You are Sam Fisher. You are a…

I know, you’ve heard it a million times before, but how could this review be complete without it? On the GameBoy Advance we have a slightly different brand of Splinter Cell. Sure, a heavy emphasis is still placed on stealth, but this game mixes in a healthy dose of platforming.

The storyline roughly follows the events of the console version. Unfortunately it’s told in tidbits, making it completely indecipherable. All you really need to know is that there are bad guys and you’re the good guy out to foil their devious plan. Regardless of what the mission description says, the large majority of the time, you’re just trying to get to the end of the level. This involves a lot of sneaking, lock-picking, color-coded key finding, and a good bit of jumping around.

That’s not to say there isn’t any meat to the action. Mr. Fisher has a wide variety of moves including hanging from ledges, shimmying across pipes, hiding in shadowy crevasses, and punching bad guys in the head, rendering them unconscious. You’re armed with a pistol, and some smoke grenades, but you’ll never have enough ammunition to fight all enemies head-on. That’s where it becomes important to tread lightly and make your way past the many security cameras and armed guards without conflict.

In order to make the stealth element playable in a side-scrolling game you’re given a “Sticky Camera”. Basically, this means that you can press the R button and scout out the territory on all sides. Once you find out what’s ahead you can develop a strategy to get past the obstacles. Be careful. Enemies react to sight as well as sound and you don’t want to be fighting a grenade bearing guard with your fists. Besides, it’s much more rewarding to pop out of a dark corner and do away with the enemy before they even know you’re there.

Making mad dashes from one hiding spot to the next requires some quick movements and, thankfully, the control is spot-on. Whether it’s jumping from one pipe to the next or shooting a target while hanging, you’ll never feel like a failure wasn’t your fault. In a nice touch, the lock picking events present you with a graphical view of the inside of the lock, through which you must maneuver the pick.

The game features digitized graphics that can be somewhat grainy at times; particularly in backgrounds. On the other hand, it features some incredibly smooth animation for all of Sam’s movements. Levels look impressive in places, especially in outdoor cityscapes where you can see the excellent parallax scrolling. Indoor environments feature a good bit of graphical variety, although some of them look too much alike.

You’ll find some nicely designed platform challenges in this game. Hanging from moving meat hooks, while shooting the beef from others before jumping onto them, is pretty fun stuff. You’ll also have to escape from a sub filling up with water as well as catching a bad guy as he does his best Mario imitation. The focus on platform jumping is a welcome design choice and keeps the stealth elements from getting stale. The variety of levels is enough to keep the game fresh in most places. Still, there are times where the action begins to feel a little repetitive.

Did I say repetitive? Well that’s a perfect way to summarize the stealthy soundtrack. Music is generally a sparse metal rift looped in short intervals. At first, it seems to be a good backdrop for sneaking around, but it gets on your nerves quickly. Sound effects are respectfully realistic, although it would be nice if the bad guys said something more than “Hey!”

In the end, Splinter Cell is a fun experience and a good way to kill off the 5-6 hours it will take to complete. You can extend that a bit by linking with the GameCube version to unlock a few new, although not too impressive, levels. The game has some quirks but they’re easy to overlook due to the generally clever level design and a rewarding feeling of stealth. The GBA version does a great job of capturing the look and feel of its console big brother and for that it’s definitely worth a play through.

· · · PBMax