My eyes are sore and my brain tells me I need to sleep, its been almost 3 sleepless nights and am still sitting in front of my faithful computer (which has not shown signs of overheating) catching up on all the news across the virtual world, ahhhh… The sweet taste of pixels still lingers my mouth and bump mapping rules the day, as I started to type I realize evolution has taken over finally the power and ingenuity of current generation consoles will finally let a developer derive maximum potential out of their grandeur visions, here are couple of moments that brought a grins and scowls to my face.
The Biggest announcement that made me go all “waka waka wee” was the arrival of StarCraft 2, after its official unveiling at Seoul, the game has been in development since 2003 right after the release of “The Frozen Throne” although no release date has been announced as of now but given Blizzard’s top notch company profile it would be highly unlikely to expect some shoddy game from their studios.
StarCraft holds a special place in every gamer’s heart, although personally I Love RA2 but StarCraft’s ubiquitous nature of addictiveness somehow cannot be forgotten, the gameplay trailer that was showcased along with its announcement ends with a nuclear strike wiping out all the enemies off the map, the first thing that popped into my tiny cranium was using the Nuke while playing as the “Russian forces” in Red Alert 2, I think I need to add this “The game is already playable in multiplayer with all three factions”.
Sunday Monday happy days…Tuesday Wednesday, Happy days…Thursday, Friday Happy days…Happy days are here again.
The Master of stealth Solid Snake has been facing Stiff Resistance these days, with Kojima breaking the 360 into two by referring to it as a DVD player and Metal Gear Solid 4 requiring a home theater to experience the goodness of war. Well Snake it seems ain’t coming an inch close to those M$, (but what he said was also quite true, the PS3 does come close to a home theater sans the Bravia and Bose surround sound system), although the rumors about an alliance between Suda (of Killer 7 fame) and Kojima and the revival of a 16 bit mystery/adventure game called “Snatcher” (Sega CD) does have a multiplatform prospect, that is if it isn’t exclusive for the Wii.
Well Microsoft, went shopping and bought its own stealth super spy in the form of Sam fisher of Splinter Cell fame, his next sneak op “ConViction” is scheduled to appear exclusively on the 360, it is currently being handled by the Montreal studio who brought out the original Splinter cell and its stellar sequel Chaos Theory, (Double Agent and Pandora Tomorrow were developed by their Shanghai studio, they were more of expansion packs than full fledged games), the game is about to take a complete turn around with Sam being put in an sandbox area and finding ways to escape the enemy, ironic but it defines MGS 4’s tagline “No where to hide”.
I just came impressed by the hand to hand combat and the use of the environment as a weapon from the recent trailer; call it strange but the Information that was divulged about the game, made me feel the ideas were akin to I-O Interactive’s “Hitman” Series.
ConViction would have been able to stand out of the crowd if it did not resemble the upcoming and highly anticipated “Assassin’s Creed” being developed by the same studio and Fisher’s uncanny resemblance of Big Boss from Snake eater who in turn looks like Kurt Russell from his Escape from New York and L.A adventures, this also reminds me of a game that was scheduled to be built around the adventures of “Snake Plissken” by Namco, the game seems to be MIA, If Namco ever decides to revive the game I hope its not like Dead to rights , Kill.Switch Or Nina: Codebreaker
I got hold of the stats for both the games and Metal Gear seems to beat Splinter Cell by miles in terms of sales figures. Here’s the break up Metal Gear Solid (6.6 million), Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty(7 million ), Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (3.7 million) whereas Splinter Cell series could only manage to Churn out 5 million copies (all three of its games combined, I don’t know the sales figures for the current one [Double agent] and it can’t really be another 5 million), the game did have an upper hand in the multiplayer front which was far better than the online mode introduced in MGS3:Subsistence.
The gameplay mechanics of Splinter Cell has always had an authentic spy feel to it, the story revolves around global crisis situations (which are hardly comprehendible), the slick gadgets coupled with the use of Stealth maneuvers requires players to trod along a level with a lot of patience, if it was not for the shoddy A.I. in all the four games, the series would have been really hard to beat.
The Metal Gear Solid series is like an over the top Hollywood blockbuster action/spy movie that delivers on all fronts, but merely calling it a Hollywood movie would be an insult for it is one of the most impressive games I‘ve ever seen till date, the story does have minor loopholes, but the gameplay fits in tune with the surroundings (guns + explosions+ polished gadgets + environment = One man army), the story illustrates a wide range of emotions, and the Characters are superbly crafted to fit into the story(SNAKE!!!!!), however the game is more forgiving in the stealth department than Splinter cell and the cut scenes that tell a major chunk of the story feel somewhat stretched at places, detracting from the on hands experience. I wonder if Kojima will have Minigames this time around within cutscenes, to keep the player drenched in the saga of war, honor and love.
This whole raging debate started out with the original Splinter cell when certain gaming websites labeled it as a “Metal Gear Clone”. This little snippet has been taken directly from the review of the original Splinter Cell game.
“Splinter Cell is a third-person stealth-based game, much like the Metal Gear Solid series. What’s important to note about Splinter Cell is that it’s not a game trying to be like Metal Gear Solid 2, it’s a game that has evolved past it.”
I think its time to get the facts straight, Splinter cell has more common elements in the Thief series, sneaking and active measures of stealth are essential in completing the missions, whereas MGS allows players to use confrontation as an effective solution to progress ahead in the story ,which is not centered around a rigid structure of missions, so both games fall in different gaming genres all together, the only common line that runs parallel through both the games is the fact that the protagonists are Stealth agents (the actions of such agents will be similar in a lot of terms, so it is advised not to start comparing the various moves/weapons presented in both the games), barring this I cannot seem to find too much in common in both the games, the games deal entirely with different subjects all together.
The only reason I think its essential for Montreal’s game to be compared with Kojima’s master piece is the fact it gives them an incentive to create a stealth game that gives all games a run for their money in a big way.
MGS4 Vs Splinter Cell has no winner, for they are great games in their respective fields.
–Neelesh Mukherjee