Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell® on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
Infiltrate terrorists' positions, acquire critical intelligence by any means necessary, execute with extreme prejudice, and exit without a trace! You are Sam Fisher, a highly trained secret operative of the NSA's secret arm: Third Echelon.
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell® is a stealth, action and third person game
developed and published by Ubisoft.
Released on April 01st 2008 is available only on Windows
in 2 languages: English and French.
It has received 3,298 reviews of which 2,894 were positive and 404 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.5 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 4.99€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell® into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
Minimum:
- Supported OS: Originally released for Windows 7, the game can be played on Windows 10 and Windows 11 OS
- Processor: Pentium® III or AMD Athlon™ 800 MHz
- System Memory: 256 MB of RAM or above
- Video Card: 32 MB 3D video card (64
- Sound Card: Direct X 8.1 compliant sound card (
- DirectX Version: DirectX® version 8.1 or higher
- Hard Disk: 1.5 GB available hard disk space
- Multiplayer: Broadband Internet connection
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
This is a positive recommendation only for those who have some historical interest in the franchise or have some nostalgic attachment to this thing. For everyone else, I would say that it is not worth wasting your time on this. Go straight to Chaos Theory and be happy (even if some of the problems I will report here are present there as well). This game will not give you an elegant, intuitive and engaging experience, but rather just a perspective on how the stealth genre was formed and how several elements present in this franchise were dissipated and integrated into practically all action games today. To begin with, the immediately recognizable aspect of some mechanics and animations may lure you into thinking that this game is not as old as it seems. After all, its visuals remain suitably iconic, with an incredible and dramatic use of very deep contrasts of shadows and lighting, in very well-detailed environments, selling an immersive realism to the places you visit, while enveloping everything in a very original atmosphere. The espionage thriller as a narrative is very charming and well-told. And Michael Ironside's voice as Sam Fisher is as striking as I remembered. The game perfectly captures the fantasy it wants to convey without you even needing to play it. But make no mistake, this game is old. And it has aged a lot. What you have to understand is that almost everything you expect from games today, even those that feature very superficial stealth systems, simply did not exist back then. Splinter Cell is a pioneering game, and like all other games of the genre at the time, it had its own language and way of executing the concepts that are so widespread and homogeneous today. Each game had its own rules and its own way of communicating to the player what was allowed or not, and what was required or not. Where you had to go and what the limits of your freedom were. This, unlike today, could vary drastically from franchise to franchise and was not always very intuitive. In the case of this game, I was forced to practically throw away everything I had learned over all these years, in favor of solutions that almost never make the slightest sense. Contrary to what one might imagine (mainly because of the other games in the franchise), Splinter Cell is a very linear game, consisting essentially of a set of well-tied and varied challenges, without much room for improvisation. You usually only have one path to follow and a single route optimized for stealth. And this direction is not always well communicated by the design. What happens in general is a clumsy process of trial and error and wandering aimlessly looking for the place you have to go, because the game didn't show a certain trigger or because the game doesn't clearly communicate to you which objects in the scenario you can interact with, and so on. Things like walking through fire or walking right in front of enemies, are very common solutions in this game. Things that are too specific and poorly communicated are very common in this game. At the beginning of the third mission, for example, I got stuck when I had to slide down a cable as if on a zipline. The character would slide, and when he was reaching the other side, he would fall and die, without any explanation. After several attempts, thinking that the game was bugged, I discovered that I had to press the duck button while sliding, so that the character would raise his legs and reach the platform at the end of the cable. There was no indication that the character would not be able to reach the other side if I didn't do this and why the character, after falling, didn't grab the platform's ledge, which was clearly within reach. And I had no idea that I could do this, because it was the first time the game was introducing the idea to me. Coupled with this, the inconsistency of how the rules work, makes the experience an exercise in frustration. You almost never know what is considered too loud or not and what is considered visible or not. You just want things to work logically and they don't, and when you figure out how they work, you just get annoyed because it doesn't make any sense. Years and years of playing virtually every relevant stealth game on the market, watching the genre evolve and refine itself and eventually die and dissipate into the ether of the unfocused clutter that is today's games, has conditioned me to read the language of stealth design and behave in certain ways that are completely incompatible with Splinter Cell, even though the aesthetics and feel are immediately recognizable. Things that should work don't. Things that shouldn't work do. I've been conditioned to see every piece of the scenery as an interactive objective and a navigation option, I've been conditioned to improvise and avoid certain habits. Splinter Cell wants me to take it slow, memorize enemy placement, figure out not-so-obvious solutions, and play by its own rules. Throw logic and familiarity out the window and learn the game on its own terms. It's an old game, released before any of the things you imagine were refined. Once you familiarize yourself with the game, it becomes much more enjoyable. Even though the dynamism that has become so characteristic of the franchise simply wasn't there yet. Time has obliterated almost all of the original memories i had of this game, so it was like learning it for the first time. In another context, much less favorable to this type of experience. Splinter Cell is a cool game that has aged rather poorly, but can be enjoyed in many ways once you get used to it. I just don't guarantee that the process until you get there will be worth it.
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So, this really was a blast from the past! I remember playing this game a lot on my Playstation 2 when it came out, but it was so long ago that I only remembered some bits here and there. With that said and after finishing the game once again in the most stealthy way that the missions would let me, I definitely recommend this game. It didn't age terribly, but it still aged and to me it was great playing it again because I knew what to expect. It's hard to recommend this to newcomers especially with the high gaming standards nowadays... I'll sure recommend it to people that like retro gaming, but if you're looking to play something new to you, have in mind that this is an old game. It's good, but it didn't come out yesterday. Just a heads up, it is possible to fix the missing shadows by adding "-shadowmode=projector" without the quotes to the Launch Options in the game's Properties. It is also possible to play at any resolution you want by editing the line "Resolution" inside the file "...\Steam\steamapps\common\Splinter Cell\SplinterCellUser.ini" present on the game's folder.
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A message to UBISOFT. Guys, this was the golden era. The two coolest things on this planet in no particular order are; The Matrix and Splinter Cell. What a fantastic game, its over 22 Year old and destroys anything you have made in the last 15 years... If you want to save your company... you know what to do ... OVER AND OUT
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Pros: + Classic stealth game + Good soundtrack + Steam cloud saves Cons: - Old game. Need tweaks and improvements. I recommend to use this [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1692255530]guide 9/10
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After fixing the technical problems that come with its age through mods, the original Splinter Cell is a linear, unforgiving stealth experience that holds up surprisingly well – the occasionally frustrating moment notwithstanding Despite publisher Ubisoft [url=https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/article/4adJLuhgYrPboHAPRfK7Oz/splinter-cell-remake-begins-development-at-ubisoft-toronto]announcing a remake of the first Splinter Cell game back in 2021, there hasn’t been much information about it since, apart from the hardly encouraging news that [url=https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/splinter-cell-remakes-director-has-left-ubisoft/]the director of the remake has left Ubisoft only a year later. As the remake unfortunately hasn't made any (re)appearance yet and if you want to experience the first Splinter Cell game in the franchise, this original version from 2003 remains the only way to do so on PC - at least for the foreseeable future. Unsurprisingly, with a PC game that’s two decades old by now, some modding is required if you want to run the full game with modern resolutions and proper controller support. To begin with, for some reason the default Steam installation contains an old version of the game that’s missing three bonus levels from the Xbox version – fix this by manually installing the official [url=https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_Splinter_Cell#Patches]1.3 patch for the game . For widescreen support, install [url=https://github.com/ThirteenAG/WidescreenFixesPack/releases/tag/sc]ThirteenAG’s widescreen fix by downloading the .zip file from GitHub, extracting its contents and then copying them into the game’s directory (= where the .exe is located). Afterwards, if you want to play through the game with a modern controller, I also recommend using [url=https://www.moddb.com/games/tom-clancys-splinter-cell/downloads/controller-support-for-splinter-cell]vini1264’s controller support mod , which is once again a downloadable .zip file that should be extracted before copying its contents into the game’s directory. That’s thankfully all it took for me to play the game on a modern TV with an Xbox One controller (make sure you don’t use a Steam community controller layout!), with the only caveat being that the prerendered cutscenes remain quite small and are played back with massive black borders on all sides. Back in 2003, the PC version of Splinter Cell (originally an Xbox-exclusive title) received an impressive [url=https://www.metacritic.com/game/tom-clancys-splinter-cell/critic-reviews/?platform=pc]MetaCritic score of 91 and was a commercial success as well. Still, considering it has been more than two decades since its original release, the question of this review won’t be how good it was back then but rather how well it holds up now. The graphics for example, which were praised by critics back as cutting-edge back in the day ([url=https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/tom-clancys-splinter-cell-review/1900-2911182/]GameSpot : “possibly the best lighting effects seen on the PC to date”), obviously won’t be as much of a wow-factor nowadays, though they’re still holding up pretty well. Actually, “still holding up pretty well” can be attributed to almost the entirety of the game. Despite being a mostly linear affair in terms of levels and their structure, featuring no side objectives and only one possible path to the main objectives, Splinter Cell doesn’t feel outdated at all. This is mostly thanks to the wide variety of moves and gadgets protagonist Sam Fisher got at his disposal, which allows player to choose how to handle a situation – do they want to sneak around enemies, knock them out or shoot them from afar? From lockpicks to (smoke & frag) grenades, a silenced pistol or non-lethal ammunition, Splinter Cell offers enough options (if you’ve got the ammunition, that is) to still feel like a modern stealth game despite the linear level paths. A few sections in the game require a specific course of action (mostly forced, awkward gunfights) but it rarely happens. Splinter Cell offers a unique approach to stealth gameplay, with a visibility meter at its core. Depending on the brightness/darkness of the spot Sam Fisher currently finds himself in, the visibility meter increases or decreases, which allows the player to check just how good a hiding spot really is. In fact, it can get quite ridiculous, with guards not being able to spot Sam Fisher in total darkness even if he’s just crouching a few centimetres in front of them. However, since enemies are also very sound-sensitive, sudden movements in the shadows can still draw them to your position – they’re quite capable foes. That said, as good as it feels to evade enemies by shooting out the lights and sneaking past them in the darkness for example, Splinter Cell unfortunately has a few problems that make you thankful for the quick-save button. For one, even with the visibility meter, figuring out if an enemy can spot or hear you from a distance can result in a lot of trial-and-error – especially in places that are dimly lit but not entirely dark, since even slight position changes by a few centimetres can make a huge difference here. It also doesn’t help that some spaces don’t look at dark/bright on screen as the visibility meter makes them out to be, so it’s recommended to keep your eyes on the visibility meter even if you feel like a hiding place is dark enough. Couple that with the enemy AI behaving rather oddly at times, especially when it comes to hearing you move, and you’ll find yourself quick-loading quite a few times. Despite having a tutorial section, Splinter Cell also doesn’t tell you about certain mechanics, like wall-mines that can only be defused when pressing the action button at the small timeframe when they’re blinking green instead of red. Another problem are levels that force a game over screen if you’ve raised the alarm too many times, which can also happen if a dead body has been found. This doesn’t mean that you’re safe if you’ve knocked out all enemies in an area however, since the game performs an automatic periodic check to see if you’ve properly hidden all bodies in dark spaces, which I found out the hard way (fortunately it didn’t result in a game over for me). Still, most of the game offers great stealth gameplay in a variety of locations, that still holds up today bar a few frustrating moments. Keeping the entire game together is a typical Tom Clancy -style story from 2002, with American special forces saving the day from a new world war, chasing intel and targets across the globe. It’s the type of story you’ll either love or hate, depending on how you feel about this type of genre. I didn’t find it to be particularly engaging myself, with the gameplay being the only reason I played until the end of the game, which took me about 10h. Considering the small price of the game (4,99€ even without sale), that’s a decent deal as long as you’re open to older, occasionally frustrating PC titles.
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Last Updates| Steam data | 08 April 2025 06:03 |
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| SteamSpy data | 11 April 2025 03:19 |
| Steam price | 13 April 2025 04:45 |
| Steam reviews | 11 April 2025 21:54 |
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