The game is much longer than I expected.

It increases difficulty by adding more objectives and making levels longer and giving AI new weapons.

It's very rigid as a stealth game but fortunately later games improved on it.

Being a fan of the entire Metal Gear Solid series definitely put my expectations fairly high going into this game. While it has a few constant flaws that irritate me, I came out of this game with a positive outlook.

The game's 2002 visuals hold up surprisingly well, specifically the fantastic lighting. Not much to speak of in the way of music, but it's not bad for a stealth game to go with the ambience approach.

Going off the game's lighting, I adore the game's emphasis on sticking to the shadows to reduce visibility. If there's no darkness, it may behoove you to make your own by shooting out nearby lights. Aside from the shadows, Sam's toolkit is massive and varied, and just fun to toy around with. The game's stages are full of unique setpieces and challenges, never a dull moment.

Unfortunately, the game can't help but shine a spotlight on some of its more glaring flaws. Sam's melee attack feels extremely unreliable at times, you never know if it's going to result in your guard being knocked out, stunned (and alerted), or simply turn to point their gun at your head. When one guard is alerted, the rest of them tend to act like a damn hivemind, immediately ganging up on you. It doesn't help that Sam will die in a handful of shots anyways, makes me wonder why there's a health bar in the first place. Compounding on all of that, some of the game's setpieces are mandatory firefights, where the combination of Sam's non-existent health and gun controls that don't feel like they were made for combat culminate in fairly frustrating sections.

Phew. Thank god for quicksaves.

That last paragraph might make it seem like I disliked this game, but I didn't, I admire it. Dedicated stealth games are hard to come by, and this one is really damn solid (GET IT???), even despite glaring flaws. I can only hope and assume that future games used this one as a foundation to create even better sequels.

This was my first game that introduced me to the World of Gaming. I played this game in for first time 2020's 1st Quarntine. My dad suggested me to try this game. Before playing this game I had no idea what games are like but after playing this game I fell in love with gaming. This game is 20 years old by the time I'm writing this . The gameplay is fine and the graphics have aged but the lightning still looks really good. I would not say that this is one of the best experience or game but this is the 1st game that I have ever played so it holds a special place in my heart. If you like stealth genre then you should give it a try.

This is actually a pretty decent game, nowhere near Chaos Theory and far from great, very dated with its occasionally clunky controls and some rather odd stuff like when the game tells you that you're visible while you're very clearly in the shadows etc..., but in the end it's fun, the missions are way too samey in the first half but the second half gets better and the last two are the best here. Definitely worth checking out if you're a fan of some of the later games and look for something simple.

**Played as part of the Splinter Cell HD Collection on PS3

Splinter Cell is iconic. There are aspects of this seared into my brain from 20 years ago. Nearly too hard for me to grasp as a kid, some of its difficulty has worn off as I am an adult. Some of it is very much intact, owing in no small part to its exceedingly janky and buggy experience.

Certain things are harder than they have any right to be, particularly the act of grabbing enemies and certain platforming actions. Sometimes enemies will spot or hear you against all logic and reason, or indeed for no reason whatsoever, and it’s really difficult to calibrate when an action or hiding spot will get you noticed or not. These are rough edges that certainly get sanded down in later releases, but they are fully present in this version.

It looks okay for what it is. You can tell they added some high res textures here and there, but also woof. Why does it run so SO terribly? The frame rate is abysmal. I’m certain it dipped into sub-15 FPS and possibly single digits on multiple occasions. Sometimes this was momentary, others it persisted throughout entire environments. It’s also weird when environmental noise pops in suddenly as you cross predetermined thresholds in the level.

The game still stutters a moment before you get spotted, and the game froze for 5-10 whole seconds more than once. It froze completely at least once. One quick save glitched and sent me back to the PS3 home menu if I tried to load from it, causing me to have to repeat about 15 minutes of play time from the previous autosave. All this rendering a 2002 Xbox game on PlayStation 3 hardware. I’m not a tech wizard, so maybe there’s a logical explanation for this, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why the PS3 doesn’t eat this game for breakfast. It runs about as poorly as it did on launch, which is kind of funny when you think about it.

Man, the story and conceit and characters have Tom Clancy written all over it. It’s unmistakable. Yes! The story is so good!

Omg the old alert music.

I love how Sam just barehands zip lines.

The lighting effects still hold up and it looks wonderful on OLED. Seriously—the game runs like butt, but it looks admirable even today.

Great attention paid to sounds and how you and characters make different sounds on different surfaces. If only it was a little less opaque to the player and a little more forgiving.

Between the lighting and the soft object physics, this design team was flexing SO hard. It’s adorable.

Hey Ubisoft, don’t make me do goofy stuff and exploit silly tactics to get through a stealth encounter. Design a clever thing within the game to make me accomplish a stealth objective without it feeling like a video game. If I have to lure a guard somewhere, give me a way to make noise besides run around and jump up and down. I mention this because in-game solutions to this exist, and one of the only times I ever needed to lure a guard somewhere, I didn’t have the distraction camera and there were no objects to toss.

Platforming is like rolling the dice. You never know what Sam will or won’t grab. Thank God for the quick save.

Also, he’s so slow it’s kind of funny. But it also makes sense and seems believable and I kinda like it. Funny in comparison to “spider monkey” Lara Croft.

The oil rig level runs like absolute anus.

The pistol and rifle accuracy are inexcusable. I believe this was a feature and not a bug, but first of all, it’s unrealistic how inaccurate they both are (as well as how bad this means Sam is as a marksman). Plus, there are multiple encounters in the game where stealth is not an option and bad guys stream at you in angry droves. An accurate and powerful rifle would make these go down a lot smoother, but they play as really frustrating because the gunplay is so sloppy.

I liked how this game really embodies a realistic vice video gamey approach to villains. It’s actually really hard to kill Grinko in a shootout...but when it’s time to kill Nikoladze, Lambert just says, “Let me make this perfectly clear. Snipe Nikoladze right now.” And you shoot him, and he’s dead. I love that.

Just about all these gripes get addressed later on, and I’m excited to track the progression. It’s worth noting that the story here is great and the core gameplay is strong, just deserving of a lot more polish. Most of my gripes are really polish gripes, and possibly optimization gripes 😂

Splinter Cell is at it's best when you take enemies into the dark before knocking them down, seeing as your character seemingly disappears into the shadows and the only thing you can see are those iconic NVG.

Thankfully you do that quite a lot in the game itself. This really is one of those classics that still holds up after all of this time, mostly holds up... yeah not every element holds up, the game at times is bad at telling you shit, yeah thanks game for not telling me that I can disarm mines that was cool.

Also the 'parkour'/climbing mechanics are very inconsistent in both what you can climb on and whether or not Sam will climb it or go nope rather die rn and I have to say I am not a big fan of the more combat heavy sections in the last few missions, like the guns are not very accurate and for as realistic as the game wants to be, if a guard wears a fucking hat it will not go down in one headshot which is a baffling choice for a game like this but whatever.

And...that's kinda it, most of the gameplay still holds up, I like how you can increase/decrease your speed by using the scroll wheel on your mouse, it felt more natural than I expected. Being in the dark, hugging a wall as a guard goes by you is still pretty intense.

The story isn't remarkable but it's prb the closest a Tom Clancy game has gotten to actually being like one of his books since the game is very heavy on the politics behind what you're doing which is also refreshing as all hell for a Ubisoft game. Sam Fisher as a character is likeable enough and serves the game really well with his just following orders mind-set even if he doesn't quite get what's going on at all times.

While I know the linearity of the game is an issue for a lot of people, for me it was a plus as it meant that no matter where I was going, I was taking the correct route and not accidently making the game super hard on myself without knowing, which isn't to say that this happens a lot in non linear games but I can 100% see it happening in this game if every mission had 3 really different ways of doing it and the game is allowed to be more cinematic this way.

Idk what else to say its like 4am rn and I just beat the game, it was really fun, I'd rate it higher but the elements that didn't hold up were really annoying at times and I feel like the next few games will only expand and improve on this game's formula so I'll most likely end up enjoying those more.

Still it's a pretty great stealth game and a classic in it's own right. Worth a shot if you like stealth games and are interested in the series.

I've never played Thief, but I have played nearly the entire MGS series which both are apparently inspirations for this game. And I have to say that this is a stellar stealth game.

For a 2002, this is still a really fun experience. Playing with light sources and dark shadows, sounds, and even some stealth platforming which was a surprise to me.

Aiming with the pistol kinda sucks as you have to still your reticle for a while to get a more accurate shot which even then can miss your target. I know this is supposed to be a "more realistic" part and encourages you to be more hands on, but I feel they forget their protagonist is a special ops who should be able to handle firearms better than that.

Really glad the PC port has a quicksave and quickload but it's also a crutch, but I also see it as a fix to the inconsistent enemy AI which only a few points can get frustrating for less patient people. I also wish it had a record shown at the end of each level which at least they implement in later games.

The story itself isn't much, but at least Michael Ironside's voice is great

Big fan of the graphics (at least with dgVoodoo2 installed) and a unique control scheme. Levels are pretty cool too if a little linear at this early stage. The three-alarms-and-you're-out thing kills this game though, not helped by the game automatically scanning past previous areas and suddenly setting off the alarms if any bodies aren't completely hidden in shadows, completely removing the feeling of wiping an area of all guards when there's apparently an omnipotent force trailing after you the entire time judging you on how much time you spent slowly carrying bodies around.
There are FAR too many fail states but the tech and controls are nice enough that I still replay this from time to time. Memorizing the levels and being able to quicksave in just a single frame really helps subsidize frustration, too.