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A GLANCE AT A BETTER TOMORROW
March 15, 2004 - Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow was unveiled Monday evening with a world premiere screening of its Xbox Live online multiplayer mode. The screening took place in the Loews Theatre on Universal Studios’ City Walk in Los Angeles and the event was open to the public. Aside from the first public viewing of the game’s trailer, it was the game’s online component that was showcased.
Pandora
Tomorrow is the much anticipated
sequel to last year’s Tom Clancy inspired action-stealth game featuring super
spy Sam Fisher as he faces off against international terrorists cells around the
world. This is also the first Splinter Cell game to feature Xbox Live
support in a multiplayer mode that features a spy versus mercenary scenario.
The spies are played in good old-fashioned third-person mode like the single
player game and they have all the high tech equipment Sam Fisher carries
around. Meanwhile the mercenaries are played in first-person mode and are armed
with heavy firepower such as machine guns and motion sensor equipment. Whether
you’re a spy or a mercenary, you work in pairs and thus making this a pretty
interesting match up.
The world premiere not only revealed the multiplayer mode via screenshots and video, but also gave the audience a demonstration by way of a competition between Los Angeles and New York. Hosted by Los Angeles hip-hop radio station Power 106 and its New York sister station, the competition featured players from Texas, San Francisco and even Delaware. The competition was played using a warehouse map. What’s the objective? The spies must infiltrate the warehouse and disarm a series of strategically placed laptops that control a weapon of mass destruction. The mercenaries are out to hunt down the spies and kill them before they tamper with all the laptops.
Those
familiar with the first Splinter Cell game will find that controlling the
spies is exactly like controlling Sam Fisher. They could grab mercenaries from
behind and use them as human shields or even break their neck and they can
quickly hide in the shadows. Mercenaries have the advantage of heavy weaponry
and equipment such as motion sensor visors that can track any movement. How can
the spies compete with that, you might ask? Before each match, spies can equip
themselves with everything from chafe grenades (that tamper with the
mercenaries’ motion sensor visor and tracking gear) as well as use a powerful
taser. Spies also get the advantage of four lives over the mercenaries’ three
lives.
The Xbox Live mode features a Quick Match mode, Optimatch, Create Match mode, Rankings, Friends list and even a Download Content section (you can bet it’ll be used to download more multiplayer maps and new single player levels like the first game). While the number of multiplayer maps were not announced, from what I could see there are about a dozen to begin with including a multiplayer map that takes place in a laboratory. What you can expect, though, are massive maps with many ducts and places for spies to crawl through and plenty of places to spring traps.
As the
competition rolled on, Los Angeles won five out of four matches against New
York. At the end of the match all those in attendance got to play against the
New York gamers using Xbox Live. Among the gamers testing out Pandora Tomorrow
were Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan who played two of the heroic Hobbits in the
Lord of the Rings trilogy.
“I loved the first Splinter Cell game,” Boyd said with enthusiasm. “This one
has a lot more cooler stuff, though, and the Xbox Live game is amazing.”
Billy Boyd Dominic Monaghan
From what we can see, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow already looks like that Must-Have game of the year and Xbox gamers will be more than pleased with its multiplayer game that is one of the most addictive and innovative Live modes so far. You can look for Pandora Tomorrow at you local retailer March 27.
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