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Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow

In case you missed it when I mentioned it the first time around, the original Splinter Cell put you in the third-person shoes of one Sam Fisher, a near-future high-tech super-spy. Equipped with two different vision modes—a light enhancement mode and a thermal mode—Sam was tasked with getting in and out of extremely secure areas undetected. Further complicating matters, on several of the maps, you were forbidden from harming anyone. Aside from the difficulty level that scaled from very hard to ludicrous near the end of the game, the only real complaint that anyone had about it was that it lacked any kind of multiplayer mode.

Pandora Tomorrow takes the gameplay of the original Splinter Cell and kicks it up a notch. I’ve not delved too far into the single player campaign yet, but the first few missions are very difficult. The single player campaign is just a nice diversion from the real point of this game though: multiplayer.

Pandora Tomorrow only includes one multiplayer mode, but damn is it good! Four players compete in a two-on-two format. Sounds pretty lame, eh? Well, as you can guess, there’s a hook. Two players take the role of spies, with most of the tricks that you’ve grown accustomed to Sam Fisher having. The other two players assume the role of Argus Mercenaries, whose job it is to prevent the spies from doing something. The trick is that the spy keeps the third person vantage point that we’ve becomes accustomed to, but the mercs utilize a Rainbow 6-like first person mode.

The spies goal? It’s simple, they have to get to a known area, activate a device, then hide, before the mercs come back to kill them. The spies come equipped with two standard visual modes and several alt-fire weapons. Mercs also get two vision modes—motion tracking and electromagnetic. Each team has a variety of weapons to choose from. The spy can use Spy Bullets, which not only track the tagged enemy on the map, but allows you to snoop on Merc voice chatter. That’s just damn cool.

The balance is great, and the two-on-two fighting is freakin intense. When there are two minutes to go, and the spies only have to capture one last point to win, you can rest assured that you’ll sweat. Tonight as a spy, my team was creating diversions, keeping the enemy pinned down, and just being an overalll nuiceance.

The multiplayer game alone is worth the price of admission on Live!