Does anyone have Flay's original comments cached? It steams me he personally attacked KingSmoth and let the world see it, only to slowly edit out all of his vicious comments one by one until he's off the hook...

What was wrong with the aiming? Seemed pretty intuitive to me.

Tuan Jim

Would have been nice to have inverted controls on the aiming. I'm not used to non-inverted controls. From what I hear this option is in the final game.

I do. I'll email them to you as soon as I can. That meanie Flay won't get away with this one.

Same here. It took a period of adjustment. Inverted will help out quite a bit.

That's probably because you were in the shadows. Look at the meter on the upper-right corner. It tells you how invisible you are (based on the light level). If you're totally in shadows, the guard will walk right past you. This is a stealth-based game, you're supposed to hide and sneak your way to the goals.


You can do this in the options menu on the demo. I made the switch in-game.

Let's stay on topic, please. If you think someone broke the rules, report the offending post to a mod, but don't post about it in the thread... it just drags threads off-topic.

That might've happened when I was in the hallway. I didn't notice whether or not I was in the shadows. However, the second incident happened when I was standing in the middle of the doorway. He was trying to run out the door, couldn't and turned the other way. Dumb AI... I hope it's just the demo.

Regardless, I'll be buying it as soon as it hits the shelves. I'll put my trust in the five page review I read in XBOX magazine rather than one angry MGS fan......

Are you sure that's the better source?

Thanks...shall check that out tonight. Guess I didn't see it on first pass through the options menu.

OXM is supposedly independant of MS / XBOX. In the past, OXM has had no problem trashing a game if it blows.

Being that this is some what of an exclusive title for the xbox that can't help but be compared to PS2s MGS, you never know...

...the magazine will only do well if the console it reports on does well. Perhaps there is some occasional slight bias for the purpose of self preservation.

As blatently fanboyish as they are in the context of the mag, OXM actually has decent reviews.

They have given pretty harsh scores to games I thought were better then they gave it credit for. They have also slammed the crap games that exist for the XBox.

In any case, they gave Splinter Cell a score as high as Halo which leads me to believe it's worth 50 bucks.

I opened up my OXM issue 13 and got the best news ever...Dan Egger is not writing for them anymore...yay! I will read the upcoming months to see if the bias tones down with Egger gone. Egger had a habit of latching his lips onto whatever console maker's ass that he was writing for. He did it for PS2 on Daily Radar and did it on OXM as well.

Maybe OXM will be better with Egger gone. Then again, most of the others are still there.

I'm going to buy this game the day it comes out. I've been having fun playing the demo even though it has some problems.

IMHO the Splinter Cell demo has more gameplay than the final release of MGS2. I think MGS2 was way more overhyped than SC and it didn't even come close to the hype. It ended up being more of an interactive movie than a video game.

There are problems with the SC DEMO that I hope will be fixed when the game is finally released. The final release will be better than the demo and with how much fun I'm having with the demo I can hardly wait.

Such disparity. *sigh*

"this game blowx0rs", "MGS is way better than this overhyped crap" - KingSmoth - Member of DVDTalk - Demo Disc Review

"The Best XBOX Game Ever Made?!", "9.6 out of 10" - OXM, - December 2002 - World Exclusive Review

Sounds like a game you might want to rent before you buy.

Okay, I have a lot to say about this.
1) When you release a demo this close to the actual release of a game this hyped, it better be a VERY GOOD demo. When there are this many problems, no matter how old the demo is, it becomes a concern as to how good the final product could be.
2) Yes, lots of games have clipping, that is to be expected. But the amount I saw in just this demo was more than I've noticed before in others.
Volumetric lighting it is. But this game is supposed to have an aspect of realism, and all of that shine is extremely out of place.
3) The demo contains furniture, lamps, and fire extinguishers. The most interaction available is jumping on top of a bench.
4) There is importance in my complaint of his jump. How am I supposed to take this seriously - I jump, and he floats up into the air like a butterfly, then glides down. When you do a wall jump, it's as if he is in Bullet Time, because he floats to the ground like a leaf. Bad physics: 200 pounds falling 6 feet is not equal to a leaf.
5) This was not a case of a badly hidden body. This was a case of retarded crap just like in Hitman 2. There is NO ONE around to see the body, and NO cameras, but the instant I walk away the body is spotted. This happened throughout the demo, no matter how hidden the body was, and how much darkness was around. This is a big problem for a game that revolves around stealth.
6) I know how to work the stealth door mode. It is still useless when you can see nothing through the opening, and when you slide the analog stick forward he just swings it open. No matter how I tried it, I could not get him to slowly open it. Once again, this is a stealth game, but not a stealth manuever.
7) Have to know when to use heat vision? Get this: beginning of the demo, I walk through the cell hallway. I can see the prisoner in the cell on the right via HV. I walk down the hallway and see nothing, then shots ring out, and there's a guy RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME shooting me. This is not a case of not knowing how to use HV, this is a case of the game not registering that the enemy was right there.
8) When I'm standing within arm distance of an enemy, they should drop with a headshot, whether the gun doesn't "pack much stopping power" or not. 6 shots to the head at that range is unacceptable. 12 direct shots into a man's chest who is standing still(and I'm standing still) is unacceptable. What kind of soldier takes a gun into combat that can't even knock a man down at that range with 12 bullets. Oh yeah - these were not one-time instances, they were common occurrences.
9) This is not a case of good sound - it's a case of poor use of sound. Since when does an empty coke can go BOOM? Since when does hitting someone in the skull with the butt of your pistol sound like hitting a pillow?
10) I can't use stealth when it doesn't work. Example: I do Open Door Stealth into the Computer Room. There are NO guards in sight(used the optic cable to see), and I make no sound, yet the instant I open the door, guards come running out to kill me. Yes, this happened repeatedly throughout the level.
11) Get this: my friend takes out a guard, drags his body to the door. Of course he can't open it, so he sits the body down in front of the door, opens the door, immediately picks up the body, but before he gets through the doorway, the door closes. He drops the body, repeat, and it closes again. He just gave up and quit playing.
12) Yes, it's good they use different ammo. But in something that's so "realistic", shouldn't I be able to take the gun from them? Oh wait, can't do that, they're cold dead hand is wrapped around it, and when I pick up their freshly dead body, they never drop it.
13) I would think a soldier would have the ability to defend himself if he didn't have a gun - hell, he should always keep a knife on his belt at least. Due to the "realism" of this game, I couldn't get into close enough quarters to even try hand to hand combat with a guard when needed, because the instant they found me, I was surrounded by bullets.
14) It's not the point of answering the phone. I figure it would be obvious to you that it shouldn't take three bullets to destroy a phone point blank. Also, I wasn't wasting ammo. By this time we were 10 tries through the demo, and fooled around and shot the damn thing.
You can spit and chew all the observations you want. I know how to play stealth-based games, and for a game that was supposed to become the benchmark for stealth, it falls miserably short from what I've played. As I said, a demo two weeks before final release has a large impact on what someone will think of the game. If a demo isn't meant to affect what someone thinks of a game, then E3 is pointless and should never be held again.


Maybe Sam Fisher does have a personality that rivals Solid Snake. However, a demo is supposed to draw the player in, to get to want to know the character - in this case, it did not succeed.

MGS2 was far from perfect. It wasn't as good as MGS, and had a weird storyline. It could use some techniques that Splinter Cell supposedly offers. But considering Splinter Cell was supposed to be the MGS Killer, and the demo was widely released to showcase this two weeks before the game hits the shelves, I am incredibly disappointed in what I've seen, and still consider MGS to be the better of the two.
I will admit that I shouldn't have flat out said it sucks, because it doesn't. But the demo falls far short of the hype, and leaves a bad impression on me for the final release.
I couldn't care less if you consider me an MGS fanboy because I have so many concerns for a game I really looked forward to. I wouldn't have driven 4 hours for this demo if I just wanted to slam it.
If you enjoy the game, good for you. But don't sit there pretending it's the reference stealth title when problems are glaring like the sun at you, and don't make statements that I don't know how to play a stealth-based game.

So you mean to tell me that your so convinced that the demo fully represents the full version, that you won't even rent it to confirm your opinions???

Well, it sounds like you've made your decision. That's fine. Although, I think your logic in coming up with your final conclusion is certainly questionable.

A little off-topic here but I'm interested in knowing:
Did I understand you correctly? It took you 4-hours to get to TRU? Not including the time it took to get back?
You're willing to do this for a demo?

Just out of curiosity, what demo were they using at E3? And if it was the same or similar build as the current demo disc, why weren't all the "flaws" that KingSmoth encountered brought up before?

No, I will rent it, since so many people seem to think there will be drastic changes between the demo and the final.

As for what demo was shown at E3 - I was told on another forum it's the same one as on the disc, which doesn't make things any better.

No, it didn't take a 4 hour trip to get there. TRU is 30 minutes from my house - I made 4 trips there, and wasn't able to get a demo until the last time. Yes, I was willing to use my gas and time to get this. SC is really the first XBox title to interest me, with a few upcoming as well(PDO, Ninja Gaiden). This demo was to make or break my thoughts of getting an XBox, and it broke them.

I'm wondering what the point of a demo is anyway, if it doesn't properly reflect the final product?

The OXM always stated on their discs that demos "may not refelct final code". I didn't notice any glaring problems in the demo (jumping looked fine, I killed guys with one head shot etc.)

I'm sure that this demo had to be submitted a few months ago to get it ready in time for this issue of OXM. Any problems should hopefully be worked out by the time it goes gold. See what the reviews say when it comes out. If the problems are there, we'll all hear about them.

The demo had its problems but I will buy it anyway and if it sucks return it to Gamestop and get any of the other half dozen games I want that will be out around the same time.


This demo might have had some flaws but the PDO demo was increadible and I can't wait for that game to come out.

It seems like a lot of games for the XBox (this one in particular) have all the right ingredients (cool special effects) but something went wrong in the recipe that meshed them all together, whether it was the story-line, camera-angles, etc. The game has some pretty cool eye-candy (heat vision), but I just didn't feel that compelled to play it. Not sure if this is from already playing an oversaturated genre, or whether the game itself just doesn't live up to the "best game on the xbox ever" ad. My 2 cents.