The Splinter Cell series has been on my backlog list for a while now. Fresh off my Metal Gear Solid experience, I decided to start Pandora Tomorrow. Pandora Tomorrow is the second Splinter Cell game in the series and was originally released for the PlayStation 2. I played through most of the original Splinter Cell about a year ago on PC, so I knew what I was getting myself into with the PlayStation 3 HD remake of Pandora Tomorrow.

 

Pandora Tomorrow puts you in a more tropical settings than the original Splinter Cell game, which spends most of the time indoors. Other than that, it is a lot of the same game, which is a good thing.  I am always impressed with the lighting and atmosphere the developers were able to create with Splinter Cell at that time period. Pandora Tomorrow takes a lot of patience, but is very rewarding when you are able to stealthily reach your objectives.

 

 

Pandora Tomorrow adds a three-tier warning system for alerting the enemies to your presence. If you stay quiet long enough, the warnings go down. I enjoy this because it gives you a little room for error, but still not much since opponents will gear up with helmets and flak jackets as each warning goes off. The soundtrack complements this well, amping up the music as warnings go off, but toning it down in less tense moments.

 

The AI is fair, which makes for fun gameplay. Every time the guards were alerted to me, I knew where I had gone wrong and had no one to blame but myself. There are multiple ways to approach each situation (which is helped in part by the attachments on the weapons). By the end of the game I noticed that I settled on a couple of go to attachments and really left the others alone.  This is partly due to a lack of understanding the different attachments. The game is quick to give you a tutorial on how to use your scope for your gun, but not the attachments. I never could get a feel for some of them.

 

 

The ending left a lot to be desired. It seemed like the game ended in the middle of a mission, which just seemed awkward to me.On one hand I did respect them for not forcing a big, dramatic end sequence with gameplay that goes against the style of the game. I would rather that than an ending that asks you to perform stunts you haven’t been doing all game. Stealth is the mechanic of the game and that didn’t change in the end.

 

This game is still terrific and I recommend it to anyone who has it on their backlog. I don’t know what I will play next from my backlog but at some point I will be looking forward to Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.

 

---

Ryan Latuso is an editor for MONG and the owner of many unplayed video games. Follow him on IGN and twitter.

---