Traditionally, Splinter Cell games require a lot of patience. As anyone who has played any of the three home console titles in the series will know, they mostly consist of waiting in the shadows and watching guards wander by, resisting that in-built gamer’s urge to just jump out and shoot something. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to be quite as patient as is necessary with such a game when it’s on a handheld platform – Splinter Cell is arguably unsuited to a console likely to be played for short amounts of time in loud, public places. Splinter Cell: Essentials, though, is nonetheless an admirable attempt at translating the series’ enduringly unique gameplay to the PSP, and even if it doesn’t work entirely as well as we would have liked, it still has considerable merits.

Essentials is set, oddly enough, after every other game in the series – even the yet-tobe- released fourth Splinter Cell title, in which the game’s ever-surly protagonist Sam Fisher somehow ends breaking out of a prison and joining a terrorist organisation. It basically fills the player in on what happens between the third and fourth games, and also serves as a handy reminder of events past – the game contains only two entirely new missions (not counting the Splinter Cell 4 preview missions), the rest consisting of slightly simplified versions of events from the first three games. It’s more of a compilation than an entirely new game, but fans of the series will relish the extra background information, story titbits and, of course, the preview of the fourth home-console title that Essentials has to offer.

The game begins with a short tutorial mission in which Sam, whilst visiting the grave of his daughter (who dies earlier on in the series), is arrested and taken away for questioning. Along with the player, he is forced to re-live key moments in his career, from his days fighting in the jungle as a Navy Seal to his recent activities in prison. What Essentials has over the other titles in the series is variety – in one mission Sam will be fully gadgeted up under the care of the American government, in the next he’ll be little more than a civilian, carrying no weapon and without the night and thermal vision that make sneaking around in the darkness that little bit more manageable.

Occasionally this variety feels a little inconsistent, but generally the opportunity to replay some of the best missions from the history of Splinter Cell is one to be relished. Seeing them all in context helps to flesh out the story of the series and make its events seem that much more believable. Indeed, in theory, Splinter Cell: Essentials is an excellent idea and a great precursor to the third game; cripplingly, though, the limitations of the PlayStation Portable when compared to a home console mean that the Splinter Cell’s core playability really suffers. For one thing, when playing anywhere but at home (preferably alone and in the dark, thereby ruining the point of having bought a PSP in the first place) it’s pretty much impossible to hear the approaching footsteps and snatches of conversation that are such essential clues in the game. It’s the controls, though, that really let the game down – you need to be able to do things quickly and effectively in Splinter Cell games, rather than have to faff around with buttons whilst crouching behind guards until they inevitably turn around and shoot you in the face.

Crucially, you can’t move the camera and move Sam at the same time due to the lack of a second analogue stick; instead, holding Circle whilst moving the analogue stick changes the view and using it normally moves the character. In a game where you have to keep a close eye on your surroundings and spend a lot of time hiding in corners and behind walls, this is infuriating. The alternative control method does offer to map the camera to the buttons, but this disables such essentials as the crouch and other action buttons. We’ve tried, but it’s desperately hard to enjoy Splinter Cell as much when you can’t see anything – the games are dark enough to make things difficult already, and having such limited control over the camera just makes it ten times worse.

Nonetheless, it’s impressive that the game remains enjoyable at all when its key values – namely, patience and observation – are so ill-suited to the PSP. Though frustrating, the game remains as tense and quietly exhilarating as it ever was, and treated as a valuable spin-off rather than another entirely new Splinter Cell installment, it works very well. The visuals have translated impressively, too, and the minor downsizing that the missions have undergone doesn’t affect their rewarding complexity. With such sizeable control issues, though, it’s impossible to recommend Splinter Cell: Essentials too highly – fans of the series should be prepared for a fight if they want to get the most out of the game.

Kelly MacDonald