Splinter Cell: Double Agent delayed till October
It's only one month on top of the original September release date, but the news of Sam Fisher's latest adventure in dark duplicity being delayed until the spookiest month of the year is not entirely welcome. Splinter Cell: Double Agent promises to take the series into new territory, allowing players to infiltrate the ranks of the enemy and experience the other side of global terror and insidious espionage. This dramatic addition to gameplay is characterized by the following exciting features (taken from the fake press release):
Intricate pendulum level design: As a guard, you'll be expected to patrol a set area, walking back and forth between point A and point B (at higher difficulty levels, a more challenging point C may be added). This path will be made very clear to the player, with potential exits blocked off by debris, locked doors, raging fires or piles of dead guards.
Dynamic AI conversations: In an effort to create the illusion of intelligence in your fellow evil minions, non-player characters have been designed to frequently respond to your actions and engage in banter entirely unrelated to work. An extensive dialogue tree enables you to choose a response for any situation, be it relaxed ("Good morning."), congratulatory ("Good work.") or alarming ("Good lord, someone's shooting at us.")
Positional sound muffling: In order to be truly successful as a guard, distractions cannot be tolerated. Thanks to an advanced positional audio algorithm, the game aids the player in correctly categorizing the sounds of gunfire, explosions, bloodcurdling screams, shattering windows and crashing helicopters as the unremarkable, nocturnal machinations of rats.
Oblivious (TM) lighting engine: The next generation of HDR lighting better simulates the vision of an actual guard. All fluorescent lights appear to be flickering, darkness is entirely impenetrable and brightly lit christmas trees that strangle you from behind are entirely invisible. Note: This feature is only available in the Xbox 360, PC, PS2, Gamecube, PS3 and Xbox versions of Double Agent.
[Thanks Stephen!]
