Unfortunately I have to compare this to Double Agent because again they  managed to release a piece of crap in regards of QA. Maybe they  shouldn't have outsourced the actual QA portion of the development to an  Eastern European country infamous for their shit work quality. And I  played the game after a year of patches were already released for it,  what was it like originally? And speaking of patching that's a disaster  in itself. The only way to patch the game is to start the game and have  it  look for patches automatically, and if it finds a newer version it  installs it. Sounds good? Right, but the game only ever installs the  next patch, and there is no cumulative update. So you have to quit and  re-start the game until it finds no more updates. A bit how like windows  update works, only this one takes more re-starts.

Before playing I didn't consider the patching issue as an indicator of the overall quality of the game, but sadly it was. During my playtrough it must have frozen or stopped working unexpectedly a dozen or so times. But the problems don't end there, there are other minor and not so minor bugs scattered trough the entire game. The most ridiculous of these was when I shoot a guard dog, only for it to get back up a few seconds later, and run off the map in a straight line, clipping trough everything. I'm not joking this actually happened. And a similar thing happened when a soldier went off map, and kept shooting me from outside the map, but I couldn't shoot back because the level boundary blocked my bullets. And this was on a level where the mission was to kill all enemies, so I had to reload.

The gameplay is similar to older splinter cell games, as in you have to use stealth to corner the enemies, because in open fights you get overwhelmed even by the lowest form of thugs. Thankfully there are a lot of options when it comes to eliminating enemies. There are at least ten ways for murdering them. And the game even scores you based on how you murder them. If you use a silent non-lethal takedown that's the best score, if you silently kill them you get slightly less, and if you kill them openly you get even less points. And this actually has value in the game, because you get credits after each mission based on your score. Credits that you can use to improve your headquarters and equipment. They even created a small animation that counts up all the aspects that make up your final score, which would be effective, if they didn't screw this up also. Because on the status bar on the top of the screen the credits indicator already shows the sum you got when the game is still counting your score.

The game has primary campaign missions, and some secondary side missions. You can get 4 types of the latter, each type from a different squadmate. The first type is where you have to infiltrate some facility silently. Do your job then slip out unseen as well. These are the hardest, but the most fun as well, they're hard because there is no saving here, you have to do the whole mission in one go. The second type is when you have to clear all enemies from a map, this is quite hard as well, because if you're detected just once reinforcements arrive which means that you have to deal with 25 instead of only 10 soldiers. These missions are always two part, and thankfully there is a checkpoint between the two parts. Otherwise they'd be quite impossible to get right. The third mission type is when you have to hold out wave after wave of enemies. Basically it's the carbon copy of ME3's multiplayer. The fourth type of missions I didn't try because it only works in multiplayer. And I don't care about that.

And speaking of Mass Effect, I had a feeling that they also borrowed the idea of having your own "ship" from there, because the whole vibe is very much like that on your flying HQ. I even think that somehow Sam Fisher even looks somewhat like default Shephard here.

Others mentioned that the protagonist is no longer voiced by Michael Ironside, frankly I didn't even take notice of that. But apparently it's a big negative.

The most of your earned credits must be spent on improving your gear because your basic weapons are very ineffective. A well upgraded sniper rifle and some luck is enough to take down heavily armoured enemies. You need luck because sometimes the bullet will only make their helmet fly off, instead of killing them. And hitting them a second time after they start frolicking around is very hard. And heavy soldiers are very annoying enemies anyway since they are immune to most attacks including gas, melee, and electric prod as well.

The story is the most clichéd one you can imagine. A new terrorist group wants to do bad things, and you're the only one capable of stopping them, because every one else is sitting on their hands or something. Even when it would be obvious to send in the military, you're still being sent alone. The twists in the story are foreseeable from miles. And the whole game comes down to a very stupid and annoying bossfight.

I'm not saying this is a bad game because gameplay is actually fun, but there is nothing that we didn't see before.

The graphics is OK, not great, but at least it ran well. Except during the HQ, where for some reason it kept slowing down.

The checkpoint based save system was OK during the campaign.

The controls on the other hand have some serious issues. When you're in cover all the movement is relative to the camera, and not to the character, which made me crazy, and the same goes for climbing. Other issues include the character missing the intended cover and going into the wrong cover facing the enemies. Or he will turn on the light switch instead of opening a door.

Another stupid thing is hiding the bodies. Which is only possible in designated "corpse dumpsters" you can't put the bodies anywhere else, even throwing them off a cliff doesn't count as hiding them. But there is very few of these dumpsters in the game, so the whole idea of hiding bodies looses it's point.

I think I mentioned everything that I wanted.

+

  • Scoring system
  • Since you're transported to your HQ after each mission the immersion is not broken
  • the basic stealth and enemy hunting gameplay still works
  • the game made a return to it's origins after the action style detour of conviction  

-

  • freezing and hanging
  • bugs and other stupid errors
  • really underwhelming bossfight
  • extremely hard side missions  
  • clichéd story
  • I still can't feel the vibe of the objectives being projected within the game world  

What it lacks in story it makes up for in gameplay.


Scoring:

Graphics: 7
Story: 3
Atmoshpere: 7
Gameplay: 8
Contorls: 5

Overall: 7/10
Despite it's errors It's worth playing