A question for those who've played the Splinter Cell deom (1 Viewer)

[Dave Falasco]

No reason to think a Georgian police officer would necessarily use the same caliber pistol ammo as an NSA agent

That's a great point, and I understand that this isn't "Serious Sam" and the object isn't to kill every mofo in the room by whatever means necessary. I ran into the same problem you did--after taking out the lights and burning a half-dozen rounds taking out the video camera, I had no ammo left towards the end of the game. The fact that I am killing people who carry guns, and yet I can't pick up their guns and use them myself just seems unrealistic. If a real NSA agent was out of ammo, wouldn't he grab another gun just to cover himself in case things got messy? Sure he may not be trained in that weapon, but anything is better than nothing, no?

Nevertheless, I understand the decision that was made, and it isn't dampening my appetite for the game one whit. It's just one little hitch in an excellent game--if I can pick up a Coke can and use it, I don't see why I have to bring a knife to a gunfight when there are ample opportunities to pick up extra gats.

 

[Brian E]

Hopefully ammo will be a little easier to find in the full game. I don't mean Quake/Unreal easy, but for that whole level I only found one spot with extra ammo. It really wasn't hard to get through with the ammo you start with, but a little extra would be nice.

 

[Edan W]

I can see your point Dave and I agree with it as well. I guess the reason I accept the developers decision to not allow you to pick up enemy ammo is because, when I think back to the first time I ran through the demo, my first instinct (I know not everyone is like this but..) was to go in guns-a-blazin', shooting everyone in my way and everything that looked interesting. I got punished for this attitude though because I was quickly out of ammo. So I restarted and had infinitely more fun sneaking around the station and sneaking up on people and conking them in the head rather than just gunning them down.

But again, I see your point and it probably would have been more realistic to let you pick up enemy guns...if I was placed in that situation and I was out of ammo, I'd be looking for anything I could get my hands on.

What may have been even more realistic is to eliminate extra ammo pick-ups...what you start with for your gun is all you get, but then allow you to pick up enemy weapons. Of course they'd be unsilenced and loud and the only way you'd want to use one would be if there was absolutely no other option.

 

[Romar Armas]

I haven't finished the demo but I've been reading up on it from other forums and I'm very impressed with what I've read.
-There's a way to finish the level without interacting with anyone. Full Stealth.
-If you're out of ammo, you can take care of the baddies creatively (sneak up and bash with gun, shoot the fire extinguisher as they go by, or pick up a bottle and throw it on their head)
I'm gonna have to try all these things out.

 

[Steve Iseman]

Has anyone tried knocking all the lights out and just messing with the guards?

 

[Steve Iseman]

Here's what Splinter Cell's producer said about the weapons issue:

In terms of fire arms, handgun and SC-20K multipurpose riffle are the 2 weapons Sam can use in the game. At a certain point in the development, we wanted to enable Sam to pick up its enemies'guns. We didn't do it for 2 reasons:

- Realism: real special ops operatives are not using any other equipment than their own equipment. You don't know what to expect, it's too dangerous.

- Gameplay : it is hard to balance a good stealth gameplay if you can get a new gun at anytime. We didn't want the game to become a shooter...

 

[Dave Falasco]

Steve, those reasons make sense. And Edan, I agree with you--just like Hitman 2, it is a lot more fun to play the game in stealth mode than to walk around like the Wrath of God.
I guess from a gameplay point of view it works, I just can't help but be frustrated when I'm out of bullets and I see a gun on the ground that I can't pick up. Like Edan said, sure the gun would be loud and maybe even the accuracy could be reduced to simulate the fact that Sam isn't familiar with the weapon, but as a last resort it sure beats chucking soda cans at the guards.
Enough of that, though. It's a great demo of what looks like a fantastic game, and the little quibbles that I brought up certainly don't detract from it much.

 

[Edan W]

To change the topic slightly, has anyone figured out how to use the fibre optic camera? I saw it in the inventory last night, but didn't really get a chance to play around with it.

 

[Steve Iseman]

You select it in the inventory and then when you're in fron of the door you pull the right trigger button. You pull the trigger button again to exit.

 

[Dave Falasco]

[edit]Steve beat me to it. That is one cool gadget!

 

[Brian J Dupuis]

- Gameplay : it is hard to balance a good stealth gameplay if you can get a new gun at anytime. We didn't want the game to become a shooter...

I can see the reason in that. I wonder how hard it would have been to implement something that enabled you to play in either way, with as many bullets as you wanted, but it was simply monumentally difficult to go the Rambo method.

I think it probably would have been very difficult to do that, while still maintaining the stealth-oriented mentality. If you up the number and "smartness" of the AI enemies so that blowing them away becomes difficult, you also, almost by definition, make it significantly harder to stealthily maneuver past them.

I think they made some very smart design decisions, personally.

The only thing that does provide me a moment's hesitation is the seeming high level of scripting as opposed to autonomous AI. As an example, regardless of the amount of time you spend waiting outside the very first door, the guard is always in the exact same place when you open the door. Similarly, every other enemy in the level essentially does the same thing each time. I'm hopeful that there are a bit more "unscheduled" events.

 

[Adam Nixon]

I can understand the balancing issues involved, but I'd be pretty frustrated if I was fighting for my life with a fire extinguisher while an arsenal lays on the floor that I'm not allowed to touch.
I'm afraid I've gone into "wait-and-see" mode for this one.:frowning:

 

[Derrik Draven]

My very small gripe is that I hate the animation when Sam goes either up or down the stairs. It's the exact same one as when he's walking and it looks like he's sort of floating up/down the stairs.
Like I said, VERY small gripe but, with all the attention they've paid to this game, you'd think that would be accurate as well since Sam's animations are a huge part of it.
Also, and I'm sort of guess here but, when I was watching the half hour Splinter Cell movie, on Gamespot, I noticed what seemed to be some of the demo level. It looked just like the outside parts but it showed some rooftops and back alleyways: Sam was no where near the prison.
Since everything I've read mentions the "huge" levels , I'll bet that in the main game, we have to make our way across town just to get to the prison and not starting in the back alley. That would be cool.

 

[Dave Falasco]

Just an update--I played the demo yet again last night with the aim of trying out some new moves (thanks, Brian!), and I found another clip for Sam's pistol in the interrogation room upstairs. There are two locked doors on the far wall of the office with all the computers--the one on the right has a two-way mirror and a dead prisoner, and the one on the left has a video camera pointed to the mirror and an extra clip of ammo on the desk. So it appears that ammo WILL be distributed throughout the level, albeit far more sparingly then just picking up an enemy's gun.

You can also shoot the one-way mirror and climb through to the other room, but for some reason I can't climb back through to the first. Weird...

The more I play this demo, the better it gets.

 

[David Glenn]

I've never played a demo so many times before. This has become my most anticipated release.

I'm going to schedule a couple of vacation days as soon as it's release date is more firm.

 

[Brian J Dupuis]

I'm going to schedule a couple of vacation days as soon as it's release date is more firm.

God, I'd love to do that as well. In fact, I just found out I don't have a kung fu session at lunch today, so I'm very tempted to head home and do some damage at lunch.
Last night I pulled off a no-shots-fired, no-guards-touched run through the demo that was very fun and rewarding to pull off. Okay, one shot... the camera, but I've got some ideas that I want to explore to get rid of that one pesky bullet used .

 

[Edan W]

Ran through the demo last night again 3 or 4 times and played around with the lockpick, camera, split jump (very inconsistent, but cool...sure was fun picking that first guard off from the ceiling) and the pipe shimmy. By the way, thanks for the door technique Brian, worked like a charm.

I can only imagine the wealth of things you'll be able to try in the full game with the rifle, knockout gas, sticky cams and such.

 

[JeffMuller]

Is it possible to invert the controls on this? I'm going nuts because every time I try and aim, the gun goes in the opposite direction!
Otherwise, it looks great, and I'm looking forward to playing (exploring) some more.

 

[Steve Iseman]

Is it possible to invert the controls on this? I'm going nuts because every time I try and aim, the gun goes in the opposite direction!

You'll be able to invert the controls in the full version of the game. I don't think you can do it in the demo.

Hey Brian, how do you get the guard in the last room to leave the computer? When I was in the autopsy room I went behind the curtains then walked up to the bodies. For some reason the camera never spotted me.

The demo level is very small and yet there is still a lot of replay value for this game. I can't believe I'm still playing it.

 

[Paul_Fisher]

Steve is right, you can't in the demo, but you can in the full game.