Splintered

Finally managed to finish one of the toughest missions in Splinter Cell. Feel like ranting now…

Things I’ve Learnt from Playing Splinter Cell:

1. People like to have a lot of dark corners in their offices.
2. Enemies can’t see you even though your goggles glows and can probably be used as a lighthouse.
3. People know that you are heavily armed even if you don’t draw your guns.
4. Civilians are annoying pests that must be exterminated but you will fail your mission.
5. However knocking them out cold is perfectly fine.
6. The SC Pistol, which is based on the real life FN Five-seveN Tactical, is the shittiest pistol ever, if the game is to be trusted. Despite its ability in real life to penetrate ANY personal armour, even ones used by the US Army, it can’t kill a dead body in Splinter Cell without a headshot.
7. Weapons are stucked on your enemies hands and you cannot pick them up.
8. Everything else is stucked too, only data sticks, ammo, medpacks, CANS and BOTTLES can be picked up. Conveniently, there are cans and bottles located every 5cm in the game so that you can distract your enemy with them.
9. You CANNOT put out fires even though fire extinguishers are located on almost every wall. Refer to rule 8.
10. The security camera will spot you the minute you walk into the same ZIP code as them, however the security post doesn’t send people to check if you shoot out the light or the camera.
11. All elevators only serve two floors.
12. People hate having their lights turned off.

Things I Learnt from the CIA HQ mission:

1. CIA and NSA fight on opposing sides, contary to what common sense will tell you.
2. When NSA discovers there is a CIA leakage, instead of INFORMING the goddamn CIA internal affairs, they do the most logical thing ever: They infiltrate CIA. I would think that a dedicated team of professionals with access to all CIA files will have an easier time finding out the source of the leak than one lone wolf tapping into the server illegally.
3. CIA is the most horrible workplace on earth. Less than 20 percent of the corridors are lighted. Are they all afraid of lights? OR are they just begging for intruders?!
4. After tapping in to the CIA central server, the source of the leak is instantaneous found. Wow, does that mean that CIA central server ALREADY has the identify of the leak in their files?!?! WHICH WOULDN’T MAKE SENSE.
5. Turns out that the leakage wasn’t a mole in the agency, just a sloppy employee who failed to secure his computer properly. (THAT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE, after all CIA wouldn’t be clever enough to centralize all the internet connections and filter them through their own firewall now would they? Noooo… every employee must secure their own terminals! No wonder 9/11 took place!)
6. Instead of informing the CIA about the source of the leakage and the employee in question, Fisher had to KIDNAP him and bring him to NSA for questioning. WTF?
7. There is a NSA agent working in the CIA who left you a SC20K Rifle, real life coutnerpart FN F2000, in the janitor room. Although he could sneak a bulky rifle around without being seen, he couldn’t just do the job for you instead and tap into the central server himself…
8. CIA agents walk around with their pistols drawn even though they are not on patrol. In their OWN HQ no less.

In the end, you infiltrated CIA just to kidnap some slacker who left his computer open to attack. Meanwhile, you knocked out at least 20 security and office and maintanence personals, indirectly wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax payer money due to lost productivity and medical fees. Judging by the way the people are knocked cold, I say that they will all suffer permanent head damage. Also, since you are forced to knock out practically everyone you meet along the way unless you want trouble later on, you just left the CIA wide open. Hurray, Sam Fisher is a real patriot.