After shipping for the Xbox, Splinter Cell took home more Game of the Year honors than Dom DeLouise takes home Biggie-sized fries. Between the gorgeous graphics and the Tom Clancy-penned story, the game was one of the system’s fastest-moving million sellers. It should come as no surprise, then, that when the exclusivity clause ran out, Ubi Soft was going to port their gameplay behemoth to the PC, PS2 and GameCube. Ted has already reviewed the PS2 version, which took home an Editors Choice award, so now it’s time to evaluate the GameCube version to see how it survived the port. Read on, dear friends, to see whether the newest GameCube spy game is for you.

Given your inevitable familiarity with the gameplay, I won’t beat the story or stealth-oriented aspects over your head. Suffice it to say that the basic gameplay is nearly identical to previous versions: it’s slow, it’s deliberate, and it’s geared toward playing in the shadows as much as possible. That’s not to say Splinter Cell for the GameCube doesn’t have its bouts of action, it’s just that action only happens when absolutely necessary. You’re a spy, after all, not Rambo.

While those gameplay aspects are identical to the other versions, the GameCube port includes an interesting "enhancement" that makes life as a spy a little easier. Where the Xbox version, for example, would place you at a door and force you to think about what to do next (pick the lock, open the door, peek underneath it, etc.), the GameCube version features a dialogue box that pops up with two possible options. While it seems convenient at first glance, I found it somewhat demeaning after a while. Part of the appeal of Splinter Cell is going through the story believing that you’re starting to think like a spy and thoroughly evaluating each situation. With this new dialogue box, though, Ubi Soft is doing an awful lot of that thinking for you. Don’t even begin to say it’s because of the GameCube’s "target audience," either, because I’ve personally seen more complicated puzzles in Zelda: The Wind Waker, and no little dialogue box automatically pops up with the clues in that game.

Since the GameCube version is obviously on a Nintendo system, it should come as no surprise that Ubi Soft has included a gameplay tweak to maximize the GameCube-to-GBA connectivity. By plugging a GameBoy Advance into the GameCube, players can see a top-down map that shows Sam Fisher’s relative location to every objective, enemy, wall mine, camera and nudie bar in the level. Not that Sam would enter a nudie bar, mind you, but the point remains the same: if it’s in the level and you connect a GBA, you will have a God-like view of everything that the world offers to your favorite government agent.

Speaking of God-like, forget about the bad things you’ve ever heard (or said) about the GameCube controller, because it handles Splinter Cell’s grown-up scheme with ease. Easily the best improvement in the control category is the use of a single button to draw and fire your weapons. On the Xbox version, Ubi Soft seemed pressed to use every button, meaning that in many instances you’d hit one button to equip a gadget and another button to use it. On the Cube, that all has changed for the better. Regardless of whether you’ve played Splinter Cell before, you will have no problem picking up and playing this game. In fact, you’ll probably find that the tutorial is excruciatingly long. And no, it’s not optional.

Since Nintendo’s console lacks a hard drive, Splinter Cell on the GameCube suffers from frequent checkpoint interruptions. On the other versions of the game, these checkpoints come and go pretty rapidly. On the GameCube, though, they have a knack for delaying your progress and drawing you slowly out of the otherwise-immersive story. On the other hand, it does make the game a bit longer, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, given the overall quality of the game.

Honestly, the first thing I noticed on the GameCube version of Splinter Cell was the high-quality graphics. Having been wowed by the Xbox version, I would be remiss if I didn’t admit being concerned that the GameCube port would take a bit of a graphics hit. As it turns out, the lighting is indeed "fudged" on occasion, and the textures are sometimes bland, but Splinter Cell is still easily the most realistic-looking game to date on the GameCube. Progressive scan support only adds to the top-notch graphics, particularly since the Xbox version didn’t support it, and somehow the cutscenes actually look better on the GameCube than they did on the Xbox version.

But you knew there had to be a downside, didn’t you? Night vision and thermal vision are, to put it kindly, ugly. At one point while reviewing the game, we looked at one another after activating our night vision goggles and thought we had somehow inserted a preview copy of XIII, Ubi Soft’s upcoming cel-shaded first-person shooter. Why? Because the filters are atrocious. For starters, they are unusually blurred compared to the crisp non-filtered in-game graphics, and this blurring effect wasn’t this bad on the other versions. Secondly, the blotches of color tend to accentuate the low poly counts and textures present in many parts of the environment, particularly in heavily shadowed areas the developers didn’t think you’d bother poking around in with your goggles. The end result is a filtered vision that looks chunky but colorful as only a cel-shaded game can.

Filters aside, this game is gorgeous. Even with fudged lighting, the game is a sight to behold, regardless of the versions you’ve already played. For those gamers who’ve not yet played Splinter Cell, prepare to pull your jaw off the floor, because the GameCube version is most definitely a pleasant surprise.

The soundtrack doesn’t skip a beat compared to the Xbox and PS2 versions, and the game’s environmental sounds are just as varied, numerous and impressive as in Splinter Cell’s other iterations. Having support for Dolby Pro Logic 2 doesn’t hurt matters, either, because in a game centered on stealth, you can make good use of the directional audio to target enemies and the rotating security cameras on the walls. Pro Logic 2 isn’t quite as crisp or effective as the Dolby 5.1 in the Xbox version, but believe me, it’s far better than playing on mono or standard TV stereo.

As in the other versions of Splinter Cell, the replayability of the game isn’t as much of a draw as is the sheer scope of the entire campaign and the immersion of the story. On the whole, the game ranks pretty highly on longevity, but not necessarily in its replay value. You’ll play the game for dozens of hours, but it’ll be because the game simply takes that long to finish, not because you want to go back to replay the first five levels.

Splinter Cell is the definitive stealth action title on the GameCube. We’ve recently heard that the GameCube will be getting an exclusive Metal Gear Solid, but Solid Snake had better study up pretty hard if he’s going to bump Sam Fisher from the top. We entered this review having seen Ubi Softs port of Ghost Recon and being concerned that the GameCube version of Splinter Cell would suffer the same horrific fate. Although Sam Fisher did lose a little something in the translation, we’re happy to report that he’s going to live to spy another day. It was a long wait for GameCube owners to finally get their hands on Splinter Cell, and Ubi Soft certainly didn’t disappoint.