`SPLINTER CELL' HAS PLAYERS SCHEME AS DOUBLE AGENTS.

Byline: Redmond Carolipio Staff Writer

YOU'RE pointing a gun at a kidnapped and bound news chopper pilot. Under his gag, you can hear the muffled cries for mercy. You can spare him. Or, you can blow his brains out. Either way, someone's not going to trust you.

This is a hell of a choice for a hero to make.

``Splinter Cell: Double Agent'' takes the legendary Sam Fisher and puts him in uncharted territory -- the world of anti-heroism.

In the earlier installments of the ``Splinter Cell'' series, the character of Sam Fisher was the quintessential Tom Clancy military warrior -- no frills, ridiculously good at his job but far from superhuman. That last quality was what separated him from Solid Snake, the stealth gaming icon from the ``MGS'' series.

However, what makes Snake so compelling is the drama that follows him. Fans know Snake as someone who has fought plenty of personal demons, while Sam Fisher concentrated solely on the enemy.

That's changed now. ``Double Agent'' turns Sam Fisher into gaming's Jack Bauer, a hero who shows both the light and dark sides of serving his country while balancing personal tragedies.

The tragedy, in this case, is the sudden death of Sam's daughter, which he learns about after the first mission in the game.

Who do you trust?

As the credits roll, we find out that a still-broken Sam agrees to take on a near-suicide mission, which asks him to infiltrate a terrorist organization, find out its plans and destroy it from within. Players start with a prison breakout of one of the group's members and work from there.

The theme of the game is balancing trust, and the game wastes no time in applying pressure from both sides. Players are asked to perform tasks for both the NSA and the terrorists within the same mission. The trust levels are displayed as meters on the screen -- any of those meters hits empty, and it's game over. Oh, and on many occasions, players are working with a time limit.

If there's such a thing as ``fun'' tension, the trust system in ``Double Agent'' produces it. Players will go from stealing scientific notes for the terrorists to eliminating the scientist for the NSA -- all while trying to maintain the game's long-standing tradition of staying relatively invisible.

There's also a healthy dose of missions where Sam doesn't have his trusty night-vision goggles, which ramps up the difficulty when players try to sneak around the terrorists' compound in the dark.

Sam is also asked to do some very unheroic things, such as the aforementioned ``test'' involving the kidnapped news pilot. That's just one of the many wrenching choices players have to make, and they all shape how the story unfolds.

Might as well jump

The control scheme for the game is complex, as Sam can practically do anything but fly -- climb, wall shimmy, break necks hanging upside down, rappel -- but it actually feels quite natural after a few training missions.

Frenetic is not the word to describe the action's pace in ``Double Agent.'' Like the chapters before it, the game flat out punishes people who like to run-and-gun their way through everything -- players will trigger alarms, kill their end-of-mission rating, or just die quickly. Instead, players are encouraged to do a lot of sneaking around, waiting for the right opportunity to strike (or just move). Therefore, it's not quite the game for everyone.

Visually, ``Double Agent'' is one of the more impressive games out there, especially the 360 version. Players can see beads of sweat glistening to individual hairs on Sam's freshly shaved scalp (which even has scars).

The only issues I had with the game were some rare frame-rate issues (rare for me, at least), as well as the adjustable camera taking funny angles at times, giving me close-ups of Sam's ear instead of the room. There's also a reality-bending moment in prison, where Sam still has his danger-light indicator on the back of his prison garb, which just looks silly.

This is probably my favorite of the ``Splinter Cell'' games so far because it adds depth to a character I never had any problems with. I could go on about how much this means to Sam as a character, but as Jack Bauer might say -- there's no time.

SPLINTER CELL: DOUBLE AGENT - Three and one half stars

Platform: Xbox 360, PS2, Xbox, PC.

Rating: M for Mature.

In a nutshell: Amps up the drama.

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