A wonderfully ambitious first effort. The start of something cool but definitely the start. So much of Splinter Cell's light and shadow tech still looks awesome, and even without the HUD element, it's advanced enough that you can know how concealed you are simply by looking at the screen. Backing all that up is some excellent sound design. Broken glass, falling shell casings, the night vision bewwwmmm -- it's all great.

And some of the archaic control elements are actually kind of cool! Are speed up and speed down buttons a bit silly compared to simple analogue stick control? Maybe, but I appreciate it all the same!

Where it falls down is with level design and AI - both of which are mostly great but have some sizeable issues. Enemies react to noises, visuals, distractions, and even environmental things like you switching a light off. But sometimes they'll walk 50 feet across a court yard or hallway just to inspect a light you switched off. And the cardinal sin for me is that, when you're rumbled, every enemy in the scene knows where you are and can shoot you precisely regardless of your stealth meter. It's always a shame when mechanics like that matter until they suddenly don't.

Likewise there are tonnes of interesting level layouts and objectives, but sometimes you'll get bizarre fail states like accidentally killing an NPC before realizing you were supposed to use him to open a locked door. Then there's the inexplicable shoot outs -- I never understand why stealth games choose to do this, but it's especially bad here because Sam can't take much punishment, and his incredibly wonky aim is not meant for all out warfare.

But nonetheless; a cool, satisfying espionage tale that lays the foundation for more.