14 DAY TRIAL // Following the great success of Sam Fisher and the Splinter Cell franchise, Ubisoft is now finalizing work on the story's next chapter, to be available on all current generation consoles as well as XBOX 360 and PC. Since Splinter Cell Double Agent draws closer to its release date in September, more and more information, footage and screenshots surface the net. Old and new Splinter Cell concepts come together to the fan's delight, for it's time to witness the war between Spies and Mercenaries firsthand in a multiplayer coverage.
Apparently the Mercenaries have had a serious makeover. EMF requires you to stand still, the gun looks and acts differently. In order to cope with spy speed, Mercs can now rappel and swiftly climb down high places and do some spying of their own with help from a drone. The remote controlled device is destructible, but will provide easy scouting across difficult terrain or through inaccessible areas like air vents. To cover for the lack of sound detection, Mercs now have motion tracking built in with their standard visors, which outlines enemy movements pretty much like the use of night vision. Spies are safe to some extent, since walking crouched is below the sensor threshold. To spice things up, shifty Spies can counter this measure by outright hacking the Merc's visor and disabling the proximity detector. The distance handicap is yet unknown. Since Mercs are heavily armed, it works to balance game combat by allowing spies to actually stand a chance in the encounter.
Making use of hacking abilities, spies can turn off any light source from its proximity, but it is said this won't confuse the AI too much. Spies no longer have the shocker gun, which greatly impacts game dynamics, since it was a key element in the gameplay of previous titles. Being nimbler than before, spies automatically climb most obstacles and will have no problem jumping across fences, or traversing a ledge while hanging. They can also perform special getaway moves, like sliding under closing doors or jumping through windows. With the sound detector gone, the spy finally has total freedom to run so long as he's not in the Merc's field of view. This will definitely quicken the pace of deathmatches. As the multiplayer cooperative mode has been disabled, Ubisoft made a variety of sub-modes within the Versus category, to accommodate players with more multiplayer features.