First Impression: Splinter Cell Essentials

Heads up! Slight spoilers ahead!

After a night of playing Splinter Cell Essentials, I have noticed a few noteworthy things about the game. I have not been a fan of previous Splinter Cell games released for consoles, so forgive me if I offend any Splinter Cell fans with my lack of knowledge about Sam’s back story.

The first thing I noticed about the game was its lack of thorough tutorials and training levels. Normally this would be a problem, but since the first “mission” has Sam simply walking over to his daughter’s grave, this should sufficiently acclimate most players to the games control set up. The control set up itself is intuitive enough and provides the user with two variations for different tastes.

Since loading times have decreased steadily since the release of Midnight Club 3 (the game with the longest loading times of all), I was expecting to see reasonable loading times here too. Unfortunately, this game seems to exceed the time spent loading in all other recent games and is somewhat reminiscent of MC3. Not only do you load into a mission, you also load (again) to get up to the point of your last save.

After playing the game for a while I decided to shut off the PSP, while at the pause screen, to save some battery juice. When I turned the PSP back on I was shocked and horrified as I watched my PSP shut itself down (without my permission). This is not the only time my PSP has spontaneously shut down during this game and it reminds me of the problems many experienced while playing Madden 06. I am hoping that my experience was just a fluke and not something we will be hearing more about in the future.

While Splinter Cell Essentials certainly has its share of problems, the game itself delivers. I really get into this game. The ability to interact with dead bodies alone is enough to keep me interested for days! Overall, this title stays true to its Splinter Cell roots and does an admirable job of delivering a console experience to a handheld platform.

Heads up! Slight spoilers ahead!

After a night of playing Splinter Cell Essentials, I have noticed a few noteworthy things about the game. I have not been a fan of previous Splinter Cell games released for consoles, so forgive me if I offend any Splinter Cell fans with my lack of knowledge about Sam’s back story.

The first thing I noticed about the game was its lack of thorough tutorials and training levels. Normally this would be a problem, but since the first “mission” has Sam simply walking over to his daughter’s grave, this should sufficiently acclimate most players to the games control set up. The control set up itself is intuitive enough and provides the user with two variations for different tastes.

Since loading times have decreased steadily since the release of Midnight Club 3 (the game with the longest loading times of all), I was expecting to see reasonable loading times here too. Unfortunately, this game seems to exceed the time spent loading in all other recent games and is somewhat reminiscent of MC3. Not only do you load into a mission, you also load (again) to get up to the point of your last save.

After playing the game for a while I decided to shut off the PSP, while at the pause screen, to save some battery juice. When I turned the PSP back on I was shocked and horrified as I watched my PSP shut itself down (without my permission). This is not the only time my PSP has spontaneously shut down during this game and it reminds me of the problems many experienced while playing Madden 06. I am hoping that my experience was just a fluke and not something we will be hearing more about in the future.

While Splinter Cell Essentials certainly has its share of problems, the game itself delivers. I really get into this game. The ability to interact with dead bodies alone is enough to keep me interested for days! Overall, this title stays true to its Splinter Cell roots and does an admirable job of delivering a console experience to a handheld platform.