Splinter Cell Double Agent (Xbox 360)

Splinter Cell Double Agent is the fourth game in the franchise, it originally released back in 2006. I've never played any of the original trilogy but don't worry, I own the HD trilogy for PS3, but I think it's worth mentioning for this review.

So I first played this back in 2009, me and a friend completed it playing in turns. I didn't remember much from back then. This time I played all the way through on my own, one thing I can say; this game feels really old. It's not aged that poorly, but the controls have a lot. Playing this on hard and trying to get to grips with the control scheme doubled the already challenging difficulty.

Sam Fisher is given a new assignment, going undercover as a terrorist for the JBA organisation. Although he's already a spy, you can make choices of how the story plays out. Do you risk cover and stick to National Security Agency or do you blend in and follow the terrorists plans all the way through.

The stealth is really good, it's certainly imported in the more recent years, but for over a decade old, I enjoyed it. There's lots of items to help you get through missions, smoke grenades, thermal vision, they're all pretty useful. You can turn off lights using your secondary fire on the pistol. Using guns isn't that great. If you get discovered and find yourself in a gun fight, I'd just restart, the gameplay isn't up to scratch for that. The platforming is the same level as stealth, works well and fun to play.

There's optional objectives that add more to the game, the story isn't too long, but finding and stealthy path can take a lot of time. I thought the lock picking sucked, the hacking was slightly better but neither was fun. One huge flaw for me was the lack of tutorial. I struggled to play the game because of the controls and I didn't know if I was picking locks right, I had to look online at how to do it. It was a huge negative.

Even though there are different choices to make, I wouldn't really say there's much replayability. In my eyes there's no reason to play through the game again, unless you really liked it. Once was enough for me. Love the current Splinter Cell series, it's been four years since the last, so, you know, hurry up!

6.4/10