Sneaky Saturday| Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow

 

Image Credit: rodvcpetrie on DeviantArt

Reviewed on Xbox Series X with Enhancements. Small note: This is the only game not purchasable on steam for my PC gamers out there as the lighting engine is not compatible with modern PCs but there are fixes if you buy a physical copy.

Continuing on from last Saturday's Review we'll be talking about the sequel Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow. This game is probably one of my favorites in the series after playing through it the story feels so much more connected than the first game, the characters feel more developed, and the game feels slightly smoother in combat and presentation. The maps feel much more open and the game gives you all your gadgets from the second mission onwards. This game was released by Ubisoft Shanghai while Ubisoft Montreal was developing Chaos Theory and feels slightly different but still familiar. Overall this game made the proper improvements needed from the first game. 

Lets dive into the story of this game Sam's story picks up in Dili, Timor as a terrorist attack is carried out on the united states embassy. Here we are introduced to our antagonist Suhadi Sadono a leader of an Indonesia terrorist group who is against America due to the US putting support behind Timor instead of Indonesia. Here we are introduced to one of the main mysteries of the game as well after rescuing Douglas Shetland we find an encrypted email sent regarding a person going by "mortified_penguin". After finding an Analyst the email is decrypted leading to the next mission a cryogenics lab in France. This is where the gameplay truly opens up and reintroduces the SC-20k (small error I notice in my previous review is referred to it as 30k) and gives us the "Fifth Freedom" (game term for lethal force being allowed). From here the globe trotting spy adventure opens up to be slightly less globe trotting but still allowing for many different locales from a moving train, ancient catacombs under Jerusalem, the city of Komodo, or even LAX. These locations provide more challenges than and interesting gameplay opportunities that really test your ability to play the game your way either as a neat agent who only kills when needed or a trigger happy madman who tears through soldiers and mercs.

The gameplay feels similar but slightly improved from the first game: more movement options have opened up, you have an optional laser sight to make targeting easier, whistling to attract enemies, and an EMF vision mode to track lights and power sources. The new functions may not be the most used but they do make up for many of the complaints I had with the gameplay in the original. The level variety feels more refreshing as well no longer are you confined by city streets and tight interior corridors at night time like the original now you'll be exploring jungles, bright neon lit cities, submarine bases, catacombs with an aqueduct, and a train in the French countryside. These locations all pose unique challenges and ask the player to adapt their style by adding different environmental changes be it flashes of lightning blinding you and fully revealing your location at random, tripwire mines through a dense brush, or non environmental factors like terrorist having a higher body temperature due to recent inoculation and having to draw them out of a civilian crowd to eliminate them safely without blowing cover this game ask you to solve puzzles in new ways than before. The last area of gameplay is they added a full multiplayer mode that is beloved by many called Spies versus Mercs unfortunately due to being on the Xbox version servers are shut down but if you have two copies you can play it locally in a good LAN party with up to four players.

This game once again for being so old still looks good the skybox in the Jerusalem level still holds up, the dense foliage in the jungles makes it still look decent, and the city of Komodo in its neon baked alleys and buildings looks like eye candy sometimes. The character models have been improved and enhanced Sam constantly has different looks that all seem more detailed then his previous model. Honestly for a 2004 game it still has some good looks the lighting is just as amazing as the previous game. 

Finally the sound the music is great, it matches each level so well and helps to amplify the missions atmosphere. The only area of the game that I had any complaints with is the voice acting while yes Michael Ironside did amazing I felt myself missing the voice of Don Jordan as Irving Lambert but Dennis Haysbert (24, The Unit) did loan his voice and did a good job. Overall every voice that is not a major character sounds like it was just random chatter recorded for a previous gen game as but some lines are funny even if they sound weirdly compressed. 

This game is an amazing sequel in almost every way possible. The graphical improvements were good, the gameplay feels so good, and the story was a large improvement over Splinter Cell. This title continues to show how great Ubisoft used to be and shows why Splinter Cell is considered to be such a groundbreaking franchise. This game oozes atmosphere and expands the feeling of being an international operative working with other intelligence agencies across the world and uncovering a large terrorist plan to take out the US. This games scores a 4.5/5 as it truly improves on everything from the previous title which was near perfect and constantly had me in awe that such a title holds up so well over two decades later. What your favorite sequels out there? Let me know down below!