Splinter Cell Double Agent

[Sam25]

I have installed Splinter Cell Double Agent on my system. I had read sometime back that there are bugs in the game causing the game to crash. I have searched on the internet for patches and there are 2 patches. Which one should I get for Single Player? (I'm just playing the single player missions.) Can someone please tell me? Thanks!

 

[CP5670]

The latest one is 1.02, so get that. There are still tons of bugs in the game even after patching it though. You have to just live with them.

 

[Sam25]

Thanks man! I'll get the v1.02 patch, it fixes the 'Unlockables Bug' in
Single Player mode.
But, what other bugs are there in the game, since you mentioned " There are still tons of bugs in the game even after patching it"??

 

[mundane]

I reached the end of one mission, only to have whatever scripted trigger for the concluding behavior missing. After looking it up online, the only solution was to restart the mission from the beginning. Given how long it took me to finish the objectives, I stopped playing the game then and there.

 

[Sam25]

Shucks! That's bad! I guess SC: Chaos Theory was way better. I can still think of re-doing an entire mission but what angers me more are game crashes to desktop...that drives me mad! Does this happen a lot in this game?

 

[Nightmare225]

Yes. This game was sloppily programmed on both the 360 and the PC by the terrible Ubisoft Shanghai studio. Hopefully, the next Splinter Cell, made by the great Ubisoft Montreal, will do better.

 

[CP5670]

Shucks! That's bad! I guess SC: Chaos Theory was way better. I can still think of re-doing an entire mission but what angers me more are game crashes to desktop...that drives me mad! Does this happen a lot in this game?

There are certain places where it always happens, but otherwise it's pretty random. You need to save regularly as it may crash at any time. I had maybe 15 or 20 of these random crashes throughout the game.

I did manage to complete the game, but there were two points in mission 8 where the game always crashed as you entered a save checkpoint, and you were forced to trigger the checkpoint to proceed with the level. I had to edit the game's ini files to bind a key to a cheat (thank goodness for the Unreal engine's ghost command), so I could fly around the checkpoints and prevent it from saving. I seem to have lucked out though, as I've read about a lot of problems on mission 5 as well, and also many people reporting that saving a game anywhere in one map in mission 8 causes an immediate crash.

Apart from the crashes, there are also several places where some ingame scripting doesn't work and makes a mission impossible. At one point, a guy is supposed to turn around and you have to crack a safe behind his back, but he had gotten stuck on some level geometry and kept looking back due to that. I think I ended up showing myself there and just took the hit on the trust level. There are also numerous odd glitches with the menus and UI. For instance, you'll find that Sam refuses to perform certain actions, like safecracking or entering vents, unless he is running at top speed (this is at least easy to work around). To add to everything else the graphics engine is very poorly optimized; it's essentially the same as CT's engine but runs at maybe 1/4 the framerate.

I have seriously never seen a game that is so frustrating due to bugs. This could have been quite a good game but it was essentially released in an alpha state, and there won't be any further patches for it. It doesn't hold a candle to CT.

 

[Sam25]

@CP5670:

OMG! That's a hefty list of problems for this game. Surprising to know since all the other Splinter Cell games (I played them all on PC) are so stable. I know single player mode for
SC: Pandora Tomorrow was developed by Ubisoft Shanghai but it ran good, maybe a couple of crashes but that's okay. Maybe I'll replay SC:CT again or play Thief III (I never played Deadly Shadows)! But, tell me something man, did you patch the game and still get those problems??

Btw, I'm sure to have more problems later on in the game as my PC fits all the system requirements except the processor speed part (the game needs 3.0 GHz and my
PC has 2.4 GHz)! I ran it once though and it ran okay for the first part.

 

[CP5670]

Yes, this is all on 1.02. If you look at the Ubi forums, it's loaded with complaints about the PC version of this game (the 360 version is apparently also buggy, to a lesser degree).

The first three Splinter Cell games were top notch. CT is one of my favorite games of all time, and it's amazing how bad this game is in comparison. I hope Ubi doesn't make another mess out of Conviction. At least their Montreal studio has a better track record so far.

Interestingly, the Xbox 1 and PS2 version of DA was made by the Montreal team and is supposed to be a completely different and far superior game. They say it covers a lot of story detail that the PC/360 version skims over.

 

[Sam25]

Yes! Your correct friend, I started playing the first level in Iceland and already the game crashed to my desktop even after patching...WTH! The PS2 version is the OldGen one and tells the story much better. I wish there was seperate OldGen version of the game on PC as well. I'm also playing Tomb raider Legend which is running well.