Splintercell: Double Agent demo review

Alright, Grog140 here to review SCDA because Jeremy can't seem to play any games. I on the other hand have played about 7 or 8 of both spy and merc.

First off, those worried that Ubi would ruin the game have no fear. This game feels and plays very close. Think Halo: CE to Halo 2 in my opinion. Yes its different but the true fans can see how this is true Splintercell versus at its root.

Jeremy and I have been playing Splintercell versus since Pandora. We are true fans so there might be a bias since we aren't experts but we will win more than we lose if you know what I mean. That being said, we were playing Chaos Theory a lot lately and really got to see that it was so much worse than Pandora Tomorrow in many ways. This isn't an isolated opinion either by the way, we have spoken to many that agree with us. But after playing this I am happy to say that every problem that Chaos Theory introduced has been taken out. On top of that, every problem with Pandora Tomorrow has also been fixed! That's not to say that there isn't some problems but the point is that they come few and far between.

First lets talk spy. Everyone wants to be him, know one knows how to play him and everyone used to lose with him. That's right, winning as spy is no longer a sign that you have obtained Divine powers. In Chaos Theory that was especially true because of all the merc boosts. This time around spy has moves that are easy to learn and difficult to master. No longer will you find yourself checking the stats of your team member to ensure he is good. The biggest reason how they fixed this is putting in little reminders of available moves. They can be turned off though if you like. The moves themselves are very intuitive and the objectives (on the map I played) are well located. In addition, the way you hack the objective is a combination of neutralization, sabotage and extraction and this method is genius. The last thing I have to say about spy though is...*takes a moment to thank God*...that there is almost no temptation for the spy to go aggro at all. Trying to kill all nine mercs is just suicide. The shocker gun has also been removed however don't panic, its replaced by a crazy super hacking device that can break lights, glass, and scramble mercs by hacking them.

Now the merc. As anyone who has played the previous versus game mode will tell you, the phrase merc **** was something thrown around a lot. People would go from game to game playing only as merc because, as I said before, merc would almost always win unless you were playing someone a lot better than you. Although merc has been slightly toned down, he is more fun than ever. There is only one that can be chosen from (at least in the demo) which is like an SMG with a sniper mode. Your gear is restricted as I was only able to have 3 frags and 2 drones (a remote control bomb). Though I have read that other equipment is available. Berserk is still in and very rarely used though. And the charge is a viable way from getting places fast since you can run forever. I did not find any motion mode and the electronic one is pretty hard to use. The flashlight can be adjusted for wide and short range or narrow and long though. My favorite moments playing as merc was chasing a spy, and killing it will the drone or knocking the spy down, grabbing him by the throat and head butting him to death. All in all, it plays the same as before but changed to be more precise and fluid.

The map I played is like no other map I played in any of the other games. In my opinion it is about the same size as Aquarius in Chaos Theory, maybe a little bit bigger. But it played like 4 sector one warehouses connected together. Well not really but its more like warehouse than anything else in my opinion. In any case, it was well suited for 3 vs 3. And I have not played 2 vs 2 but I can't see any reason why it would be bad if you tried playing like that. As I said before, the objectives were well located and there are plenty of places to hide while hacking. The closer you get, the faster you hack so its an even trade off. You need to be almost in touching distance in order to get full hacking speed but the lowest speed takes about 1 minute to hack so you might get found out eventually. The map I played had lots of areas for spy and merc to go, with refilling stations at their spawn points. If the other maps are like this one then I can't wait.

I could go on all day about this game and the things it does right. I haven't even covered all the things I would of liked to. So I will wrap it up. But not before mentioning the problems that I assume are demo related. First, finding a game is harder than what it should be. Sometimes you get stuck forever in a joining game screen which never joins. Second, hosts also seem to favour spy and will kick you if you show any interest in changing from merc to spy after a game. Lastly, the lag (although vastly improved over the previous ones), is very annoying when it does happen. I had one games that would make everyone freeze. Just stop moving. First I thought it was stand by or somethign but I am pretty sure it was just a bad way to control lag. But those points compared to the things I liked about it were nothing. I am running on here so I am just going to give my score:

Graphics - 8/10 - Although they were obviously better than the Xbox versus, they don't seem as good as the single player videos. Very good lighting though.

Controls - 9/10 - The use of the bumpers and face buttons worked very well, especially if you were a fan of the previous versus modes.

Sound - 8/10 - Nice sound, but not Call of Duty stuff or anything. The guns sound gunny, lights being smashed sound right and the announcer sounds announcery

Game play - 10/10 - This is the most biased because I have been a fan of it since the beginning but every has to admit that they made the mechanics in this game very well.

Overall - 9/10 Please note this does not include any aspect of the game except the versus mode. And especially keep in mind my bias that I mentioned.