Arguably it is the ancestor of all stealth action games, or at least the game that made this kind of games popular.

You would think that looking at a game that was made more than a decade ago is asking for trouble. But you'd be wrong, it has nothing to be ashamed about compared to today's flashy games. Graphics is acceptable, and controls are as good as if not better than anything today. The only thing that somewhat bothered my eyes was that they used the same low-poly character models during cutscenes as they used in-game. Even those characters look like they've been carved with an axe that never even appear in-game. And on top of that the compression algorithm used on the cutscenes is really poor, I don't understand if they're already using low-poly models in it, why not just use the game engine to generate them real-time? Why use over compressed bink? Apart from that the graphics is totally acceptable, even today. You won't be disgusted by it. The only exception are the vehicles that appear in the game, it seems that the game's artist had some kind of anti-talent when it comes to vehicles, because all trucks, cars, look utterly terrible in the game, even their texture maps are a magnitude smaller compared to other objects.

The gameplay is known to almost everyone: While you can shoot at everything that moves, it's far from the best tactic in the game. There are some missions where you're not allowed to shoot anyone. But it's not recommended to start playing guns blazing anyway because the ammo runs out very quickly, and you hardly if ever find any ammo during missions. Because of course our hero uses some fancy CIA weapons that have special ammunition, and you can't take weapons from enemies either. So the best and only solution is stealth. Personally I don't fancy sneaking past enemies because I hate to leave potential threats in the path of my retreat. The only times I did have to sneak past enemies where large open spaces where I couldn't isolate and take down enemies one by one. The maps are remarkably well designed, the only negative aspect about them is that you usually only have one route, if a door isn't leading to your goal, then it probably won't open. They should have made more effort in this regard, because the "lock jammed" pretence got old very fast. Especially when there is a change of plans and suddenly a door that was jammed just a few seconds ago becomes openable. I think they should have let you go into places you're not supposed to, you wouldn't find there anything of interest anyway. It would've added much to the realism without much effort from the devs.

The difficulty of the game is average, which is strange because in my memory it was stored as impossibly difficult, from the time when it first came out (I haven't even finished it back then), but now I was able to finish it and I didn't even break a sweat doing it. But there is always the possibility that I remember some other game, after ten years its hard to tell them apart. I thought the wave of short games started later, guess I was wrong about that too. Because this game is indeed pretty short, it only has 10 maps/missions and I already included the tutorial in that number. On average it takes about 30-40 minutes to finish one mission. But the tutorial is only 10 minutes, and the first real mission didn't took more than 15 minutes either.

One interesting aspect of the gameplay is that you can often take thumbdrives from fallen enemies, that have some message on them. It's a good distraction, the only problem is that most of these messages are meaningless. Any significant data is stored by the game automatically anyway. Like door passcodes. Uninterestingly almost every time you can find the code for a locked passage on the person standing guard in front of it. I think there was only one door in one mission where I had to go a bit further away to find the code for a locked door.

I rounded up a lot of negatives about the game, but regardless of those it's a good game, the atmosphere is great, the gameplay is great, the overall look and feel even reminded me a little of DeusEx. (which I consider one of the best games ever made) While the story is not very original and has no real twists, it's solid and gives a great deal to the atmosphere.

+

  • Atmosphere  
  • Graphics (for 2002)  
  • Gameplay  


-

  • Very short  
  • Your visibility seems to be completely detached from your visibility. What I mean is that it happens that you can see yourself on the screen clear as sky in the third person view, but the game tells you you're completely invisible, and the enemies really don't detect you. And the opposite happens often too, when I'm standing in a dark corner I can't even see myself, but the enemies still find me easily.  
  • If one of the bad guys detects you all of the enemies suddenly know where you are, and start shooting or running in your direction. It's like they have some kind of telepathic connection.  
  • It's the same when you attack someone. No matter that you're completely hidden, suddenly everyone knows where you are. This means that if there are more than one badguys in a room you have no chance against them. But if you lure them away where they can be taken down one by one then it's like they become cattle strolling into a slaughterhouse. Even if there are 4 corpses on the floor in the open, the fifth guy still walks into your trap without hesitation.  
  • The doors can only be opened when standing right in front of them, and you even have to put away your weapon to open doors, so if there is an enemy standing on the other side you're completely in the open and vulnerable for a few seconds, which is more than enough for them to take you down, especially towards the end of the game.  
  • Low picture quality in cutscenes  
  • Every freakin door in the game closes automatically after a few seconds, and not just automatic doors, but the door of the last closet too. It's the most annoying when you want to take a body into another room. Because by the time you reach the door with the corpse on your shoulder it closes, and of course you can only open the door if you put down the body. I swear that most of the already short gameplay was accumulated by me picking up and putting down bodies and opening doors. It got so frustrating that towards the end of the game I didn't even bothered with moving bodies, I left every one of them where they have fallen, no matter what.  
  • Despite being a super-spy Sam Fisher has really bad aim, it's almost impossible to hit anything that's further away than 40 feet even with a scope. I often used up a whole magazine of ammunition by the time I was able to shoot down a light or camera from a few meters away.  
  • And on top of that the cross-hair is huge and not translucent which means you don't even see where you aim exactly.  


Despite the extremely long list of negatives, this is a game you don't want to miss. I truly enjoyed playing it.
So it's a 8 out of 10