XBox uncovered

While the XBox still hasn’t cornered the market from the PlayStation 2, it has definitely matured since its release and a wide range of excellent titles are now available.

With the support of Microsoft Australia and the leading game publishers, The Gamesman will be reviewing new XBox titles as well as PC, PlayStation 2 and Game Boy Advance games throughout the coming year.

In the lead up to Christmas, Microsoft put together a fantastic package for its XBox game console. The Massive Pack includes the XBox console, a standard controller, a DVD remote kit and three games: the award winning HALO first-person shooter, Sega GT2002, a great console car-racing game and Jet Set Radio Future, a futuristic cell-shaded in-line skating game.

All up the Massive Pack should retail for $748 but for a limited time it is available for $459. These packs were one of the hot-selling items before Christmas but there are still a few available in stores like Harvey Norman and Electronics’ Boutique (usually a few dollars cheaper than the RRP).

In the US, Microsoft have just launched XBox Live, a system of linking XBox consoles via a broadband connection to play against other users in much the same way the Internet has been used for online PC gaming.

While a roll-out date for the Australian release is still to be confirmed, 250,000 starter kits were sold in the US during the week of its launch and Europe looks set to join online in March.

The beauty of the XBox over the PlayStation 2 (which is launching a similar networking system) is the XBox comes pre-installed with all the hardware needed to get up and running, hard drive, network card and broadband adapter. The only thing needed is an account and the cable in the starter kit.

The mission man in Splinter Cell, Sam Fischer gets a different perspective on his mission during one of the new releases for the XBox.

Splinter Cell http://www.splintercell.com
Ubi Soft http://www.ubisoft.com

While HALO was the XBox launch title that everyone drooled over, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell is the game to show off just what the console is capable of. It is hard not to compare it with the award winning PlayStation title Metal Gear Solid at first glance but they are quite different games once started.

Surprisingly, Splinter Cell plays very well using the console controller but it does take a bit of work to co-ordinate the camera as well as movement.

The recently released demo for the upcoming PC version (expected to be March) shows just how simple the game is to play using the standard XBox controller. Everything is at a player’s fingertips although remembering some actions does take some time.

The game puts the player in the assault boots of Sam Fischer, an operative in the newly formed Third Echelon of the NSA intelligence gathering departments. Splinter Cell is set this year in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and is part of the ongoing fight against terrorism. Sam Fischer has been sent to locate and report on the fate of two CIA agents who disappeared and if possible extract them. There’s only one problem – no-one in power must ever find out he was there.

As you could imagine Splinter Cell focuses on stealth, guile and cunning over the run and gun tactics of most first-person shooters. It makes for a dramatically different playing style and as such the game incorporates an over the shoulder third-person view to give players a much wider field of view.

Perhaps the best bet of Splinter Cell is the way a player can control Sam. It is much more than the run, crouch, crawl, jump, lean and strafe we are used to. While Sam can do all of this he can also hug walls, peek incrementally, open doors incrementally, climb poles and some walls and even grab someone to use as cover while holding a pistol to their head.

Sam’s athleticism gives a player many more options in completing the mission ... being able to hide above a roving guard by doing a Van Damme-style split to suspend yourself between two walls is definitely new to the gaming world.

Sam is also equipped with a range of gadgets to help on the mission. A fibre-optic camera comes in quite handy for seeing what is going on in the next room, while a tazer is good way of subduing those who don’t need to be killed.

Most important, however, is Sam’s PDA. For an older guy he is very computer savvy and Sam can use his PDA to hook into any system and copy information that may come in handy.

He has an unusual thermal/night vision system that proves very effective, while his pistol is a specialist infiltration unit with a silencer, large magazine capacity and excellent targeting.

Splinter Cell’s environments are also great with lots of shadows, movement and realistic noises to keep you on your toes.

Most of the environment is interactive and doing things like shooting fire extinguishes to create a gas cloud to cover a movement are quite possible. In fact there is definitely no one way to achieve anything in the game, giving it a lot of replay value to try different techniques.

It is, however, quite hard and most players will find themselves making full use of the XBox’s hard drive to continually save the game. It kept me occupied for much of the leave period and I would rate it as one of my truly enjoyable console gaming experiences.

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