Stealth games

[pershainovitsh]

Discussion about the stealth genre.

Why should I play a stealth game?

There's an unrivaled thrill to be experienced in stealth games. Maybe you're afraid that your cover will be blown when dressed as a waiter, maybe a guard is approaching your hiding place in the shadows, maybe you have only very little time to pick a lock... Unlike many may think, stealth games can be more thrilling than action games.

Popular titles in this genre are the Splinter Cell, Hitman, Assassin's Creed, Thief and Metal Gear Solid series. All of them with the exception of MGS are available on PC. I haven't played MGS.

I've got all the SC, Hitman and Thief games. Plus Assasin's Creed 2. And I've played through all of them except Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Thief: The Dark Project and Thief 2: The Metal Age. Mostly because they don't work.


My favourites among the series:
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Hitman: Contracts
Thief: Deadly Shadows (well, I haven't played any other Thief games)

You can get almost all of these games in handy collections. I got the Thief collection, consisting of all three games for a about 10€.

Splinter Cell collection was 1€ (in a huge sale), and it contained all the proper Splinter Cell games: the original, Pandora Tomorrow, Chaos Theory and Double Agent. Double Agent is where the series' downfall starts. After that comes Conviction, and it's as much of a SC game as BF3 is a BF game. A matter of preference, some may say, but I'd say the fan who has liked the series so far won't consider the latest installments to BF and SC proper sequels.

Then there's the Hitman collection, consistin of Hitman: Codename 47, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin and Hitman: Contracts. There's also the fourth installment, Blood Money, available.


Small summaries of the games

Splinter Cell

Splinter Cell, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Splinter Cell: Conviction (more like 24: Jack Bauer to the max), Splinter Cell: Retribution (upcoming)
you're Sam Fisher, a top secret agent working with high tech equipment while operating and leaving no trace of his existence.


Hitman

Hitman: Codename 47, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Hitman: Contracts, Hitman: Blood Money, Hitman: Absolution (upcoming)
You are the best assassin in the world. You kill people who you're paid to kill. The levels are big open sandboxes. The main gameplay feature is the use of disguises: rather than hiding in the shadows like Sam Fisher, you're blending in by dressing up as a policeman or a cleaner, for example.

Thief

Thief:The Dark Project, Thief II: The Metal Age, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Thief 4 (upcoming)

As the name suggests, you're a thief, and not just any thief but the best on in the world. Unlike in the other two series, you play from a first person view. The objective in the missions is to steal a certain valuable object, and along the way you can of course snatch everything else valuable. You hide in the shadows like in Splinter Cell.

Metal Gear Solid

Ummm... I don't know. It's a stealth game series. You can use different kinds of camouflage in MGS3:Snake Eater. The MGS games are notorous of having very long cutscenes and overly complicated plots.

Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed, Assassin't Creed 2, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Assassin's Creed 3 (upcoming)

This game has a unique sort of stealth: social stealth. You don't hide in the shadows (but you can hide behind walls and other structures to avoid being seen), you don't disguise yourself (usually), but you can just walk along law-abiding citizen like any other man and the guards won't say a thing. But if you are seen jumping on rooftops (you can climb on top of practiaclly any building you see) the guards will tell you to get down.

The main weapon is a hidden blade. A typical scenario in the game would be that a templar is in a courtyard of a building, and the rooftops are full of archers. You can dispose of them quietly and throw them away (in the best case to a hay stack or in to the water) and finally leap on the target with your hidden blade. After that you'll have to escape from the remaining guards.

Death to Spies

Death to Spies, Death to Spies: Moment of Truth, Death to Spies 2/3: Ghost of Moscow (I'm not sure if Moment of Truth was a sequel or more like an expansion pack, plus the hird installment might be calcelled)

Basically Hitman, but in WWII and more about espoinage than killing. I've only played the demos, and the games seem to be pretty stiff in terms of controls and the AI doesn't alway work.

Chameleon

An extremely rare game. Apparently it was made in Czech or Poland, and the texts in the game are in those languages. Unless you get the Russinan version which is fully in Russian. The non-Russian version has English-language voice acting. And it seems that for the first time in a stealth game, you can actually use a bathroom! (there's a line in Hitman: Codename 47 where 47 says that he needs to use the bathroom in a funny way www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiVRlNKEgew)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC2IBOC3o8c&feature=related

Project IGI

Project IGI, Project IGI 2

A stealthy first person shooter. There are two demos available, and I've played them both. The environments were very open. I liked it.

My recommnedations:
If you want to devise a cunning plan to get closer to a target, steal clothes and disguise yourself, Hitman might be the game for you. There are many ways of killing the targets: shooting guns blazing (not encouraged), sniping, poisoning their food, strangling with a fiber wire...
If you are new to the series, I'd recommend to start from either Contracts or Blood Money, as they are the easiest. You'll get spoiled a bit about the first game's ending if you get Contracts, but I don't think it matters. Play Codename 47 only if you have played at least one of the other games and want a very difficult game to play. C47 is quite old and the moving is a bit stiff. You won't miss much of the story no matter in which order you play the games since they have pretty individual stories.

If you'd like to play Splinter Cell, start from Chaos Theory. It's the easiest and the best. The plot in the games is individual, but there are some characters who appear in the previous games. The first two can be very difficult. Conviction is like a completely differetn game: there are no variable moving speeds, you can't carry bodies, you can't take out enemies non-lethally, you are forced into combat etc. If you'd like a Jack Bauer: the game, then this is the game for you. For me it was painful to play. And the story makes the characters pretty much the opposite of what they used to be.

Thief: The fans seem to like Deadly Shadows the least, but I'd say it's a safe start. But I haven't been able to play the first two at all.

Other games: I don't know really, haven't played much.



So, there are many stealth games being developed right now.



I guess I could consider myself as some kind of an expert in these games. So ask away if you've got something to ask.

[pershainovitsh]

First post updated with Assassin's Creed, Death to Spies, Metal Gear Solid, Chameleon and my recommendations of where to start. I'll post some kind of a general stealth tutorial at some point.

[pershainovitsh]

Hitman: Absolution will be released on November 20th 2012 on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. They wanted to make sure the PC version isn't a mere port from the console versions so there's a small team making the PC version and generally it should be just as good as on the consoles. Hitman started on PC and Hitman: Codename 47 was only released on PC.

On the other news, Dishonored, which isn't a stealth game, except it is (it's more like Deus Ex in the way you can finish the levels in numerous ways thanks to the level design and the special abilities the player has, like short-range teleportation and mind control), but anyway now it has a release date. Or actually release dates: in America October 9th, in Australia October 11th and in the rest of the world October 12th. Dishonored is one of my most anticipated games of the year.

Previews of Dishonored by Rock Paper Shotgun: www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/22/dishonored-preview-2/
www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/04/26/dishonored-preview-3/

[pershainovitsh]

Here's an example of one way of completing one level in Hitman Contracts. It's one of the fastest levels in the series. I skipped to the beginning of the actual gameplay so you don't have to watch the cutscene and get spoiled. It's played on the PS2 so that explains the bad quality.

www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-Jm67aODBZE#t=79s

You can also snipe the target from three other positions or poison his tea or set a bomb on his car. Or go guns blazing. Or strangle him. And probably kill him in many other ways. Some of these apporaches require you to get a disguise.

It's actually really difficult to find Hitman videos on Youtube that are not about doing a suit-only all zeros silent assassin speed runs. Meaning that the player will stay in the suit (47's default outfit), will not get alarms, unnecessary kills and such and completes with the best ranking. This is probably because the last Hitman title was released six years ago: the fans are getting bored and are doing everything that is possible in the Hitman games.

Another video, this time from Hitman: Blood Money and with the use of disguises. Again, this is only one of the many ways of completing the mission. This one is on the PC. Blood Money was released in 2006.



In Hitman, you can just follow the situation for as long as you want (unless you are in a restricted area) and plan your approach at your own pace. It's also good to have a backup plan. The AI in Hitman games isn't always the best possible, but the developers are saying that in Absolution the AI will be a lot better. One thing is that the guards seem to have a fear of running people in Hitman 2: Silent Assassin and in Hitman (3): Contracts. They get very suspicious if you run around and very quickly start shooting at you. This is to simulate how the guards will pay more attention to running people and will notice that the running guy wearing a guard outfit isn't one of their collegues.

Unfortunately common sense doesn't always work in Hitman: if you think you can shoot or even have a gun out in an alerted facility while wearing a cop disguise and holding a cop gun everyone will attack you. But if the NPC's have a weapon drawn out at all times like in a military base, then it's OK to hold a weapon in the correct disguise.

Another thing: the only punishment for breaking the law is death. This is like from a Judge Dredd comic. But as I was saying, if you pull out a gun, you'll get shot, if a metal detector beeps when you walk through you get shot (apparently in the Hitman world people don't use belts and the only things made from metal are weapons), if you are caught picking a lock you get shot etc. Despite its flaws the Hitman games are very good. And in how many games do you get to play as an assassin? You know, not the kind who leaps off of a roof and sticks a blade in the targets neck. The kind who gets in, kills the target and gets out without leaving a trace. It's funny how few games there are that decipt the life of an assassin. Who doesn't want to be the guy form movies who does the perfect hit?

[pershainovitsh]

A preview of a level set in Chinatown in the upcoming Hitman: Absolution pretty much sums up what Hitman is all about: freedom of choice, creative thinking, patience, being the cool assassin from the movies who doesn't look back as the car behind him explodes.

www.officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk/2012/06/01/hitman-absolution-hands-on-preview-5-ways-to-kill-the-king-of-chinatown/

This got me very excited. It's all Hitman has been before, but with new features. Like close combat abilities. In Blood Money, 47 can throw in a couple of punches and a headbutt, but that's it. In the first three games 47 wasn't able to perform any kind of unarmed melee, although knives could be used to attack people at close range. This makes the game more dynamic and you won't be screwed just because you don't have any weapons. The crowds should work more realistically this time. As the AI in general.

There is also a trailer involving nuns that has caused some controversy. I don't think it gives the correct idea of what Hitman is all about so I won't post it here. It's called "Attack of the Saints" if you really want to look it up.

A random thing about the Hitman series: in all the previous Hitman games the composer for the soundtrack has been Jesper Kyd. His other works include soundtracks for the Assassin's Creed series. If you pay attention to the music, it is actually very well composed and a plesaure to listen to. It also changes if the enemies get alerted. But he won't be composing for Absolution as he is busy with other projects.

Another thing is the voice actor of 47; David Bateson. He has voiced the main character in all four games, but for some reason the devs decided to ditch him in Absolution. They have given no word as to who will replace him. There is speculation of a Hitman tie-in film, which could suggest the lead actor would be voicing 47 in the game as well. In any case, the fans are pissed. Bateson himself doesn't seem very happy either.

47 isn't the only character whose voice actor is being replaced. 47's contact to the agency, Diana, who was being voiced by Vivienne McKee, is also being replaced. Again, the fans are not pleased. That includes me. There have been only three characters appearing in every game in the series, and they haven't spoken all that much. But their voices are iconic to Hitman fans. It will surely feel very different hearing them speaking with a different voice.

Other than the voice actors getting changed, Absolution could become the best Hitman game ever made. With some good luck some imitators could provide a mod to change the voices.


Edit: here's a video showing pretty much everything told in the article. www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9_pal859keA#!
Note that it is a pre-beta build which explains the bugs and missing holstering animations. Dual Hardballers (or Silverballers as they are called in most games) are 47's trademark weapons alongside with the fiber wire. Shooting dual pistols is a viable option, but not necessarily an easy one and certainly not a clean one.

[pershainovitsh]

What is Hitman all about?



Disguises

If you kill or knock out a male human, you can almost in every case take their clothes and disguise as them. You can disguise yourself as a policeman, for example, and enter an otherwise restricted area. This is the primary use of disguises. The other use is to escape a tricky situation. If a guard sees you doing something illegal, your cover will be blown, and your disguise will be compromised. You can then, after dealing with the situation either by running away or killing the enemies, change to another disguise which will work and you are anonymous again.

There are lots of disguises that will work in different situations: you can pretend to be a chef, a policeman, a bike gang member, a soldier and many more.

Tactics

You could have a tactic to go along, or you could just improvise all the way like I do. You are given a satellite map which gives various amounts of information depending on the difficulty level. You can use that to make some sort of a plan. One of the main things is to figure out a way to get near the target. Then you should think of how can you kill him, and will you be attacked if you use that way. You may be able to walk around the target and go so close you can smell their breath, but it may be impossible to take him out without alerting his guards who are nearby.

There are mutliple ways of taking out a target. It's always possible to shoot them in the face, but most of the time that's the worst option. Sometimes you may be able to strange them with a fiber wire (also known as a garrote) or knife them. Both are silent options. Check if you could use a sniper rifle from some location or if you could poison their food or drink. Or if you could place a bomb in a convinient location to blow them up.

Blood Money introduced accidents to the series. This means that the kill will look like an accident. BM also introduced very basic hand-to-hand combat and pushing. You can push people down the stairs or off of balconies. Sometimes you can even put a small explosive device (again, introduced in BM, although bombs can sometimes be found in other games. In BM, you start the levels with a bomb) on the chains of a chandelier or something similiar so you can make it fall down on the targe on the perfect moment.

Hide the bodies. You can drag bodies, so use it to hide them and hide them well. Hiding bodies in closets or other rarely used places is usually good. In BM you can hide bodies in containers such as boxes, or throw them off a balcony. If a guard sees a body, dead or uncoscious, they will set off an alarm. If it happens to be a half-naked body (implying its clothes have been stolen and are being used as a disguise) the guards will start to look for a person with that type of clothing the person should be wearing.

Remember that you have to get to the extraction point alive. So try not to arouse suspicion from anyone as you go away from the scene of crime. And remember that running is more suspicious than walking. So be cool and calm whenever there are guards or enemies around. Usually you can run around civilians freely, unless you are on their lawn or something like that.

Replayability

The Hitman games offer great replayability. The tagline of Hitman: Contracts (my personal favourite) might have been "When you kill for money, there are no rules" might imply you can kill the targets in whichever way you want, and it is true, it doesn't mean you shouldn't try to do it again better or simply in a different way. It's fun trying to figure out new ways to finish missions. Especially if you are trying to get the Silent Assassin ranking, which can be gotten if you only kill the target. Maybe one enemy guard is allowed to get killed, but that's it. No alarms can be risen, no bodies can be found, no civilican can get killed, no close encouters. I think you can make people unconscious (with a syringe or chloroform, not found in the original) without it affecting the rating. A perfect hit is what the Silent Assassin ranking is all about.

But what about after you've gotten SA ranking on every mission? Try something different. Or something more difficult. Like going through a mission with only using the default suit, not changing clothes at any point. An easier alternative is just to leave the mission in the suit, which grants a bonus in Blood Money, one of the two Hitman games where you gain money from the hits, the other being Hitman: Codename 47. Another one to try is to go all zeros, meaning the stat screen after the screen will read just zeroes. No bullets fired, no alarms etc. This can also be done in the Splinter Cell games, and it is quite difficult. I've only managed to do it in a couple of levels. You could also try to do a speed run. I have managed to beat one level in BM in under two minutes by doing something absolutely ridiculous, and still got a SA ranking. The average time for a mission would be 15-30 minutes, I'd say. Time varies with the skill level of the player and mission. Some missions are shorter and some are longer. A small level can take a long time to complete.

Or you could try doing it all at once: get a SA ranking with accidents only, suit only, all zeros and in the fastest time possible. Or pick up a shotgun and go on a rampage. Or pick people one by one, silently.

[pershainovitsh]

Splinter Cell is now completely dead. The franchise has been destroyed.

Why, you may ask? SC: Conviction was't even a stealth game, and now SC: Blacklist, the game that's supposed to go back to the roots, is just more of the same: action with few stealth elements. The focus is in killing, explosions and action when it should be all about stealth, hiding and taking out a few targets per level.

Then there's the characters. Sam Fisher, the main character, apparently won't be voiced by Michael Ironside. He's been voicing him in all five SC games. Even if it was a perfect stealth game, it would be extremely weird to play it without Ironside being the voice actor of Sam Fisher.
Lambert, Fisher's boss is gone just like in Conviction. So no more "My God Fisher" and other classic lines. Anna Grimsdottir, the tech girl has been in every game and will be on this one as well. She has been voiced by the same person in every game so far. I don't know about this game.
In Hitman: Absolution, the long-time voice actor of 47 has been changed as well. But at least the gameplay seems to be true to its roots.

Some old gadgets are making a return, like the sticky shocker. And maybe whistiling to draw attention. But not night vision goggles, instead we get the sonar goggles from Conviction. For some reason it seems that the true Tom Clancy games have night vision goggles, the bad ones dont'. Moving bodies was removed from Conviction, as was variable moving speeds. But it won't matter, the game is ruined already. It won't be Splinter Cell.

forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/680756-Proof-that-Blacklist-Conviction-developers-DO-NOT-like-stealth-gaming

"Andréane says- “We’re not using the shadow stealth as a constraint or as an obligation. You don’t have to hide because you might get shot or killed with an automatic game over."

“Our creative director felt that waiting was not empowering. People would tell me you can stay in the shadows, leave your console and come back later and you still won’t get detected (in Chaos Theory)."


"Go and Google Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, and look at the images. You're going to see some images of Sam, he looks as if he could be in the same world as Batman. He's wearing that ****ing wetsuit and he's super-built, and the rain and the goggles, and you look at him and you think he could be in the Batmobile with Batman."-Beland


"Beland doesn't like green night-vision sequences in games and told me that Fisher's goggles aren't used for anything like that; just for sonar scans, which show enemy positions through wall"


"creative director Maxime Beland states over a sandwich in a café, “We wanted Splinter Cell: Conviction to be more about action"


"Mechanics like “Last Known Position” and "Mark and Execute" are designed to work for computer AI, not for human players. For example, players can use the “Last Known Position” mechanic to set up flanking positions and ambushes on the computer AI. The same mechanic won’t be as effective on human players."-developer comments


"Because we're going to have some urban environments, we needed Sam to walk in a ground and not have people go "my god, it's Batman, aaaah". -Beland

Multiplayer designer Patrick Redding told the Major Nelson podcast that "Mark and Execute" and "Last Known Position" are the major pillars of the stealth in this game.

while referencing the Splinter Series before Conviction M.Beland had this to say...

"Every game that is stealth action is approaching you the same way, forcing you to be weak," says Max Béland, the creative director for Conviction.



"We want to make you feel like a predator, not a grandmother," Béland says.


Jade Raymond, Ubisoft Toronto studio boss, has remarked that the series will still focus on action.


The more we were talking to gamers and the more we were talking to the internal Ubisoft people, what came out was the fantasy of playing Splinter Cell, the fantasy of light and shadows, the fantasy of gadgets and Sam Fisher, the elite stealth agent. People want to be that guy. But what was coming up all the time was, 'Man, that game's hard. I played the first map and I stopped. It was too difficult.' - Max Beland in interview about the difficulty of stealth in the series before Conviction

Instead of forcing the stealth on the player, where you're seen and the alarm rings and you need to re-try, we're going to do the opposite.- Beland

Being a grandmother before kind of forced you to be stealth. You need to hide in the shadows because if you're seen, they shoot you and you're dead.

"As I was playing them (The other Splinter Cells), I found them to be a lot frustrating."-developer BlackList (the developer who made this comment is standing to the audiences' left side during the E3 SC:Blacklist demo)

That was horrible to read. Yes, the older games made you weak and forced you to be stealthy. What's wrong with that? You are a lone agent sneaking in places you're not supposed to be in against dozens of (usually armed) people who wouldn't like you to be there. It was realistic. If I want a game where I shoot everyone in the face I'll just buy one, the market is full of them. But if I want a stealth game, i'll just have to replay the old ones again.

The more we were talking to gamers and the more we were talking to the internal Ubisoft people, what came out was the fantasy of playing Splinter Cell, the fantasy of light and shadows, the fantasy of gadgets and Sam Fisher, the elite stealth agent. People want to be that guy. But what was coming up all the time was, 'Man, that game's hard. I played the first map and I stopped. It was too difficult.' - Max Beland in interview about the difficulty of stealth in the series before Conviction

If you can't play the games, you just suck. And if you suck at a game or anything else, you just have to keep on trying until you get better. It's very difficult to play the guitar but I'm not complaining and the manufacturers are not making guitars with two strings and ten frets.

You are the guy if you know how to play. Is it the developer's fault the gamer is so stupid? Maybe it is, to some degree. Maybe they should have a tutorial level that tells everything you need to know.


If someone even tries to give me this game once it's released, I will punch them. This is like if I had been a Ferrari fan for years and owned almost every single one of them and liked every part of them, and some day Ferrari announces that their new car will have 120 bhp, top speed of 200 km/h, 0-100 km/h in 10 seconds and it will look like any other car. The reason? Most of the people didn't know how to drive them. "Man, I wish I could drive a Ferrari." said the crowds. So Ferrari made a car that anyone can drive. But is it a Ferrari from its soul? No it isn't. And the core of Splinter Cell is not action, it's stealth. I hate Ubisoft. I am infuriated.

Splinter Cell is dead. 2002-2005 the king of stealth lived, now it's dead. I didn't include Double Agent from 2007, even if it is a good game, because the PC version is horribly made and the plot is not good.

[pershainovitsh]

Too long, didn't read (TL;DR) version of the last post: Splinter Cell: Blacklist won't be a Splinter Cell game. Don't buy it. I won't. If you buy it, you are showing Ubisoft that it's good to change franchises beyond recognition. Vote with your wallets.

Anyway, somehow Ubisoft is making a stealth game that actually looks good. And it's a completely new series. It's called Watch Dogs and you play as a guy who can hack into pretty much anything: traffic lights, bridges, trains, mobile phones... And it's an open world game set in a cyberpunk version of Chicago.

Here's an article by Rock Paper Shotgun: www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/05/watch-dogs-ubi-does-cyberpunk-open-world/

Here's a gameplay video:


Notice how good the graphics are, but most of all how realistic the character animations are at about 4:00. It looks like that in the end you could either fiddle around with the traffic lights or do it in a different way. Wait in the club, run the target over once he steps out of the car, shoot him while he's entering the club and such. Or at least that's what I hope. And hopefully the traffic jam isn't completely scripted so the cars won't always be in the same positions every time you toy around with the traffic lights.

Looks quite promising. I'll keep an eye on this game.

[pershainovitsh]

An interview of the devs of Watch Dogs on Rock Paper Shotgun: www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/07/hackers-paradise-ubisoft-on-watch-dogs/

[pershainovitsh]

How difficult is it to finish a level in stealth games?


Hitman
Codename 47 - difficult due to the lack of in-mission saving
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin - very difficult due to extremely paranoid AI and slow sneaking speed
Contracts - normal
Blood Money - normal

Splinter Cell
Splinter Cell - difficult due to occasionally binary concealment and the fact that in some missions you are not allowed to get any alarms or kill anyone
Pandora Tomorrow - difficult, see above
Chaos Theory - normal, you are allowed to get as many alarms as you want, in some missions you are not allowed to kill anyone.

How difficult is it to finish the levels without killing anyone who is not a primary target?

Splinter Cell
Splinter Cell - some are moderately difficult, some are extremely difficult
Pandora Tomorrow - see above
Chaos Theory - much easier than in the previous games thanks to the improved knock-out moves and upgraded non-lethal gadgets

Hitman
Codename 47 - early levels are moderately easy, in the later ones you are almost forced to get rid of some people who are in your way
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin - some levels are moderately easy, some are very close to impossible to complete this way
Contracts: some missions are moderately east, some quite difficult.
Blood Money - Nothing too difficult here.

Is difficulty a bad thing?

A challenge is not a bad thing unless it's frustratingly difficult. Some levels in Hitman 2 are incredibly difficult to play stealthily. In those missions you just have to improvise and do your best. Minimize the casualities. Get a disguise and hide the bodies. Pray the Lord.

In Splinter Cell you are usually given fifth freedom, which is the freedom to protect the other freedoms (freedom of speech, worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear) with any means necessary.

In practice means that you can kill anyone to accomplish the mission. This shows how brutal the world in Splinter Cell is. But you still should avoid killing as much as possible, and any contact in general. You are not supposed to be in the places you are. In the first Splinter Cell, Lambert says that your gun is your last option and he is right. Even if the weapons Fisher uses are suppressed, they are not completely silent.

The tagline of Hitman: Contracts was "when you kill for money, there are no rules". So, again, you can do whatever you have to to complete the mission. Using stealth is still advisable.

[psyco6]

Article on new Splinter Cell game.

undertheradar.military.com/2012/06/splinter-cell-killing-in-motion/?comp=1198882887570&rank=3

[pershainovitsh]

Splinter Cell: Blacklist seems to be straying away from the traditional hiding in the shadows to hiding behind cover, quite like in Assassin's Creed. Someone said on a comment section somewhere (gametrailers, youtube?) that in the gameplay demo Fisher kills more people than in the first four games in total. Even if it is sometimes pretty difficult, it is indeed possible to finish the first four SC games without killing anyone who is not a target. I couldn't do it in the first two, but in the third I could. The fourth I haven't played.

But my point is, Blacklist is straying far from its stealth roots. It looks like an action-adventure game. I have to admit that they have confirmed that a number of old features are returning, like the ability to move bodies. Still it's not enough to make me like the game. It might turn out to be a good action game, but as I have many times said, I don't want a good action game when buying a Splinter Cell title. I want a good stealth title.

The little we know of the plot already doesn't make any sense: Fisher has been promoted to be the leader of Fourth Echelon (previously he was working for Third Echelon) but he's still working in the field. What if he gets killed? Why isn't he in a command room somewhere guiding a new field agent?

[pershainovitsh]

My (hopefully) short tutorial on how to play Splinter Cell

You are Sam Fisher, a top-secret agent of a top-secret side branch of the NSA: the Third Echelon. If you are caught or killed, the governament will deny everything.

Since you are just a brittle human against dozens of people who will shoot you on sight because you are an intruder, it's the best to stay out of sight. Most of the time your mission is to gather information, sometimes ot assassinate a person and sometimes to rescue or abduct someone. Even if you are highly trained and are equipped with the latest technology, your best bet to stay alive is to stay in the shadows. The missions are highly classified so it would be best if you didn't just kill everyone. If you can leave the scene as it was before you got there, that's a good thing. But it is difficult. So at first just try to survive to the end of the mission and slowly start knocking out people instead of killing them and even avoiding contact altogether.

First of all, Splinter Cell is not a shooter even if you are given a silenced pistol and a silenced assault rifle. It really is the best if you just evade enemies. In Chaos Thoery, firing a silenced firearm in complete silence will alert all the nearby enemies, which is of course not a good thing.

Some tips for beginners
- Move slowly.
- Don't just go shooting everyone. Be stealthy. Knock people out if you have to get rid of them. Hide the bodies.
- Look at the situation from a dark spot. Decide what you should do next.
- Use the sticky cam to see what's around the next corner or some other place you can't see to very well. Remember that you can pick them up if you don't use the smoke.


General tips
- Use the night-vision goggles. They allow you to see in the dark. And don't worry, the enemies can't see the goggles even if it looks like it. You can also see though thin surfaces with the thermal goggles. With the electric goggles you can see which elecric appliances you can disrupt with the pistol's jammer.
- Avoid security cameras. If you are in complete darkness, they can't see you, except if they are equipped with infra-red vision. To make sure they don't, check them with the night vision goggles. You can see a visible beam on infra-red cameras. You can jam cameras with the jammer (found only in Chaos Theory) and shoot them in the older ones.
- Even silenced firerms make considerable noise when fired in a silent enviornment.
- You can shoot lights or use the jammer on the pistol to make the lights turn off for about 15 seconds. (jammer found only in Chaos Theory)
- You can also jam electric appliances to create diversions to allow you to slip by.
- Despite his age Sam Fisher is quite an acrobat. Think vertically. You can jump on many ledges and climb up on them. You can also climb on pipes.
- Watch your light meter. If it's on the left, you are a shadow. If it' on the rigt side, you're lit up like a Christmas tree.
- Watch your noise meter. (only in CT, but noise is an important factor in other games as well) There should be a square showing the environment's own sound level. If you go under it, you can't be heard. If you go over it (to the right side of it) you can be heard. Note that even if you surpass the square, the enemies must be within a certain distance from you to be able to hear you. Being crouched makes less noise and makes you harder to see. Walking slow makes less noise than walking fast.
- Hide the bodies. If a guard finds an uncoscious body, they will be alerted but won't sound an alarm. (at least from what I can remember, I'm so good that guards don't find bodies anymore) They will think they just passed out from the heat or something. If a guard finds a dead body, they will set off an alarm.
Try to find an unlikely spot for a guard to pass by.
- Use the sticky cams and other gadgets for your advantage. My cardinal sin in gaming, especially in Splinter Cell, has been that I don't use the items I'm given. I'm just waiting for a very bad moment to use them. But I just end up thinking no situation is bad enough to use the gadgets. I think it's better to use them too much than too little.
- The sticky cam can be used for not only scouting but also to lure enemies with the noise you can make with it, and to knock them out with the smoke. You can access the sticky cams by pressing "5" and then cycle though them with the "A" and "D" keys.

A 3-step guide to facing enemies

1. If you can evade the enemy without him seeing you, do it. You can create diversions with the sticky camera (or diversion camera in the first two) or by throwing objects on surfaces so the enemy will go investigate the sound.
2. If evasion is impossible, try to take the enemy out non-lethally. You have sticky shockers, airfold rounds and the sticky cam's smoke to knock out enemies from a distance. If you get close enough, you can try to knock them out with a righ-click attack. Note that if you approach them from the front, they may be able to see you and shoot you before you reach them. If you can get behind them, do it. If you can't, stay in a good spot, scroll your mouse wheel up and prepare for a lightning-fast attack. When the enemy is close enough, approach him and try knocking him out.
3. If you don't think either of the above is possible, all you can do is shoot them and quickly get into cover. Try to seize the situation. If there are enemies who come into your location, see if you can apply rules #1 and #2 on them.

[pershainovitsh]

The problem
I seem to have troubles with playing Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory on 64-bit Windows 7 and I'm not the only one.

Using the configuration utility, provided with the disc, I got to know that I pass all system requirements, which is not a surprise considering that the game was made in 2005 and my old computer could run it on max settings. There is one requirement that stands out: "Operating system: Windows 2000/XP (only)"

I think the installation itself went well, but I can't play it. Not if I run it on Windows XP SP2/SP3 mode, adminstrator mode, both or by using the Troubleshooting utility built-in in Windows 7.

The investigation
Upon further investigation it seems that there are three versions of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory available. The disc version which I have (actually two copies that are now useless), a direct-to-drive downloadable version straight from Ubisoft's store and the downloadable Steam version. Surprisingly, all three are different in crucial ways.

The cause of the problem
The disc version uses copy protection called StarForce. The point of this, of course, was to make illegal copies impossible to acquire. It actually set an unofficial record: it took 422 before it got succesfully hacked. I can imagine the publisher being very pleased as they got over a year with no illegal copies on the market.

Unfortunately this version of StarForce is not compatible with anything but Windows 2000 and XP. Not even in compatibility modes. And the Virtual PC/Windows XP mode for Windows 7 is mainly for business applications and not for games so I'm not going to even try it.

If you buy a digital copy from Ubisoft's site, it's free of DRM and should work on Windows 7. The Steam version doesn't have Starforce, but it has its own Steam DRM preventing copying and having any rights to do pretty much anything with the product you bought, but that's a whole other topic. I and Scriv can safely say that the Steam version does work with Windows 7. We played co-op when I had the old computer and there were no problems.

The villain
It's Ubisoft. They could have just removed the copy protection from Chaos theory once it was hacked or at least update it so it works with modern operating systems. Anyway, lately they've had some crazy decisions with copy protection. In some games you have to be online during the installation to verify that the game is a legally purchased copy. Or you'd have to be online every time you start up the game.

In the worst cases, you'd need constant online connection even if you were only playing single player. It's unnecessary and also very stupid. Let's say I go to a cabin with no internet connection. It would be reasonable to believe that you don't need an internet connection to be able to play the single player portion of a game. But no, it's impossible! This example may have been a bit far-fetched, but what about people with a bad internet connection (not neccessarily slow, but instable)? They will contantly drop out of games. Heck, think about soldiers in remote areas with no internet avaiable. They will surely curse Ubisoft down to the lowest bottoms of hell when they realize they can't play.

In the end, Ubisoft's DRM causes more harm to legal customers than to illegal. If you pirate the game, you don't have to put on the disc to play, you don't have to be online at all to play and you don't even have to pay for it. I'm not saying anyone should pirate their games, but it seems that with Ubisoft's backwards thinking that's the best option. To me it's never an option though. If Ubisoft would just focus on making the customers happy instead of trying to fight the pirates, I think they'd get more sales.

The solution
It's of course to buy either the Ubisoft store or the Steam version. Both have their pros and cons though: if I buy from Steam, it will have DRM on it and in the hypotethical event of Steam going down completely due to a bankrupt or something similiar, I probably wouldn't be able to play the game. At least not online. Maybe. But it would surely work right now.

If I went with the Ubisoft store version, I'd have a DRM free copy of SC:CT which should work on Windows 7. On the other hand, I'd have to give my bank account details to Ubisoft, who I don't really trust anymore and to a store I'd probably never use again. A bit risky. Even though I don't like digital versions in general, I think I'm more likely to buy something from Steam than from Ubisoft store.

So I think I'll buy it from Steam at some point.



Short version
Ubisoft sucks and I'm going to buy SC:CT from Steam in the future.

[pershainovitsh]