Walk, run, sprint

If you don’t mind, I’d like to get to that cave yonder sometime today.

I’d like to know which bright spark game up with introducing stamina restrictions for running. “I know,” he cried. “What people really want is to be unable to move at a decent speed without holding down [or, heavens, tapping] one button constantly. That way they will appreciate it.” And lo, much hand cramp was had by all.

This in turn necessitates building the stamina bar, either by training or by adding it as a special ability. Rather than make people enjoy the later parts of the game more, it makes people dislike the beginning of the game, where they know they will have to put up with pathetically sluggish movement. It makes travelling from points of interest relatively close to each other an absolute chore. In no time at all, we take easy movement for granted.

Death to continuation!

This is why you avoid killing off satellite characters indiscriminately

I usually don’t pay attention to the plotline of Splinter Cell games because they can be a bit convoluted. Double Agent on the other hand, suffers the problem of starting too simple. So simple, in fact, it has as much subtlety as an adult entertainment version of EastEnders with a one-off wrestling theme.

I’m not even going to worry about spoilers. You would have to have the attention span of a gnat to think this is a spoiler, since it happens within the first 30 seconds of the game: in Double Agent, your character’s grown-up daughter is killed in the opening cut-scene. Not kidnapped, not murdered; hit by a speeding car. Why? Because your character Sam needs an excuse to Go Bad. Because you’re a double agent, you see.