Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow is not an easy game. That is OK. We should not expect it to be easy. Why not? Because it is all about one gruff-talking American who puts an end to Global Terrorism using only his wits, a backpack full of high-tech gizmos, and (only occasionally, and always with regret) his gun.

Apparently several real live gruff-talking Americans recently tried to use their own wits and guns and backpacks full of high-tech gizmos to end Global Terrorism, but Global Terrorism totally won the first round. And that was a big giant team of thousands, not just one guy. So no, we should not expect the hero of Pandora Tomorrow to have an easy time of it.

The hero is named Sam Fisher, because gruff-talking heroes in games and movies based on concepts like this one must always have dull names.
One day someone called Bob Smith is going to save the world and we, the players and cinephiles of North America, will have no one to blame but ourselves and our spending habits.

The Global Terrorism found here begins in East Timor, where a man named Sadano has stormed the U.S. embassy and taken a few captains of industry hostage. Our job, as Sam, is to free the hostages and clear the way for some Special Forces soldiers to re-take the embassy. We do this by walking softly on tip-toe so none of the evil terrorists can hear us. And also by shooting out the lights so that when we walk past their guard stations they will not be able to see us.

Pandora Tomorrow is all about the stealth, really. We sneak and we creep and we crouch and we hide in the shadows and we use our night vision scope and our thermal vision scope and we basically try to stay the hell away from the bad guys. On a few of those rare occasions where the bad guys simply cannot be avoided, we have to club one of them on the head to knock him out. Then we sometimes have to hide him in a closet or the bushes so that none of the other bad guys will find him and wonder who's been sneaking around the hideout. Very occasionally we have to shoot people in the forehead.

Ah, but a few people are bound to lose their lives in the battle against Global Terrorism no matter what, right? This is probably why the game has a "Teen" rating: because we only kill people sometimes, and because it is always for the sake of the Homeland.

The clever and savvy among you will be protesting out loud at this point. "Hey! We so do not kill people when we play this game! We push buttons and we watch computer graphics! What, have you completely lost track of the difference between TV and real life?" You are quite right. Besides, adventuring = fun.

As the game moves along it settles into a bit of a pattern. We get a mission briefing in our earpiece, we sneak from point A to point B to point C, making as little noise and raising as little ruckus as possible in the process, and if we stumble and get ourselves shot or discovered we lose a turn and find ourselves back at the last save point.

Essentially it goes like this: We try, we die, we try something else, we die, we try something else, we make it past the challenge and move on to the next thing. The whole adventure is linear, meaning we must tackle each challenge in the order the game presents them. There is no freestyle wandering-about here. Which is as it should be, considering that we are highly trained special operatives and not undisciplined hippies.

Pandora Tomorrow can be played online using the Xbox Live service. It is a neat way to get to find yourself staring down the barrel of a gun held by an actual U.S. soldier, who is freshly back from overseas assignment and eager to relax. But mostly it is like other Xbox Live titles: two parts jolly, well-tuned fun, one part not caring whether the action on the screen involves mercenaries or big stompy robots, two parts toilety insults.