that does no justice to the hardship we are to believe he has endured.

This intro movie doesn't show Lambert actually breaking the news to Fisher, but rather about five seconds worth of aftermath where Fisher tosses his goggles into the ocean. From this point on, nothing else of his daughter comes up and we watch Fisher go from a cold, calculated bad-ass to a vulnerable man with an obvious alcohol problem. Although the short cinematic sets the player up for a totally different type of Fisher, once the gameplay starts nothing changes and Sam acts no differently than before. Essentially, the intro cinematic shows one thing and the gameplay displays another. He looks a bit more cold and distant, but overall he doesn’t act like a man mourning the death of his own flesh and blood, an idea Ubisoft Shanghai pushed in the intro cinematic, but failed to carry through into the gameplay.

Plot Holes

Moving on, gone are both William Redding and Anna Grímsdóttir with no explanation where they disappeared too. Also, although some predicted a reappearance, Frances Coen is also nowhere to be found.

Requirements/Display

A major point to bring up is that currently Double Agent supports Shader Model 3.0 only. If you have a SM 2.0 card, you cannot play the game. This means that unless you have an ATI x1X00 series or NVIDIA 6600 or better you cannot even launch the installer. Also worth noting is the game’s steep RAM requirements, recommending 1 GB, but realistically needing more. A system with 1 GB of RAM will likely be pushed to its limits just running Double Agent on default settings. If you’re looking to enable all the eye-candy, 2 GBs will probably be needed for a smooth experience. Also, the install takes up ~8-10 GBs, so make sure you have plenty of hard disk room.

Credit must be given where credit is due however, as the visuals of Double Agent are nothing to scoff at. Ubisoft Shanghai has done a good job bringing the world of Sam Fisher to life. Character models are believable and realistic and the game makes good use of facial gestures as well. The game environments are detailed and rich, with good level design as a plus.

Sound

Disappointingly, Double Agent also recycles a lot of sound files from Chaos Theory. This is most noticeable in the prison where you can hear inmates and guards yelling at each other the same canned lines over and over again ripped directly out of Chaos Theory. In addition, Fisher doesn't have a whole lot of dialogue, and Lambert has next to none.

Honestly, there's probably more dialogue in the first mission of the original Splinter Cell than the first six of Double Agent. Another downside to the audio is that there is no volume control for the music - it's either on or off. This is a problem too, especially since the music can be overpoweringly loud and wash out the sparse and intermittent dialogue, causing you to miss an important part of the already under-explained story.

User Interface

Unfortunately, Double Agent’s shortcomings don’t stop there. Gone are the traditional sound and light meters. Rather than a scaled light meter that shows different degrees of full or partial visibility, Double Agent uses a tri-color LCD placed on Fisher’s back. The first thing I thought while seeing this was how the enemies wouldn’t see a bright three inch green, yellow, or red square when Fisher’s back was turned.

Ignoring the minor details, the new light meter displays green while hidden, yellow while between, red while revealed, and flashing red while spotted. (How having your back flash red helps you hide when people are shooting at you is another topic altogether.)

As far as the sound meter goes, kiss it goodbye. It no longer exists on the PC or XBOX360 versions of Double Agent, but the traditional light and sound meters can both be found on the XBOX and PS2 versions.

Ubisoft Shanghai’s justification for this was that they wanted to create a more cinematic experience, but as along time Splinter Cell fan, it seems counterproductive to me to take out an element from the game that has been there and worked just fine from the days of the original Splinter Cell. Having a cinematic feel is nice, but not if it requires giving up playability.

Sense of Completion

Lastly, and most disappointingly, Double Agent is plagued by countless bugs. These start at the install, but don’t stop there. A quick glance of the official Ubisoft Double Agent PC forums reveals that many gamers can’t even get Double Agent to install. The most common installation issues involve either not having a SM 3.0 enabled video card or receiving an unrecoverable runtime error.

Some credit is due as Ubisoft has been quick to release a new patch, but unfortunately the game is still hit or miss. Sometimes the game runs flawlessly, but more often than not it is liable to crash to the desktop or to cause a blue screen of death. Many users on the official forums report the game to be unplayable and I tend to agree with them. Over the course of the first seven missions, I have received a total of twenty-eight crashes of various types including crashes to the desktop, lock-ups, and BSODs. My PC has a fresh install of Windows and all other programs and games run fine. Combining my experiences with those of others on the forums (many word for word) I can safely say that it isn’t “just my computer”.

The glitches aren’t just error related, however, many are in-game and re-creatable. For instance, in the Shanghai mission, there are countless invisible floors and walls that you can fall through to your death, especially near the elevators at the center of the building. In both the Iceland and Siberia missions, there are certain areas of ice that the player can fall right through to the water below, getting stuck.

Unfortunately, I must admit that these crashes and glitches have kept me from completing the game, but if what I have seen so far is any indication, the entire Double Agent experience is a constant battle.

Multiplayer

I haven’t played the multiplayer yet, but from what I’ve heard it’s filled with its own issues as well such as interface lag, the lack of a lobby system, and limited gameplay types.

Summary

Overall, Double Agent brings a lot of new things to the table, but fails to make good in the areas past Splinter Cell games have innovated so well. Customization is limited, some key bindings are locked, dialogue is recycled and canned, and the system requirements are nearly twice that of Chaos Theory.

In addition, the game is extremely buggy, for some more than others, but pretty much everyone is going to experience a crash or two.

Double Agent isn’t without hope, however. It is still possible and very feasible that Ubisoft could patch the game’s many problems. For the time being, I would recommend that Splinter Cell fans hold off and spend their hard-earned money elsewhere.

What a let down. I loved Splinter Cell, and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.

And the requirement for a SM 3.0 card? Either just a stupid move, or an indication that I really need to upgrade.

Sigh.

I turn now, to wait until Rainbow Six: Vegas hits the shelves.

I played the demo on my PC today, and it barely ran at 1024x768 with "Next Gen Graphics" enabled. On my bros PC it runs fluidly but the game still seems to have crap controls. Maybe its better on Xbox 360? But either way I was never a big fan of Splinter Cell. I'd get p**sed off of going all stealth then I'd bust a cap in someones head in fail the mission.

So my X800 XL won't work!?!

Gawd I wish I got a 6800 GT. I'll go cry in my corner now. :'(

This game is so poorly coded its pathetic. It crashed my system. I kept getting runtime errors, emulation errors while running from the dvd, and random BSOD's. I do not recommend this game to anyone until they release more patches fixing the problem. I could barely run this game at 10x7 with default video settings. I was getting under 20FPS.

For Ubisoft to release the SCDA demo the day or day after its initial release, goes to show you how crap poor this game is made. I do not look forward to what the Splinter Cell 5 game is going to be like and how demanding it is going to be. This game calls for 1GB of RAM, I recommend at least 2GB or more. Save yourself the $50 and buy something else.

Crikes!

Bump

for me, it really seems unlike Ubisoft to release a game that buggy...aside from starforce I have never had a problem with any ubisoft game definitely disappointing...

speaking of bugs, my friend bough double agent the other day, and the game refused to let him switch the "next-gen content" off. did you find any problem like that?

I've got a great computer to play all today's hottest games that don't actually exist! F this, I'm getting a Wii.
Jared

Matt BillyBob said:

I noticed the same thing. If you disable the next generation content and select current generation, Double Agent resets it back to next generation the next time you start it up.

I basically agree with what everyone said here. I have experienced quite a few bugs and frankly I am very dissapointed. I think that Ubisoft Shanghai should not develope another Splinter Cell but that is personal. I thought this game had an amazingly good idea. Problem is that they delivered on Xbox 360 and failed for PC. Unless they release some kind of crazy super patch, these problems will persist. The only objection is that I really like the new multiplayer (but where is the old co-op!!!!) and also this game does work with a Geforce 6200 but that's random. This was probably totally useless but I just wanted to get my opinion out there.

Eli Mogul said:

Hey Eli.

Welcome to Hardware Analysis. Your messages will be read by hundreds of users, so your opinion will certainly be heard!

I agree that Ubisoft Shaghai should just give up at developing Splinter Cell games for the PC, at least until Ubisoft Montréal has had another chance to develop a sequel and hopefully show Shanghai a thing or two.

The most disappointing thing for me about the entire release is that it was supposedly postponed to fix these bugs, yet they still made it to the retail edition of the game. The last three Splinter Cell games have been playable to completion out-of-the-box. For Double Agent to be unplayable without patches yet to be released sort of makes me never want to buy another Ubisoft game again.

Considering I can't return something that was broken when I got it "because I opened the box" I feel like Ubisoft basically just got away with stealing $50 from me. In any other commercial industry, if something is broken when you get it a paying customer should be entitled to a refund. With companies like Ubisoft selling broken products and then refusing to refund customers, no wonder piracy is becoming more and more widespread, especially if it guarantees that no money is lost on broken software protected by shady EULAs that are pointless to read once you've opened the box.

Crap crap crap CRAAAAAAAAAP!

Hey I have to agree with alomost everone here, Splinter Cell Double Agent Blows. I bought this game for pc and have had nothing but troubles. Don't get me wrong I love the first 3 they are great games, this 1 was just not made that great. to many bugs and graphic issues. On my system it does not matter if I have the settings on standard, next generation or on custom with them all down, or if my screen rez is 1280-1024 or 640-480 I get the same amount of fsp, CRAP!!!! anyways hope that UBI issues another patch to fix these problems.

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System Specs
AMD 3800+
MSI K8N SLI Nforce 4 Chipset
e-GeForce 7900 GS
2 Gig mushkin 3200 DDR Ram
400 Gig HD