Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow for PlayStation 2 Reviews by Gamers

Ubi does some good things -- some very good things. What we find continually amazing is the level of technical quality its PlayStation 2 games effortlessly exude. It's a rare form of visual and aural splendor that most people associate with Xbox titles and only Xbox titles. Pandora Tomorrow is no exception to this demonstration of talent and understanding, and how its proper application can create something that shouldn't plausibly exist. Still, when directly compared, Pandora Tomorrow PS2 is but a shadow of its X-born cousin, however deep and sharp that shadow may be. But, this comparison does pose a most important question: does technically faltering behind its counterpart make this one a bad game on its own merits? In some cases, no. In other cases, yes.

It's not just excessive dynamic shadows and high-res textures that Pandora PS2 lacks. There is a convenient "revamp" of certain levels that change the title's original play significantly, and often times for the worse.

In this third-person stealth action endeavor, trial and error are the order of the day, as are a variety of exciting, expertly planned sequences that highlight the many, often underused abilities of Sam Fisher, United States super spy. The underlying stealth concept behind the title remains largely intact, right down to the whistle lure that wins the game, but stumbles often enough to be a noticeable step back not just for Pandora Tomorrows in general, but for the franchise.

It's clear from onset that this was not intended to be a PlayStation 2 title. As such, the levels of Pandora Tomorrow have had to be reworked considerably. This supposed "revamp" depletes the level of difficulty of the original in certain situations not out of request, but out of necessity. For instance, our comparatively lacking hardware disallows more than a few enemies or non-participant characters on-screen at any given time, forbids us from completely and totally destroying all lights, and requires that certain layouts be reworked to accommodate a more rigid, angular design that does not include the level detail found in the original. This all works to hamper three of the more enjoyable aspects of the Pandora X: Visual quality, pacing, and difficulty.

Since stealth action is an acquired taste -- one that has always revolved around trial and error -- one would expect the difficulty to be consistently high, but because we're now faced with fewer enemies in reworked locales, approaching situations is no longer like solving an impossible riddle through improvisation and memorization, but rather like skulking around a couple of men who are incapable of protecting an area designed to be housed by a couple of more men. This often makes the game too easy to be stealth-enjoyable, but then it will suddenly and drastically switch to unfairly hard, as a result of another limitation: the lack of total light control.

A benefit of Pandora Tomorrow Xbox was its completely destructible lighting schema, with few exceptions that were spread far from one another. Whatever the case, it was certainly possible to find some respite beneath the shade of a broken bulb. In addition to compressed rooms and more heavily restricted environments, Pandora PS2 also features a greater degree of invulnerable light sources. While fewer foes and constrained environments may sometimes make for an easier challenge, the fact that there are fewer places to hide makes for a harder one. And no, it does not balance itself out. Atop all this comes the random assortment of still imperfect Pandora problems, including off aim (worsened by a sloppier framerate), and a randomized artificial intelligence that will spot the distant, nearly invisible Sam, but will blindly stare over an immobile Sam not three inches away. It's a problem that forces us into a more frustrating than usual trial and error routine not because of impressive level design or a raw amount of intentionally developed difficulty, but because humans just can't anticipate the unpredictable. And here comes the biggest problem...

For Xbox, Splinter Cell trial and error was not so bad, given the game's relatively quick loads. For PlayStation 2, players might well find themselves spending more time watching their fingernails grow between deaths and loads than they will actually play the game. It's an unfortunate side effect of our memory card and limited RAM setup. If this lumbering punch to the face weren't enough, our version is plagued by incessant checkpoints, saves, and other level loads. I wholeheartedly believe that a first time player of the series, or even a regular Splinter Cell enthusiast may find him or herself spending more time staring at Pandora PS2's many save, load, and menu subsystem screens than actually playing the game. It gets that bad.

For all its singleplayer faults, there still remains a 100% intact gameplay experience, though we'll not this time around be subject to a substantial increase in content as we saw with the PS2 port of Splinter Cell the first. We have a new exterior jungle level, a reworked tripwire mechanic, and a perfunctory statistical summary of in-mission performance that amounts to nothing but a number for personal reference, but it's still Splinter Cell, for sure.

If you can saunter past the virtually ruined pace of the game and propel yourself into the storyline you'll find the typically zany, overtly complex counter-terror arc we've come to expect from the series. It's enjoyable to see through to the end not for any particular love or hate of the characters, but for the gameplay, which still offers the most robust assortment of gadgetry and technique seen in the genre. We may not always use the camera jammer, but being able to pick locks, use fiber optics, take human shields, climb, shimmy, and skulk our way to a somewhat unsatisfying climax in LAX is still awesome, but not nearly as much as multiplayer.

Like singleplayer, multiplayer suffers from some of the "revamps," but still manages to do what nothing else has yet done: deliver a lasting experience that's both true to the franchise and yet truly unique. It's a game of cat and mouse -- a cooperative challenge that necessitates communication. While it's limited to a simple four-player match, the pitting of spies against mercenaries is an amazing step off the beaten path our status quo shooters so readily adhere to and even manages to introduce a completely new style of gameplay to Splinter Cell. In addition to being a spy -- the same as Sam in singleplayer (only with different tools) -- players can also experience the match from the standpoint of a mercenary, in the first-person. It's incredible.

Like all multiplayer titles, it does insist you play with decent people on decent connections, but for remaining so true to source and for offering so much more than what can be found in singleplayer, it alone is far and away worth the price of admission.

On one hand, it features a reworked interface to allow for easier identification of certain objective scenarios. On the other, maps have been somewhat reworked to account for the substandard technology we now find ourselves contending with in the face of more upstanding, "next-generation" titles. The PS2 version also obviously does not feature the same level of accessibility and user-friendliness as Xbox Live can offer. When I play SOCOM, I won't know that someone wants to play Pandora, but is this an issue?

While presentation may suffer (reworked vision tools for mercs) and the levels may find themselves a touch redone and a shade different in color, our experience is comparable enough to the Xbox version in so many ways (even graphically -- more so than solo play, in any case) that we've all found ourselves once again hooked by its slower pace, more difficult challenge, and more approachable scenarios.

©2004, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved