EvaUnit02 on 3/11/2008 at 04:43
How well do the Splinter Cell games fare on PC? Do they play well? Ie better than a gamepad?
I tried a couple of the SC games years ago on Xbox and I just couldn't get into them. I hoping that it might be a different story with decent PC controls.
Volitions Advocate on 3/11/2008 at 06:10
the only problem i found with the PC controls is that you have 4 walk speeds (the slower the quieter obviously) whereas with a gamepad you have an analog stick that you can control the speed with rather than using the mouse wheel to adjust the "throttle" and then WASD .
Scots Taffer on 3/11/2008 at 06:17
Yeah, the controls are extremely ungainly and as a whole the games feel very awkward and mechanical. The best the games got for me, personally, was Pandora Tomorrow multiplayer (never even touched the SP campaign).
Thirith on 3/11/2008 at 09:05
I just finished Double Agent and I've played all of the Splinter Cell games in single player (plus some co-op in Chaos Theory). They're no Thief, but once you accept that they're good fun with high production values.
Chaos Theory is clearly the best, as far as I'm concerned. It's gorgeous to look at, the missions are cool, it plays well, and the co-op missions are great fun (if you get them to work without any problems - I had issues with using headsets, so in the end we had to deactivate the in-game system and use Teamspeak).
Double Agent is a disappointment - the plot and the missions have great potential and force you to play somewhat differently, mainly because several of them are no longer set at night, so many of the skills you've developed in the earlier games have to be rethought. At the same time, while it looks gorgeous, there are lots of technical issues that were never addressed and the controls and interface are a lot more sluggish - added to which the plot was cut to shreds for the PC/next-gen version. There's lots of potential there for a great sequel but in the end it's considerably less fun because of the issues... and being able to see beads of sweat glittering on Sam Fisher's forehead doesn't really make up for this.
EvaUnit02 on 3/11/2008 at 09:45
Thanks for the replies thus far.
Quote Posted by Thirith
Chaos Theory is clearly the best, as far as I'm concerned.
How did you deal the Starforce?
Quote:
added to which the plot was cut to shreds for the PC/next-gen version
Hmm, that's a shame. I've read that "last gen" Xbox1 version was closer to the first three games, whilst the "current gen" version was far more actiony.
Thirith on 3/11/2008 at 10:06
Quote Posted by EvaUnit02
How did you deal the Starforce?
I never had any problems with Starforce, so there was no need for me to deal with it. (However, that may also be because I got a no-cd patch as early as possible, because I tend to play several games at the same time and didn't want to bother with swapping disks all the time.)
Quote:
Hmm, that's a shame. I've read that "last gen" Xbox1 version was closer to the first three games, whilst the "current gen" version was far more actiony.
That's not 100% accurate, or at least not according to my experience with the game. Stealth was more difficult in
Double Agent, due to 1) design decisions (daylight missions, mainly, but also old, somewhat cheap strategies of knocking out guards no longer working as well) and 2) control issues. As a result of 2) I got frustrated with the game towards the end and shot opponents that in earlier games I would have avoided or knocked out.
Irenices on 3/11/2008 at 10:16
I played all 4 on the pc and found the first and 3rd (chaos theory) to be fun and the other 2 to be total shit. I don't remember the first game well at all but i remember enjoying it alot, the 2nd game i couldn't get past the first level, chaos theory was by far my favorate and the coop missions where a blast, i was very disappointed by the 4th game as it suffered from awful consolitis compared to chaos theory and the fact they cut coop out of it for pc pissed me off.
In short if you don't want to read my horrably written lump of text, play the first and third and avoid the other two.
Scots Taffer on 3/11/2008 at 10:35
Spy vs Merc isn't co-op. It's essentially stealth DM.
Malleus on 3/11/2008 at 12:09
As someone said it before, the movement isn't as practical on the PC. The mousewheel can't control speed as fluently as an analog stick. Also, there are only eight irections you can walk in, and four of those directions are not the same speed as the other four (WASD, if you press W you move forward at speed 1, if you press W+A you move diagonally at speed
Inline Image:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/e/f/5/ef5590434a387b3c4427e09d5b08baaf.png. It screws up when you were walking silently in one direction and suddenly make footstep sound when you start walking diagonally.). However, using the mouse to move the camera is way way better than using an analog stick, and it pretty much negates the diagonal walking problem.
Also, the first two games suffer a bit from porting - the first only gives flawless graphical results on a Gef3 or Gef4 card (works decently on others too, but the shadowing is buggy in some places). The second game works fine on everything but the shadows are not smooth (read: shadows are horribly pixelated in some places), though I think it's better on Gef3 or Gef4 cards (haven't tried yet).
Chaos Theory is pretty much flawless on the PC, apart from the inherited control errors (yes, the diagonal speed wasn't fixed in this either).
Double Agent has an incredible range of graphical errors, and bugs, and you'll have to be quite lucky to get it work flawlessly. IMO, it also has a number of other bad qualities (design, story, etc), but that's subjective.
With all that said, the first three games are awesome, and a must play for anyone into stealth games. After all, 90% of Splinter Cell's game mechanics were stolen from Thief. :)
