As you all know, HD remakes have become quite trendy these days and even Sam Fisher decided to get his own HD face lift in Splinter Cell Trilogy HD. Ubisoft sent us three codes to download the three original games on PSN and we captured a bunch of videos for you guys. The collection will be available at your retailer by the end of the month, but you can purchase the three titles independently on PSN for $9.99 each. My impressions on each port inside.
The first Splinter Cell game was released back in 2002, so one could not hope for a miracle when launching the HD edition adapted from the PC version. Despite some HD textures, it clearly is the episode which looks the most dated. Cutscenes especially show their age, with hands modeled in just one block. In spite of pixelated textures worth of the 32bits era, the shadow effects still look good and the lighting is sometimes worthy of a few modern AAA titles.
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow HD has received a better treatment. Textures are decent enough and the dynamic lighting effects start to show what they are capable of. On the downside, aliasing is still too visible for the HD port of a 2004 game.
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory arrived on Xbox and PC one year later, in 2005. As a result, its HD version looks a lot better than the other two. Don't expect the quality of today's standards, textures being a bit poor, but the great work they had done with the lighting is still impressive. Aliasing is also more discrete, though one can't help but wonder why it is still there today.
All comments (23)
No multiplayer
No sale.
I so badly wanted this as well (chaos theory MP)
Damn you ubisoft.. damn you to hell.
so it does what it says, its the original but in HD
so it does what it says, its the original but in HD
originals had MP (- the first obviously)
so it does what it says, its the original but in HD
Pandora Tomorrow is difficult to track down since it isn't available on any download service but the rest are easy to obtain through Steam etc. I personally LOVE Chaos Theory or loved it back in the day...I don't the series has aged well sadly.
Someone was saying a few weeks ago, they'd rather pay the money for lots of games in an HD collection on a single disc. And then you look as some of these collections, and they are rubbish. The only ones really worth owning are the God of War and the upcoming Team Ico collections. And even those, I would have happily paid more money and got them separately, if it mean that each game in those collections got a proper HD remake treatment.
Most of these collections out there, it's like Nintendo or someone is in charge of producing them - they do the bare minimum to bring them to new platforms, only for the milking rights, when they know a bunch of suckers will buy OOT or SM64 for the billionth time, because a new gimmick has been added to the game, instead of giving true classic games the proper refresh they deserve.
Halo: CEA gives you both a super cleaned up, HD-enhanced version of the original, plus a complete graphic overhaul. And simply pushing a single button, you can toggle between the two. Every HD remake should be given so much love and respect - especially when you are remaking some of gaming's most classic moments
These Splinter Cell ports deserved better - much better. Companies should be ashamed of just cashing in on these great titles.
Someone was saying a few weeks ago, they'd rather pay the money for lots of games in an HD collection on a single disc. And then you look as some of these collections, and they are rubbish. The only ones really worth owning are the God of War and the upcoming Team Ico collections. And even those, I would have happily paid more money and got them separately, if it mean that each game in those collections got a proper HD remake treatment.
Most of these collections out there, it's like Nintendo or someone is in charge of producing them - they do the bare minimum to bring them to new platforms, only for the milking rights, when they know a bunch of suckers will buy OOT or SM64 for the billionth time, because a new gimmick has been added to the game, instead of giving true classic games the proper refresh they deserve.
Halo: CEA gives you both a super cleaned up, HD-enhanced version of the original, plus a complete graphic overhaul. And simply pushing a single button, you can toggle between the two. Every HD remake should be given so much love and respect - especially when you are remaking some of gaming's most classic moments
These Splinter Cell ports deserved better - much better. Companies should be ashamed of just cashing in on these great titles.
But then i'm not big on playing through games multiple times anyway, so the more bang i can get for my buck, the better. I'd take a franchises entire back catalogue that has been up-res'd to 1080p, 60fps with trophies and 3D support over a single game that looks nicer but costs more. But then it's an old game, with old gameplay. A fresh coat of paint wont make you forget you're playing a 10 year old game. Because mechanically times have changed and games have moved on. So in that sutuation i'd rather have 3 full games, giving me 30 + hours of gameplay. It may not look as fancy, but that isnt what i'm looking for in these collections anyway. I just want a ton of content for less money that doesnt look like a blury, jaggy mess on my HDTV.
But ubisoft has failed at even the most basic of tasks with both HD collections they have released. They're just PC ports, no optimisation, modes removed and performance the same as it was originally. Which is a shame, because i was excited by the prospect of playing chaos thery, in 1080p, 60fps, with multi and co-op modes intact. But they cant even manage that.
Even Square Enix doesn't want to make a FF7 remake even though a lot of people are asking for it.
Unfortunately, in Beyond Good And Evil HD you couldn't set invert X/Y individually. So I had to skip that game also :(
It STILL lacks anti-aliasing and the PC version runs at 60fps on a tablet pc. PS3 still only manages 30fps and native 720p from the looks of things.
It STILL lacks anti-aliasing and the PC version runs at 60fps on a tablet pc. PS3 still only manages 30fps and native 720p from the looks of things.