In order to celebrate its 30th anniversary, Ubisoft is offering PC gamers seven digital games (from June to December) free of charge. Last month, the French company offered Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and today the team has made the first part of the legendary Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell franchise available for download.
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell was the big new triple-A game that Microsoft secured for its Xbox console (and PC) back in 2002. Powered by Unreal Engine 2, this game was meant to rival Metal Gear Solid 2 that was exclusive – at that time – on PS2.
Those interested can go ahead and download Splinter Cell from here.
As its description reads:
“Released in November 2002 exclusively on Xbox and PC (followed by other platforms), Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell was an important step in Ubisoft history, the first blockbuster to be developed by Ubisoft Montreal featuring one of the most beloved characters ever created by the studio.
Splinter Cell’s core idea revolved around a technological innovation: dynamic lighting. For the first time in a game, lighting cold be modified in real time, enabling developers to rejuvenate the stealth genre and allow players to hide and search in the shadows. Players could also create safe areas by destroying lights, and had to adapt to moving ones.
The game was critically acclaimed and received the 2002 E3 official award for best Action Adventure game. With his light goggles and numerous stealthy moves, Sam Fisher immediately became one of the most popular video game characters ever, and the franchise has had continued success, with five sequels, seven novels, and a forthcoming motion picture.”
Have fun everyone!
![Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (2002), Walkthrough, Playthrough, Gameplay, part 2 [FULLHD 1080p]](https://www.dsogaming.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-youtube-lyte/lyteCache.php?origThumbUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FpB8e4SLQGmc%2F0.jpg)
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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You know what? Since the change to Ubiclub their client has been kinda… not bad? It’s behaving, it’s downloading steady, it’s faster than Steam in fact, the only problem is access to the store here, it fails a lot for me (which doesn’t matter anyway, since I’m here for the free stuff :p).
But the fact that I didn’t need the client to play PoP and I hope that SC do the same makes me want to say (oh gosh), props to Ubisoft. These games remind me that time when you used to be cool (not for the PC ports though, those still where ar$e).
At least Uplay knows how to behave when I’m using my Steamlink to play on my big screen. Origin is doing its best to ruin the whole experience… I would guess on purpose 🙂
What to you mean?
Origin breaks the Steamlink overlay and some games can’t be played ( mostly new ones ). Gamepads don’t work as well. Uplay opens then let me play its games, even if they’re not “native” Steam_bought games…
Bleh, that sucks. But even if you disable Origin overlay? Or add them as non-Steam Games?
It does. I can add them but launching them can be very problematic or impossible. And it did not use to be that way… so.. 🙂
I see. Damn you EA! *shakes fist*
Yeah, I read that you don´t need to launch Uplay to play it.
Yep, that genuinely surprised me.
See the state of gaming now haha.
“You don’t need to launch the client to play? OMG :O!
Uplay is not bad (just like Origin aint bad), but the problem with it is.. i dont wanna have 50 of those programs on my PC.
Even if i do, i dont want to update all of them 24/7 every time i wanna start up a game (or buy one)
I don’t even like Steam. I miss the old days of gaming. One folder on your PC with all of your games on it.
Plug and play.
I don’t mind having multiple accounts, the thing with the other clients is that, there’s simply no benefits. Besides exclusivity, there’s very very little for me as a consumer. GOG has DRM free games (even then, why the same games are treated as different products is beyond me).
Played it recently. Its not aged badly in graphics or in-terms of mechanics.
But the game gets increasingly linear as it goes on. Pretty poor level design and very forceful linear pathways towards the end of the game. I guess Chaos Theory is where it actually gave freedom to the player. But worth playing it, if only because of Sam Fisher.
Yup the worst part is linear corridors with pedestrians and you have to shoot the lights to make the area darker while avoiding patrols. Not to mention that the game likes to turn into a shooter later on with that section in the farm with the turret. Still better than 2, 2 was basicly 100% stealth dont get seen dont kill anyone follow the linear path, very short, very linear. The interesting thing about the first game is that the console version is simpler with smaller maps less guards and different gameplay. peasant mode!!!
PS2 and gamecube versions were different, but Xbox classic version looks the same as PC version, and in fact today you cant make PC version look as good as xbox version, because on modern hardware that game runs without shadow buffers technology, so all shadows are either missing, or they are replaced with very low quality projectors shadows. In order to see splinter cell 1 with missing shadows, you have to build retrogaming PC with geforce 3 or 4, or play xbox classic version (because even ps3 version dosnt use shadow buffers, so it’s worse than xbox classic version)
I wish they gave Chaos Theory for free instead of this one, since I CAN’T PLAY MY CHAOS THEORY SINCE WINDOWS VISTA THANKS TO TAGES DRM GRRRRRR
Gah, does the Steam version have tages, or is that just physical retail copies?
Install game. Use the crack. Done.
Chaos Theory is the best one friendo. Followed by Blacklist. 1 and 2 are just nostalgia trips.
Such a good game.
“Splinter Cell’s core idea revolved around a technological innovation: dynamic lighting. For the first time in a game, lighting cold be modified in real time, enabling developers to rejuvenate the stealth genre and allow players to hide and search in the shadows. Players could also create safe areas by destroying lights, and had to adapt to moving ones.”
Kinda like Thief: The Dark Project did 4 years prior? I know that game used pre-defined light/shadow maps rather than actual dynamic lighting, but it was mostly the same from a game mechanic stand point. Huge respect for the early Splinter Cell games, but they did NOT create this style of stealth gameplay.
What they said was true though, it was the 1st game where you could modify the lighting in game.
Your buddy had good taste in games friendo.
Of course they are offering this game for free, because first two splinter cell dosnt work correctly on modern hardware, so who would want to pay for product like that anyway. The thing is, first two splinter cells were made with xbox classic shadow buffers technology in mind, and no GPU’s above Geforce 4 will display shadows correctly in this game. On modern hardware that game runs only in compatibility mode, where all shadows are either missing, or they are replaced with very low quality projectors shadows.
Below there’s comparison with shadows buffers (geforce 3,4) vs without, splinter cell without shadows looks just weird to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB9BTbtNyDw
What’s interesting, some people are trying to fix splinter cell 2 for ubisoft, they made shadow buffers wrapper, and spilner cell 2 works almost correctly now (links to this wrapper is in this video description)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=invu3VmoNA0
From here you can grab widescreen fix, HD textures from PS3 version:
https://thirteenag.github.io/wfp#sec6
Everything works great.
Also with .ini files you can buff the gfx even more
o friends this game is about my country GEORGIA 😀