Double Agent PC demos

By Tom Bramwell Published 10 November, 2006

Single- and multiplayer.

Ubisoft has released a pair of playable demos for the PC version of Splinter Cell: Double Agent, which is released in Europe today.

The demos - an 851MB single-player offering and a 789MB multiplayer effort - ought to give you an idea of whether you're interested in Sam Fisher's latest capers.

Alternatively you could read our review of the Xbox 360 version for some pointers.

There's also an Xbox 360 multiplayer demo currently doing the rounds on Xbox Live Marketplace.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (27) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Talha #1 5 years ago

    EG, oh EG, when will thee give us separate reviews for PC versions games that are significantly different across platforms?

  • Darren #2 5 years ago

    I got the full game yesterday and although it matches the 360 version graphically (but with a lovely v-sync switch so you don't have to endure that version's awful tearing), I'm bitterly disappointed about the overlong loading times (I have a dual core, 2GB system) and the lack of support for controllers - Chaos Theory on the PC had support for my dual-analogue stick Logitech Rumble Pad Pro II pad so why not this game? Playing this game with a keyboard and mouse just isn't much fun at all so I really hope this is quickly fixed via a patch.

  • StratoDriver #3 5 years ago

    Reviews for different versions would be good.
    The reason I'm posting is to have a little rant about usage capping on broadband connections, The reason I'm writing this here is because of the size of this demo. Just under 1Gb and if your on some of the free broadband packages your going to hit your 2Gb limit very quickly.
    I love the way companies like BT are trying to see you their 'Home Hub' so you can stream TV and the like over then net and then put a 15Gb limit on downloads. Not many nights of TV watching on that limit!!
    I hate CAPS!!!
    OK Rant over, sorry its not that relavant but as i mentioned I HATE CAPS!!

  • sturridge #4 5 years ago

    Talha: I agree with you - your right on the ball. I suspect laziness.

    Darren: This is why we need a platform independent reviews, see Talhas post. If it helps the game is made by Ubisoft shanghai, yes not Montreal (which made the good splinter cells). Shanghai probably employ cheap labour chinese programmers which may be good at cooking chow mein and rice but damn, are they poor coders. Ubisoft - get it sorted.

    StratoDriver: Get a new service provider:

    Well thats all I have for now, Seemingly they have completly destroyed multiplayer for this game - no lobbies? WHats that noise? Oh yeah it the splinter cell community speeding off to play snakes and ladders . Bloody Chinese!

    ni hao ma

    Sturridge
    Edited by 1 at 10/11/06 @ 11:47

  • Talha #5 5 years ago

    @Darren: Thats not good news at all. I have an Athlon 64 3000+ with 2GB of RAM and a 7900Gt, and I was looking forward to playing this with everything maxed out. Also, the lack of controller support is very, very disappointing.

  • Darren #6 5 years ago

    You have nearly the same spec as me except I've got an Athlon64 X2 4200+ CPU. The game runs as well as the 360 version I think (@1280x1024, everything on plus 4X AA) but if you have HDR lighting on, anti-aliasing doesn't work. Oh and this game uses 10 GB of hard drive space! Eeek!!!

  • Talha #7 5 years ago

    @Darren: 10GB?????!!!!! I had just painfully cleared 15 GB for Flight Sim X (the hardware for which to run properly won't be here before next year, mind) - and you are telling me this takes 10GB? It's nuts! It means I will finally have to say goodbye to my Half Life 2 installation, or else, plug in a THIRD hard disk drive.

    As for antialiasing with HDR, Nvidia have very nicely shafted us on this one for years. If you want both, shell out 600 dollars for the new 8800 GTX, thank you very much!

    Plus my 19" LCD monitor doesn't go beyond 1440x900 so I won't be able to crank up the resolution sufficiently to not feel the need for AA.


    Nuts!
    Edited by 1 at 10/11/06 @ 12:13

  • UncleLou #8 5 years ago

    Getting a bit extreme lately, doesn't it. Medieval 2 comes on two DVDs.

  • space_ace #9 5 years ago

    which mission is in the demo??

  • Talha #10 5 years ago

    @UncleLou: Who were we kidding - we should have realized all along this was going to happen. It seems we had been spoiled by years of sub-5GB installs.

    Remember when you could play your favorite games on a floppy, and spend 40-50 hours doing it?

  • suj #11 5 years ago

    who wants to start a new website with me, doing platform independant reviews? :p

    what happened to the days when full games were only 600MB and demo's weren't even half of that :/
    Edited by 1 at 10/11/06 @ 12:29

  • UncleLou #12 5 years ago

    Remember when you could play your favorite games on a floppy, and spend 40-50 hours doing it?

    I even remember when my 40 or 50 favourite games all were on the same floppy disc! ;)

    Footprints of PC games on my hdd recently are part of why I think Sony might not be that wrong about blu ray after all...

  • Talha #13 5 years ago

    @UncleLou: I fully agree with you. Case in point: Flight Sim X, a MICROSOFT published game, came on two DVDs. Never in life would anyone be able to port it to X360, even if they wanted. HD DVD and Blu Ray drives are already appearing on PCs and it won't be long before their prices drop down. Four years down the line, MS would be stuck with a medium that would be crippled due to its lack of capacity compared to PS3 and mainstream PCs of that time.

    Of course by then they would have launched XBox 1080! ;-)

  • space_ace #14 5 years ago

    hmm, defcon and sam+max are ten times smaller than these demos...

  • Veldaban #15 5 years ago

    You can't really compare PC versions to console versions. Without tight memory/disk space budgets, it's easy to let your data bloat a bit. Also, on the PC disks you either need to put your textures on the disc in multiple format (high res/low res) or put the highest res on the disc. You could possibly get away with a lower res on a console.
    Plus, the memory restriction on consoles is usually a lot tighter on consoles. If you can't fit your data in memory in the first place there's no point in having ultra-super-high res textures Sure, this problem depends on the type of game (e.g., large open environment, on-rails, etc) but it still remains to be seen how useful the extra space on a BluRay is going to be.

  • Talha #16 5 years ago

    @Veldaban: As you have seen, I am no expert - but you made an excellent point about the necessity of PC versions containing ALL possible texture resolutions, adding to the bloat. In fact, if you sift through the FIFA 07 configuration files, you will come accross coders' comments about the various settings. You are right in saying that devs don't necessarily clean up the PC versions for bloat as they do console versions (atrocious English I know - it is not my native language after all!

  • JediMasterMalik #17 5 years ago

    @Space-Ace - Defcon is hardly the game you would use to judge whether games were getting bigger now is it?

  • space_ace #18 5 years ago

    no such intention, it was just a thought
    actually, scda looks staggeringly good on pc - if it's powerful enough

  • JediMasterMalik #19 5 years ago

    Good, mine is. :D

    I'm DL'ing now. :)

  • UncleLou #20 5 years ago

    Just tried the demo, but couldn't even be bothered to finish it. Loved the last one, but I am getting tired of the series now. A ship, again? the same graphics/animations/tools? Feels a bit like this is to Chaos Theory what Pandora Tomorrow was to the original.

  • dudefella #21 5 years ago

    Bought the PC version yesterday. I have an Athlon 3500+ with 1GB RAM and a GeForce 7600GT. It runs pretty good with pretty high settings (not perfect) but the loading times are indeed quite long. Also, some of the level design is pretty atrocious IMO. I got lost on that ship (fourth mission) no end.

  • JediMasterMalik #22 5 years ago

    I just tried the demo, it was unplayable, admittedly while using firefox. There was a horrible glitch which meant I could see more assets than I should have been able to, it was so bad that I could barely see where I was going about 5 minutes into the demo. I hope they release a hotfix like they did with the X3 demo.

  • JediMasterMalik #23 5 years ago

    The MP is really good, as long as you're a spy that is. The mercs are quite frankly a bit shit, or maybe I'm just crap with them. Anyway, at least the MP worked. :)

  • WoodenSpoon #24 5 years ago

    You NEED SM3?

    What about all the last gen ATI cards?

  • UncleLou #25 5 years ago

    You NEED SM3?

    What about all the last gen ATI cards?

    Don't think you do - the demo has a "last gen" and a "next gen" button (I am not making this up) in the graphics options.

  • WoodenSpoon #26 5 years ago

    Yeah I tried it but got the same error, maybe it's something else.

  • JediMasterMalik #27 5 years ago

    No, you're right, the game only uses SM3, SM2 or lower are not options. Sorry.