Splinter Cell

Turns out I actually abandoned my project last year and only revived it the other day. I went through Pandora Tomorrow, Chaos Theory and Double Angent now and I am in the middle of Conviction at the moment.

Well, what can I say, PT is pretty much exactly like SC1. The story was kinda cool though, so I didn't mind.

Chaos Theory is still the best SC game for me so far (having played everything but Blacklist). They got the sneaking down perfectly in this one. The animations are great, the story is decent, Sam's little interrogation dialogues are hilarious to the point where I opted not to sneak through but take enemies out, just so I could interrogate them. It is the pinnacle of the series so far.

Double Agent has a really nice story concept actually but it is messed up by a bunch of missteps.
First of all, the changes in the UI are horrible. The feedback on light and sound that was pretty much perfected in Chaos Theory got dumbed down and blurred out to the point where I often get into ridiculous situations. I am in the yellow and people see me from 50 meters away but take a tiny step into the green (although there is no visible shadow there in the environment) and you become completely invisible even if a guy stand right next to you. It's just a lot of trial and error where it was precision in CT.
Also, there are heaps of technical bugs. The amounts of game crashes I had, plus other bugs like getting stuck in the map, etc. was really frustrating to the point where I almost quit.
As I said, the concept of the story is actually cool and I immensely enjoy the sections in the terrorist hideout where I have to complete a whole bunch of objectives (so many that you can't do them all) in a time limit and where I have those sections that are ok for me to be in and others where I have to hide. That's really well done.
However, the story is also hampered by a few little things that start piling up. One of my major gripes is that the terrorists don't really have much of a likable side (apart from Enrica who is only there against her will anyway). They are just assholes and you also never really get to sympathize with their reasons in any way. Also, the mission objectives are very black and white with the NSA objectives being always "white knight" kinda ones whereas the JBA only get cartoon villain objectives. I think ti would have been much more interesting to give Sam a real dilemma, which could have been easily done by making the terrorists at least try to justify their actions to him and treat him with some sense of comradeship at some point. As it is, they treat almost like a prisoner right up to the end. A missed opportunity.

Anyway, Conviction: I am not though yet (am at the Lincoln Memorial atm. Wow, this one is really trying to be gritty isn't it. Not bad though. However, one really has to adjust to the new gameplay. I don't know if you can play this one really stealthy, not to mention without killing. If so, I haven't really found a way to do it. At some point, I kinda have to use the mark-and-execute function or the encounters get too much out of control. It's also that being seen is not really that bad anymore, it can even be useful. That way, it becomes more of predator gameplay than a real stealth game. I get that this is what they were going for there and it does fit the story, I'll admit but I don't really like it that much. I liked Chaos Theory much better where you really learn your environment and the enemies in it and then plan you moves through it. It was much slower, more methodical, this one is way too action-oriented IMO.
It's not a bad game but it's just not really what I want out of a Splinter Cell game.

Anyway, from what I hear, Blacklist goes back to the old style much more, so I am looking forward to that.