Saturday, March 29, 2003

Well, hands-on Splinter cell. first thing i can say, not a metal gear killer. it is far far away from being a metal gear killer. far far away... about the bad things. first, there is the camera. you rotate the camera by adjusting the right analog stick, thus, unlike metal gear, you get 360 degrees of freedom. that is good, for one thing. since this is a stealth game, free cameras are suppose to be very important, as you lay still in one corner while observing whats going on around you meanwhile you just rotate the camera. Then comes the awful fact that the camera feels the game came straight out from a PC port. If you played MDK2 on PC, then you would remeber how innovative the game is by incorporating the mouse to be used to control the camera angel. That's what happened to SC's camera here. While it does gives you complete freedom, it just feels stupid to have to adjust the camera whenever you moved half a turn around a corner or down some stairs. Further more, there isn't a center camera button. What's fuck with that? Why no center camera button? This is a console game for god damn sake. The next bad point, those lighting effects isn't really that revolutionary. I saw ICO and went aweeeee. I saw SC, and thought, "ok, that's acceptable, but what's wroong with the framerate?" the game doesn't moves smootly as i had expected. MGS ran at 60fps for most of the time, so does ZOE2. Yet, when there are so little things in SC, why does that fucking framerate so damn low? It's almost on par with that GTA3 game. Then the controls. This game wasn't made for you to take out all the enemies with your tommy gun, since the aiming system really sucks. Think of the getaway, no wait, it wasn't that bad, think of any tom clancy and u'll get the idea. Next, no in game save. How many games nowadays doesn't allow you to save anywhere you like? (except those RPGs, minus wild arms 3...) You only get to save at the end of the mission, and that sucks. And then, there isn't subtitles in this game. Damn, why does those people talk in strange accents, no wait, whisper in strange accents. I had to tune up my volume until i can hear Sam's footsteps, and whenever that god damn enemy discovered me, the music became so loud i had to tune down the volume again. ALL GAMES MUST HAVE SUBTITLES! And that includes you, Jak and dextor. Now the good stuffs. The gameplay rocks. You get to do rapelling off walls, climb poles, slide down ropes, and most important, get to knock off enemies right in front of their face (although that gets stale after sometimes). The night vision goggles totally knock me off, like the thermal ones too. All in all, this feels like a PC game stuck in a console. They shouldn't have developed this for PS2. Totally not a MGS2 killer. Graphics: 7/10 (i had seen better), sound: 7/10 (damn those fucking accents and no subtitles!) control:4/10 (damn, have you ever suffered from motion sickness in a third person view game cos the camera sucks?)

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