The game first appeared on XBOX with a great success during the
first few weeks. UbiSoft then decided it was time to port the
game onto our PC's. Wise decision if you ask me. Some thought
it would be impossible because of the controls / graphics or what
not. Not the case. The PC version has been released on 18th of
February this year. Finally the PC enthusiasts are able to enjoy
this rich and full of excitement game. Here are some its features:
Covert stealth-action featuring a compelling original
storyline and characters inspired by the world of Tom Clancy
and endorsed by the famous author.
Revolutionary lighting, shadowing, animation, physics,
and sound effects create an astonishingly realistic tension-filled
experience.
Comprehensive stealth techniques including sniping, split
jumping, zip lining, rappelling, and using human shields bring
game play possibilities to a new level.
Experimental intelligence gadgets (night/thermal vision
goggles, prototype weapons and surveillance gear, etc.) give
Fisher the edge against his enemies.
Splinter Cell was built on the new Unreal engine which allows
for stunning special effects such as dynamic lights and compound
shadows. The game settings we've used for our benchmarks were
set to 'medium' because of high system requirements. Although
it does not appear that the game is CPU limited you will still
need at least 1.5 GHz processor to enjoy somewhat smooth game
play At the time of the review I did not have the retail game
in my possession, that's why Demo 2 was used. As far as I know,
the differences between Demo 1 and 2 are different game levels.
Let me start off by saying that applying FSAA doesn't
seem to produce great effects in terms of image quality. Yes,
some of the jaggies disappear but I expected a whole lot more.
As I recall correctly, this has been an issue on both NVIDIA and
ATI cards. For more info on this, visit our forums here.
The performance on our Ti4200 wasn't bad at all. Few quirks here
and there, but no major slowdowns even at 1024x768. The 1280x1024
resolution was only slapped on for comparison. With full confidence
I'm stating that you won't be happy while playing at that resolution.
Even with low details it's simply a waste of your time. Though
it's not a very dynamic game it would be nice to get all around
35 FPS with 2X AA and 2X AF at 1024x768. Unfortunately we only
got 30 FPS even without any IQ enhancements. Slapping 2X and 4X
Anisotropic filtering produced just about the same scores (27
FPS).
I'm still not very confident as to what mode to
recommend. 1280x1024 is out of the question. If you want better
image quality, 800x600 resolution / medium details with 2X AA
and 2X AF should do the trick. As to 1024x768, run it plain without
any AA or AF. Those are our best bets. If you find those modes
to be performance killers, try playing with in-game settings and
disabling / lowering some of them.
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