Splinter Cell: Essentials
Verdict: Essential? I don’t think so.
Platform: PSP.
Rating: 2/5
Hmm, here’s a lesson in how to take a great game and make it suck -1. Port it to a console that doesn’t have enough buttons/sticks for the original control scheme to work.
2. Use the original control scheme.
Welcome to Splinter Cell: Essentials, contender for the most ironically named game this year.
Essentials is a rehash of levels taken from the excellent Splinter Cell games residing on the home consoles. While this isn’t a bad thing, the fact that they’ve been shoe horned onto the PSP with little thought or sense and left reeling with inexcusable bugs is.
From the outset it’s apparent that the game has been rushed through development. From the initial and continual awkwardness of the controls to the constant audio glitches, shoddy AI and lifeless camera. While the core of the game is reasonably solid and built with some already proven level design it fails miserably in the area where it matters most - playability.
Replacing the PS2’s right stick camera control with the combination of a button press and the analogue nub (normally used for movement) means you are restricted from moving whilst altering the camera. Every few paces you take, every small corner you turn, you have to stop, just to see where you are going. In tense close combat situations it can often be the cause of your death - it’s hard to fight someone if you can’t see them. Lets not even talk about the levels where one false step means death and a level restart. Please, lets not.
Another example of design genius is that movement controls flip to the face buttons when you equip your gun (so you can aim with the analogue nub). Could they make the game any more counter intuitive to play?
it’s a game that doesn’t really sit well with portable gaming either. It doesn’t have that ‘pick up an play’ ethos and the dimly lit levels don’t suit anywhere other than a darkened room to play it in.
For it to work it needed to be redesigned with the limited controls in mind - automating the camera, remapping the controls in a radically different way. Instead, as the bugs show, it was just rushed out with little sensitivity towards its intended host.
If you were worried that the PSP would become a resting ground for lame PS2 ports, Essentials unfortunately does little to allay that fear.