Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow

Sam Fisher reprises his role as master of the shadows.

Tags: Categories: PS2 Reviews, Reviews

Posted by David Hinkle on Aug 19th, 2004

Title Players
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow (title page) 1
Developer Publisher Genre Online
Stealth Action Yes


The year is 2006 and the United States has just installed a military base in East Timor to train soldiers in this freshly democratic nation. A staunch advocate against this installation is militaristic guerilla leader Suhadi Sadono. Acting with support of some of the most corrupt officials in the Indonesian government, Suhadi’s small army attack and occupy the United States’ Embassy in Jakarta, taking dozens of hostages in the process. Sent in to retrieve vital documents on a computer in the embassy is none other than the NSA’s most elite black-op agent Sam Fisher.

Another title in the Tom Clancy franchise, you can count on Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow to have an engaging story full of murder, espionage, and globe-threatening disaster. Although a bit shorter than it’s predecessor (even with the extra jungle mission), and also easier, it’s definitely as engaging. This time you’ll be traveling to more exotic locales and actually see the outside instead of being cooped up in buildings the entire time, which brings us to one of Pandora Tomorrow’s improvements: environment.


In the previous title, players as Sam Fisher went to different places around the world, but most of the time given little chance to even see out of the building the objective was in. This has changed greatly. From a speeding train headed for Paris to the streets of Jerusalem , there is no shortage of breathtaking environments within Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow (TCSCPT). While all the missions are intact in this port, the environment’s graphics do take a severe blow. A lot of the lighting has been toned down, the water effects are just plain bad, and several more checkpoints have been put in. These checkpoints will slow you down immensely, as the game asks if you wish to save at each one and even upon not saving takes anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute to load the next area. While this seems like it isn’t too bad, the fact that some of these checkpoints are only a room apart can become pretty annoying.

As far as the character models are concerned – they look great. No visible clipping or anti-aliasing issues, all the definition that one would expect is here. There are a few spatial issues though, as you’ll find out yourself. Sometimes a guard who is supposed to be sitting on a chair or box will be sitting on air – only an inch or so in front of the object his or her posterior should be rested upon. This, while a small inconsistency, will be a source for a few chuckles as you play.



Another issue here is that most of the enemies you encounter seem to have suffered in the A.I. department on their trek over to the PS2. Most notably you will see this at close range, where they will have trouble dealing with you crouched at their side by just turning around in circles and taking a lot longer than they should to hit or shoot you.


Sam returns with all his old means of disposing of these armed adversaries. From the good old silenced pistol (a personal favorite) to his burly SC20K rifle, there are plenty of ways to clear the path ahead. Some missions will still be non-lethal allowing, but that doesn’t mean players can’t sneak up on someone and knock them out or shoot them with an airfoil round. Just don’t make a sound or those alarms will go off quicker than a Hindu at a burger joint.

The sound in this game is crisp. Although the lack of in-game Dolby Digital causes deductions, the sound still holds its own. From cans hitting the ground, to shots entering a terrorist’s leg, all sounds are recreated faithfully.



With some of the flaws in the single player mode, surprisingly the multiplayer is almost an exact port of the PC and Xbox experience. In multiplayer, there is the option to control either a Shadownet spy or ARGUS mercenary. This all ties in to the single player storyline also, which makes for a nice transition to the multiplayer experience.

As a Shadownet spy, it is your team’s job to infiltrate locations and neutralize ND133K boxes(biological weaponry), which are being defended by the ARGUS mercenaries. Closely resembling the single player controls and feel, the Shadownet spy will have most all the same abilities and gadgets as Sam. Using night vision and thermal vision, you can either tranquilize the mercenaries with electronic darts, flash bangs, chaffs, or the old fashioned way – sneak up and knock them out.


More interesting is controlling the ARGUS mercenary. Played in a first-person view, your job is to defend these boxes with your life. Given a heavy-duty machine gun and an advanced tactical helmet, you’ll be killing spies in no time. The gun is equipped with a torch light for the shadows and a laser sight for pin point precision. The helmet is equipped with 2 vision modes: Electro Magnetic Field and Motion Vision. With EMF vision, anything using an electronic device is highlighted in blue, which means if a spy is using any sort of vision mode he’ll show up. Motion mode tracks anything that moves, isolating it on your screen in its own special window for easy tracking.

There are 3 different gametypes for multiplayer: Neutralization, Extraction, and Sabotage. In Neutralization, Shadownet must hack into the ND133K boxes and neutralize the agent which takes time. In this mode Shadownet can stop at any time and come back to finish the job. In Extraction, Shadownet is charged with stealing the tubes of ND133K and bringing them to an extraction point. Finally, Shadownet must place a modem near the ND133K designed to eradicate the agent after a countdown in Sabotage mode.



This is a pretty solid port of Pandora Tomorrow. With graphical flaws and a solid single and multiplayer experience, this title shouldn’t be overlooked by any PS2 owner (unless they have a PC that can run this or an Xbox). Had it not incorporated the multiplayer experience, it’d be pretty close to unplayable.

What Works Score
+ Original single player campaign
+ Online gameplay
+ More outside time 		8.0
What Doesn't
- So many checkpoints
- Toned down graphics
Under the Shrink-wrap
If you only have a PS2, then pick this up. If you own a PC or Xbox get one of those (superior) versions.
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