Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent
- January 08, 2007 14:00 PM PST
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Oh Sam, what happened? We were so ready to mime your lithe, slinky moves with the Wii Remote, but then your designers had to go and flub it up by gumming on a sloppy control scheme that feels more like trying to type while wearing oven mitts.
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You know something's fishy when a game uses tutorial videos to introduce you to complex moves without once referencing the buttons or gestures necessary to pull them off. Among other things, this means that for the first few hours you'll be uttering expletives en masse as you fumble one stealth puzzle after another. It takes much too long to get functionally comfortable with Sam's arsenal of abilities, and even then, it's like sitting on a wooden bench: You can never really settle in.
Tricky actions that feel natural using a standard controller just don't mesh with the free-wheeling Wii. For instance, the camera pivots with the Wii-mote but the pointer slips easily off-screen, momentarily bungling your view. It's even worse during firefights, where you're not so much battling bad guys as pitiless aiming marginsyou'll need an arm stiff as a gun barrel if you want to reliably hit anything. Other bits like swinging the Nunchuk up to jump/climb or twisting it left/right to switch shoulders are more satisfying than thumbing buttons, but aiming and camera control make or break this sort of game, and the Wii Remote falls down squarely in "spastically flawed" territory.
The only thing that stands out is the story, which is a tad more expansive than the one found in the other versions of Double Agent, but that's about it.
With its sloppy controls and a total lack of online multiplayer modethat's right, the Wii version has no "spies vs. mercenaries," battles, just a poorly implemented split-screen modeit's tough to justify this version's existence. It's frankly the one to miss, unless you're stuck with just a Wii and a Sam Fisher fixation.
