I Spy Maps
Go ahead and read through any of the Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell® Pandora Tomorrow™ forums or listen to the chatter in an Xbox Live™ lobby. Chances are, you’ll find one persistent question. When are the new maps coming? It’s on everyone’s mind, and people need to know. Therefore, you’ll find plenty of people speculating about it, discussing it, and sometimes outright making up lies about it. Rumors are leaping out of the forums and onto the street, and now everyone thinks they have the straight dope on what Ubi Soft has coming down the pipeline. Some say the next level is an airport. Others have maintained—with indignation for any who disagree with them, no less—that the new levels will be a grocery store and a jungle. Like most gossip birthed from the Internet abyss, they’re all flat out wrong.
The one thing they do get right is this: There are new levels! What’s more, they’rehere, andwith a quick download they shall appear on your friendly Xbox® hard drive. These little (or vast, as one of these maps may be) gems are Xbox exclusives. It’s okay, you can do a little celebratory dance—I won’t watch. Ah, but I’ve gone on too long without actually breaking down the new maps. Let’s fix that, shall we?
Federal Bank
This isn’t your friendly neighborhood branch where you cash your weekly paycheck. This is a branch of the American Federal Reserve. It’s a no-public affair, housing delicate documents and a fair stash of gold. It’s a high-tech and uber-secure facility, although, clearly, not secure enough. There are mercenaries with biological weapons milling about, after all.
This isn’t your grandmother’s bank.
The Federal Bank is divided into two sectors, and, like the Warehouse level, you can only reach the second section after the first has been decontaminated. As spies, you arrive via helicopter on an adjoining rooftop, and then make your way down pipes to a clear glass dome that overlooks the bank’s reception area. Even this first bit can be a touch testy, as mercs who know their stuff can spot you on the way down.
The first set of objectives lie in the Vault room. This is a giant multi-tiered room filled with too much light for a stealthy spy’s comfort. There are plenty of paths between the different levels and objectives, but it’s just a bit too easy for a merc to spot even your most careful movements. Don’t despair, though—the balance comes in the form of a couple of secondary objectives. You can hack the vault’s electrical system, which will flood the room with darkness, and you can hack a system to trigger electromagnetic jamming. This effectively eliminates the mercs’ EMF vision. Start placing those spy cams!
Scout early, scout often.
The second sector is the gold store (sorry, no five finger discounts allowed). This area is more confined and claustrophobic than the first, so be patient and calculating. A word of advice to spies; don’t kill off the mercs in the first section if you can help it. A merc with a fresh set of mines and grenades in the gold store will be a ruthless adversary. Luckily, you can hack the lighting, as well as open up some secondary passages to get to the ND133’s in this section.
The Federal Bank may very well be the next Warehouse (currently the most popular level), so let’s rejoice.
River Mall
Welcome to your typical suburban shopping mall. This is the commercial hub for the local populace, and the perfect target for a terrorist looking to strike fear into the heart of Joe American.
Not exactly your everyday mall rats.
You might consider the mall to be the antithesis of the Federal Bank, which is good: You want variety in your content downloads. It’s huge, it’s complicated, and the ND133s are spread out, not clustered together like at the bank. Where the bank could be likened to the Warehouse, you might think of River Mall as similar to Vertigo Plaza. While most maps are initially more difficult for the spies, Vertigo Plaza and the River Mall give fits to the mercs instead.
The first area in the mall is the main hall. You’ll find locked storefronts on two stories, a giant staircase, and a gorgeously-lit waterfall (which incidentally has a secret passage that can be opened behind it). The first ND133 is here as well. What’s more, there are more than seven separate routes for a spy to take into this area. It’s also very open, which gives the mercs excellent visibility and sniping angles.
There are a lot of very cool singular elements to the mall as well. For example, you’ll find an objective in a videogame store in the first area of the mall. You’ll even see unsold copies of Beyond Good and Evil lining the shelves (that game is great, go buy it people!), among other Ubi Soft games. There’s even a life-size cardboard cutout of Sam Fisher and a crouching Shadownet spy (perfect to hide behind) in the storefront window.
The one that didn’t get away.
What may be the coolest element of the mall, though, is the addition of a new tool for the mercs. To aid the mercs in their mission, there’s a large 3-D holographic map at their spawn point. This map will highlight where spies are located in the level. It won’t pinpoint an exact location, but more of a general area. For example, you may know that a spy is fiddling about in the Hi-Fi store, but you won’t know exactly where in the store they are. Of course, this means one merc will have to stay behind to examine the map, so it’s a bit of a risk. Whole new strategies may be born from this simple device—strategies I can’t wait to try out.
Well, there you have it folks, a first glance at the new Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow multiplayer maps. Can’t wait to get your hands on them? Don’t worry; it won’t be long at all! See you on Xbox Live!
Want even more? Xbox.com members can feast their eyes on these exclusive screenshots.
By Alex McLain
