Splinter Cell 3D (Nintendo 3DS) Review

As ever, the player assumes control of Sam Fisher, a covert black-ops agent dreamt up by Tom Clancy who works under a fictitious - or so we assume - branch of the government known as Third Echelon. Sam must take on all manner of stealth-orientated missions from this establishment, such as infiltrating and seeking out various threats, stealing data from a bank whilst making it look like a regular bank robbery, and the ever-popular stealthy interrogations, knocking out guards and using a host of advanced equipment in the process. Splinter Cell 3D allows players to choose how they wish to go about their missions; you could, for instance, sneak past everyone by outsmarting them and sticking to the shadows, or if you wish you could take out the guards with a range of silenced weapons and flash grenades, making sure to hide the evidence so that their buddies aren’t alerted to your presence. It’s a very fine line, but most levels (which also offer alternative routes for whichever approach you take) will see you using a mixture of both, and if you want to go completely stealthily it takes time and patience to learn enemy routes and level layouts, which you can exploit to your own advantage. The latter style makes the gameplay more heart pounding and gripping; for instance, you may find yourself using Sam’s trademark hallway split-kick whilst a couple of guards are having a conversation right below you, only moments after you were standing there.

The premise of the game sees Sam moving around a lot, so there a variety of locations are on offer for the player to visit, including the streets of Manhattan, stately banks, and ships located in the middle of the ocean. There are ten missions within the game, each of them located in a different area and taking around an hour to complete if you ignore side missions or know what you are doing. The game looks fairly decent, but it’s hard not to notice the quality of the graphics. It looks like Ubisoft, instead of porting it from its console counterparts, have instead just updated the engine slightly from the DS iteration that launched in 2005, not taking advantage of the 3DS’ strong increase in power whatsoever. This is particularly true of the environmental effects which should be in place, as well as character and weapon models; they all look unmistakeably bland, and there isn’t much going on in the levels at all. The only thing included, which is a must, is the lighting. Sam has the usual gadgets at his disposal to make sure he stays hidden, including his trusty light meter and sound sensor which float nicely off the face of the screen when the 3D is activated, which react accordingly to the scenarios that Sam is placed in. Outside of this, the 3D gives a bit more depth to the levels, but it doesn’t work all that well as the majority of the game is set within narrow corridors. There are a few places where it works, such as being able to see the drop below when abseiling through a ceiling window, the majority of the screen is Sam-filled. This is a title designed with a bigger screen in mind, and as such the 3D seems pretty obsolete due to the on-screen dominance of the main protagonist.

Though Splinter Cell 3D is a very strong title when taking into account the content alone - it’s amazing that they have managed to keep almost everything from the original, outside of a few alternate routes and visors - the game is rendered almost unplayable by the controls. Whilst movement of Fisher via the Circle Pad is flawless, allowing him to run all out or crawl extremely slowly, it becomes pointless as the player fights with the camera controls which are mapped to the A/B/Y/X face buttons in a faux dual analogue style. It makes navigating the tight corridors and spaces that Sam has to occupy in order to remain undetected a chore, and when push comes to shove and you have to pull out a sidearm in an emergency it lacks accuracy - you will end up failing to hit the light bulb at the end of the hallway, thus alerting guards or wasting what precious little ammo you have. On top of this, Ubisoft have mapped what would usually be the A/B/Y/X controls to the D-pad. Whilst it isn’t that bad, it breaks up the flow of the game as you have to stop moving in order to make Sam jump, press himself against walls, or crouch, etc.. The rest of the controls are mapped to the touch screen, such as weapon selection and visors, but it feels very cramped and fiddly, especially with the ‘Contextual Option Panel’ which offers up different actions for certain items such as doors. Instead of being able to touch each individual item to select, Ubisoft have forced the players to cycle through the options with one touch button and select with another, requiring you to take both hands off the face buttons in order to use, which becomes infuriating.

Splinter Cell 3D also doesn’t take advantage of the new features that are packed into the 3DS, with the only instance of note being the small use of the gyroscope when using optical cables to peek under doors; the player can tilt the console side to side to look under doors (the 3D effect is intuitively turned off in this period) which works quite well, but seems tacked on as it isn’t used anywhere else. There isn’t any use for StreetPass or SpotPass, and it would have been nice to include some form of unlockables that can be used in game. On top of that, the multiplayer aspect that featured in the console and DS versions, wherein players could either work together on a set of specially designed co-op missions or compete head-to-head, has been completely removed from the 3DS version.

One saving grace of the title, however, is the audio. Thankfully everything is still fully voice acted, with Grimm and Sam having some entertaining conversations via radio as well as little hints and tips being thrown in for good measure. Guards are also voice acted, which allows the player to tell how alerted they are to Sam’s presence and to calculate the best time to strike the enemy; for instance, knowing that your target is leaving the room to get some drinks from the fridge is as good a time as any to grab him, drag him out the room whilst interrogating him, ultimately killing him as far away from his handlers as possible. Environmental sounds have also received the surround treatment, and it’s easy to tell exactly where certain sounds are coming from.