Sam Fisher’s 2nd adventure in tracking the leader of the Darah Dan Doa and the smallpox pandemic is epic in our review of Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow.
Stalking Sadono from the Shadows…
From tracking the whereabouts of Kombayn Nikoladze and the Ark in the original splinter cell game to a whole new threat, Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow brings back Sam Fisher 2 years later in 2006 to investigate the recent terrorist attack at the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia and find out the reasons by the attack.
For Fisher, his main objective is tracking Suhadi Sadono (the leader of the Darah Dan Doa), as he and his group of terrorists plan to launch a biological pandemic against the U.S. with the help from a rogue CIA agent with the alias “Mortified_Penguin.”
Treading softly, Fisher can only lie and wait in the weeds since Sadono has an insurance policy to release the biological weapon if he is captured, killed, or fails to make daily phone calls for delaying release of whatever virus that could kill millions (this unknown virus is discussed below in the next section).
Neutralizing all ND-133 Devices
For grabbing Americans by the balls in a stronghold, a biological weapon known as the pox boxes stored in a ND-133 unit contain the virus that are detonated upon the whole U.S. that catch the country off guard for finding a vaccine to work effectively as well as forcing America to go on the defensive while avoid going on the offense of the Darah Dan Doa
Third Echelon’s other objective in this whole deal is tracing phone call relays to find the locations of other pox boxes guarded by ARGUS mercenaries (hired by the DDD).
So, it is a job for Shadownet spies sent in by Third Echelon (this is where the Spies vs Mercs Multiplayer started at the time) to destroy the devices in order to cancel Sadono’s insurance policy to bring the pandemic to an end.
Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow Game-play
Picking up from the original Splinter Cell, Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow’s game-play style is much the same with the exception of some new features that are added to Sam Fisher’s character including his notorious stealth SWAT Turn to help him move from one close-quarter cover to another.
For Sam’s SC Pistol, a laser sight has been added to help each player with precise aiming since Sam does really move too much to shoot a light out from 20 feet away…Sorry Sam!
Another new distraction method was added into Sam Fisher’s character for Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow where Sam can whistle while in close proximity of an enemy soldier to get his attention in order to sneak by or be able to stop the soldier long enough for him to grab the enemy and drag him to a dark corner.
The same styles applies for hiding the bodies where the bodies must be in a dark space in order to prevent setting off any alarms…just pay attention to the blinking indicator on the visibility meter within the HUD that will indicate that the dark spot is safe enough to hide the body from patrolling guards (even-though there are no guards that will patrol once you’re gone from an area, this is just a sensor in pretending if there was a guard looking for his buddy).
Lastly, Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow is the final Splinter Cell game to only allow support from keyboard-and-mice as the only binding hardware for allowing of Sam’s movements and interactions in-game (this can be overcome by using a controller emulator in order to get game-pad support just like in the original splinter cell).
Personal Views about Pandora Tomorrow
Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow was a decent addition to the Splinter Cell Series despite the game only having 8 campaign missions. However, the game was not fully finished for the PC platform.
There were lighting glitches, shadows were not appearing, and the game does not support 1080p out of the box that tells me that Ubisoft Shanghai rushed this game out without optimizing it for Windows XP back in the day that led to further annoyances down the road for playing it on the Windows 10 platform.
Fortunately, there are some community fixes online that helps revamp this Splinter Cell game including a lighting wrapper to fix the shadows and lighting glitches.