Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent [X360]

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Another year, another Splinter Cell game. They don't tend to change much, which in this case says more about the reliable nature of the gameplay than the creativity of the developers. These are the quintessential contemporary stealth games, where every stretch of territory is like a puzzle: how do you get from point A to point B, given the set of tools you have, the hiding places available, and the enemies in the way? But Ubisoft once again manages to pile onto the equation enough cinematic flair to disguise these puzzles as tense and exciting action movie set pieces.

The story only makes sense if you're paying more attention than you should have to. All you really need to know is that terrorists are trying to get a nuke. Otherwise, it's a set of desultory locales, not unlike the way a James Bond movie flits from place to place with only the thinnest of rationales. Most of the levels have a familiar "Play it again, Sam" quality. You know the places. Skyscrapers, underground labs, missile silos, embattled cities, ships. Lots of ships. Almost half of the locations in Double Agent are ships. These are all places you've been before, either as Sam, or Snake, or Lara. Even the prison mission smacks of The Chronicles of Riddick or The Suffering. And of course, it all ends with a bomb ticking down by way of a mission timer. These are established conventions.

And they're established conventions for the reason that they mostly work. The locations are solid, and some are downright beautiful. The early missions are much more energetic and variable, but don't get too attached to flexibility. Double Agent sinks into the same old linear scripting, even when it's supposedly breaking out in a full blown war zone. But the levels look great, and it's nice to see Sam getting some sun for a change instead of skulking around in the usual shadowy corridors.

The twist in Double Agent is that Sam Fisher goes undercover and works for terrorists. This doesn't mean a lot in terms of gameplay, as the missions still play out as if he were doing the usual NSA work. Plant a bug here, recover a doo-dad from there, and so on. But this time, you have a pair of meters that result in a fail state if either one empties. The first represents how much the terrorists trust you, and the second represents whether you're acting in the best interests of the NSA.

Every mission has multiple goals, and failing a goal will often result in a loss of trust from the terrorist or the NSA meter. At the easiest difficulty level, serving two masters doesn't present much of a challenge. But at the harder levels, the penalties are more severe, and you'll find yourself dangerously close to either fail state if you're not careful. Sometimes, the goals are mutually exclusive, and this is used to morally ambiguous effect at a couple of memorable junctures. There's even a late game shocker thrown in for fans of the series.

Between each of the main missions, there are hub missions at the terrorist headquarters. These are timed, typically around a half hour. The terrorists will give Sam a task, such as running a ridiculously convoluted obstacle course, decrypting email using some sadistic combination of Sudoku and a Rubik's cube, or -- no joke -- playing a crafting minigame. That's right, crafting. Is no genre sacred? Ignore the crafting at your own peril; it's very nearly the last thing you'll do.

Sam has to quickly finish his terrorist chores and then use the rest of his time sneaking around restricted areas, collecting info for the NSA, and foiling the terrorists' plans. The goal of these hub missions is admirable; the idea is obviously to give Sam's undercover world a bit of context and flavor, to establish a sort of domestic routine, and to introduce some characters. In practice, it doesn't work out quite so well.