Splinter Cell: Essentials

6.0
Average

Gameplay	6.5	"A game best suited to the consoles. "
Graphics	6.0
Sound	5.0
Value	6.0

By Emily Buxton

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Having a portable, pocket-sized Sam Fisher should be a dream come true for any Splinter Cell fan. Not only can you now enjoy some stealthy goodness while waiting for the bus, but there’s a heap of new content, including snatches of the yet to be released Splinter Cell Double Agent. The long wait between Chaos Theory and Double Agent suddenly seems a whole lot more bearable now that Splinter Cell Essentials is on the scene, right?

Whoever thought that the PSP would make a good platform to play the Splinter Cell series on was clearly spending too much time in Wonderland. Or Never Never Land. Or any other particular land where craziness is the norm. The PSP excels in showing off games that are bright and bouncy and fast-paced, where the gameplay can distract from the fact that the screen is tiny and the sound is coming from speakers the size of a fruit fly. Putting an entirely dark, slow-moving stealth game on the PSP doesn’t even begin to make sense.

Gamers who are halfway serious about the Splinter Cell series will likely feel the pain and betrayal of this PSP title. The graphics are fairly good if you consider the limitation of the screen size and pixels. But didn’t anyone remember that Sam Fisher spends his life going on missions at night? In the dark? Sure, the night vision goggles help you out a little, but then the muted, subtle graphics instantly become a horrific blur of green and black. Quite simply, it’s too dark a game to see anything properly on the PSP screen. Imagine watching the movie Pitch Black, in a darkened room on a 42” high def TV. Then imagine standing outside in the glaring sun trying to watch the same movie on your cell phone. It’s pure butchery of an exceedingly good series.

The storyline of Essentials also falls into the ‘good theory on paper only’ category. With the death of Sam’s daughter and his subsequent abandonment of Third Echelon, Fisher is arrested and interrogated about his possible involvement in terrorist activities. Sam’s loyalty to Third Echelon all along is thrown into question, and with a string of boring cut scene snapshots, he’s asked to carefully explain exactly what went down in past missions. With that, you’re given a crash course in the history of Sam Fisher by playing through a number of important missions, some of which you’ll recognise and some which are entirely new. The problem with this idea is that the levels have no connecting storyline. Each mission starts and ends almost without warning as you attempt to retell “exactly what did happen” in each particular case.

Storyline issues aside, the actual gameplay is similar to the console versions but with one horrific difference. Only having one analog stick to work with is the death of this game. The result is a thumbstick that’s used to control both Sam’s movements and the camera angles. It means that you can’t move and look around at the same time, which makes an otherwise smooth style of play both annoying and stilted. As you play through the game, you’ll probably get used to it, but there’s also a good chance it’ll annoy most people to the point that they’ll stop playing. Readers wouldn’t put up with a badly written book, so it should hardly come as a surprise that gamers won’t want to struggle through an irritating game.

The bad news just keeps rolling in regarding the sound and music. No doubt the microscopic speakers are the main cause of such bad music and sound effects, but is that really a valid excuse? The echoing clang of Sam’s boots as he creeps along doesn’t say ‘super sneaky agent’ so much as ‘auditioning for a part in Stomp”. The sound effects and music come out poorly on the PSP, and is made all the worse by the fact that it’s a limited and therefore repetitive repertoire. Throughout the entire game you’ll hear guards whistling the same infuriating tune, regardless of how many years apart each mission is set.

As a standalone title, Splinter Cell Essentials might stand up to inspection, but because the previous three titles have raised the bar so high, it’s almost impossible to respect. Kudos must be given (grudgingly) if only because there’s new game content. The charm of Splinter Cell is still evident, even if it does get smothered by the PSP limitations for most of the game. For the average gamer, there's nothing 'Essential' about this game. However badly it’s all turned out though, the die hard fans will be hard pressed to resist the lure.

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