I love multiplayer. It’s just what I do. Don’t get me wrong—I like a great single-player game, too, especially a shooter, but there’s something so much more intense about taking on a real live person. You know that every time you shout “Yeah!” that somewhere there’s somebody cursing and tightening his or her grip on the controller in rage, vowing to destroy you 10 times over in return.
For people like me, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell®: Pandora Tomorrow™ is the best thing to come down the pike in a long, long time. The name is kind of long, but apart from that, it might just be the perfect multiplayer game. (Don’t write me letters about Halo® 2. It’spotentially the best multiplayer game ever, but I haven’t seen it yet, and unlike lots of you, I live in thepresent.)
Spies versus Mercenaries. Winner takes all.
Just watching the trailer for the multiplayer aspect of this game is an experience.
Playing as Sam Fisher is excellent in the single-player game, but hey, why stop there. Let’s invite a few of Sam’s closest friends over for a bit of team-based covert action. All trained and deadly, these fellows are going to require some serious competition, so let’s invite a few other guys to the party. How about a band of battle-hardened mercenaries?
Now we have a cast, so where do we want to put on the show?
Pandora Tomorrow gives you a great set of options for locations:
DefTech Belew A research and development contractor with ties to the U.S. military, DefTech’s facility is high tech and sleek. The corridors make for great stealth action.
Schermerhorn Waste Management. Smells like victory!
Schermerhorn Waste Management The way station stands between New York City and the Fresh Kills Landfill, not far from the East River and several major subway lines, so you can imagine the sort of place it is. Sewer tunnels, rusted pipes, twisting passages, water, and darkness. This is the level that makes you glad that nobody has invented Smell-o-vision yet.
San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art This is my favorite level. The new pavilion of the museum is under construction, leaving you lots of scaffolding, boxes, and other good terrain to use. There are air ducts to move about in and even cables strung up to support the scaffolds. If you get into the right position, you can hop up and grab the cable and slide down it like a zip line. I could do that all day. It’s just plain cool.
Temple Mount Hospital Gunfights in hospitals are underrepresented in games. Some games have combats in bioresearch laboratories or medical experiment chambers, but few go that extra mile to drop you in an actual hospital. Hospitals are fun to run around in with a gun and a stealthy ninja-suit. I love ducking in and out of corridors and rooms while checking out the cool equipment laying around and watching for enemies behind everything. I’m glad I can finally do it in a game, so I don’t have to risk getting picked up by Security again.
Temple Mount Hospital. Somebody is about to need a doctor.
The game offers a variety of good multiplayer game types as well: Sabotage, Extraction, and Neutralization. The variety gives you enough options in stealth versus straight gunplay that any team should be able to find something the members really like.
Bringing the gadgetry from the single-player game into the multiplayer experience is a blast. Checking out your opponents using thermal imaging or night vision is fun. You can sneak up behind enemies, grab them from behind in a choke maneuver, and engage them with melee attacks.
Overall, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrowdelivers an incredibly polished game experience, but the multiplayer game stands head and shoulders above all others.
