The stealth-espionage genre was made mainstream with 1998’s Metal Gear Solid, but Kojima’s series faced stiff competition from Ubisoft and the “Tom Clancy’s” brand almost immediately. Splinter Cell dialed up the realism and ripped-from-the-headlines stories in place of the outright goofiness of Metal Gear, added a revolutionary lighting system for more stealth opportunities, and gave us one of the most iconic characters of all time: Sam Fisher. Played by Michael Ironside, Fisher’s gravelly voice and snarky personality made him an instant icon.

Not all Splinter Cell games have stood the test of time. A few simply feel dated by today’s standards, but the very best Splinter Cell games remain absolute stealth classics. These are the Splinter Cell games ranked from worst to best.

Splinter Cell Essentials

Splinter Cell Essentials

Easily the weakest Splinter Cell game (not counting ports) Splinter Cell Essentials is a very weird game and anything but essential. It was billed as a sort of companion game to Double Agent, but released a full six months early after the latter game was delayed. Essentially (sorry) an alternate take on the events of Double Agent, Splinter Cell Essentials features a mix of new missions and flashback missions that are basically lifted from previous games.

That’s not a bad thing, as Ubisoft picked some of the better missions for these sequences, but the controls are stiff and the stealth is incredibly unforgiving. Additionally, enemies you knock out can pull the trigger as they fall, often killing you in the process. Stealth Action Unrefined.

Splinter Cell: Double Agent

Splinter Cell: Double Agent

On paper, Splinter Cell: Double Agent sounds like it should be the coolest game in the whole series. Following the apparent death of his daughter, Sam Fisher goes undercover in a homegrown terrorist organization called John Brown’s Army–named after the 19th century American abolitionist–gaining intelligence on the group’s planned attacks and constantly balancing his missions for Third Echelon with the tasks expected of him by the terrorists. Balancing their trust is key, and multiple endings are possible as a result.

The problem is that the missions vary pretty wildly in quality, especially the ones that take place at the JBA headquarters. The acting from some of the villains is also very cheesy, which can ruin the immersion as you make some of the hardest decisions in the whole series. Well, at least it has Spies vs. Mercs–and the version released for Xbox, PS2, and GameCube is actually an entirely different game, if you’re curious to try them both.

Splinter Cell

Splinter Cell

The first game in the series and one of the first real contenders for Metal Gear Solid’s stealth throne, Splinter Cell deserves praise, at the bare minimum, for putting the wheels in motion. Sam Fisher and Irving Lambert’s partnership–one that we’d see get very rocky as the years went on–is one of the reasons the series’ early games were so successful, as was the calm and slightly terrifying performance Michael Ironside gave. Splinter Cell was also visually mindblowing in 2002, with its advanced tech being necessary for the shadow mechanic to work effectively.

One of the only reasons why Splinter Cell isn’t higher on this list is because the series just got so good over the next several years, often through improvements or additions to this formula. Luckily, if you want to experience this story again, a full remake is in the works at Ubisoft Toronto.

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow

The sequel to the original Splinter Cell was handled by a separate development team, primarily at Ubisoft Shanghai. For the most part, this change isn’t that evident, as the game builds on the strong foundation of its predecessor while sending Sam into a variety of locations, including lush jungles. The one change that is evident, however, is to the voice acting.

While Ironside still plays Sam, Lambert is voiced by Dennis Haysbert–yes, the Allstate Insurance guy–and it’s the only time Haysbert is voiced by the actor. It’s a change most games could get away with, but as you’ll discover, players really care about the voice acting in Splinter Cell. Luckily, the new Spies vs. Mercs mode was a great addition, with asymmetric multiplayer long before that was popular.

Splinter Cell Conviction

Splinter Cell Conviction

A controversial entry that released nearly four years after its predecessor, Splinter Cell Conviction underwent numerous delays and was basically restarted partway through development. What Ubisoft Montreal’s team ultimately delivered was completely different from the series’ past games, focusing on Sam Fisher’ deadly efficiency and ingenuity over pure stealth. In fact, the game really wants you to kill people, even offering a new ability called Mark & Execute for rapid headshots.

Despite these changes, and how unusual it is to see Sam Fisher without his goggles for much of the game, Conviction works because it does what it set out to do very well. Stealth-action is difficult to pull off without devolving into all-out chaos (theory), but Conviction does it well while also building on Sam’s conflict with both Third Echelon and his late best friend, Lambert.

Splinter Cell Blacklist

Splinter Cell Blacklist

Perhaps even more controversial than Conviction, Splinter Cell Blacklist was the first game in the series to not include Michael Ironside’s voice acting. As it turns out, Ironside was battling cancer at the time and had a less than 50% chance of survival, which likely played a role in him not returning for Blacklist. In his place was the much-younger Eric Johnson, who did an admirable job but whose voice lacked the gravelly tone we expected.

So, why is Blacklist still so high on this list? Because it’s incredibly well-designed. Focused on three different playstyles–“Ghost,” “Panther,” and “Assault”–Splinter Cell Blacklist allows anyone to enjoy the game without feeling like it’s ignoring how someone else would want to play. Longtime fans can go for a no-kill Ghost run while avoiding all enemies, while those who joined for Conviction will be able to play it similarly via the Panther style. It also features multiple cooperative missions and Spies vs. Mercs, all tied together in an in-universe map menu.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

Third time’s the charm? In the case of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, it absolutely was. A slightly bloodier and more violent take on the first two games’ formula without devolving into an action game, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory gave players more control over their version of Sam by giving him a combat knife–killing or sparing most characters is completely the player’s choice, and the gear selected for each mission reflects that. Go in with a high-powered sniper attachment on your SC20K rifle or focus on non-lethal gas grenades and “sticky shocker” rounds. Both options are viable, and most instant-failure sections are gone in favor of an escalating alarm system that encourages stealthy play without mandating it.

As with Pandora Tomorrow, Chaos Theory includes the asymmetrical Spies vs. Mercs mode. On top of that competitive offering, it also includes a separate cooperative campaign, showing just how different it is when two Third Echelon agents must work together. You never know how much you can resent another person until they repeatedly open fire while you’re trying to sneak around enemies.

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Diablo III continues its seasonal updates as we move closer and closer to the launch of Diablo IV, and the latest of these, Season 26, kicks off today at 5 PM PT / 8 PM ET. It sounds like it’s going to be pretty spooky, so you best play with light on if you’re worried about getting scared. Maybe.

The theme for Season 26 is Echoing Nightmare, which is also the name of a new activity that has you fight through a “densely packed, increasingly challenging event” that shows what happens if you fail in your mission as a Nephalem. Cosmetic rewards are returning items originally featured in Season 14, including portrait frames and a Justice pennant.

Diablo III Season 26

The update comes as Blizzard also continues making tweaks and additions to Diablo II: Resurrected, its remake of the classic dungeon-crawler. Patch 2.4 updates each class, acting as the first gameplay update for Diablo II in over a decade.

Full patch notes for Diablo III are below. Alongside the changes across all platforms, the Xbox Series X version now also runs at native 4K, while the Series S version remains at 1080p.

Diablo III Season 26 patch notes

Season Theme Details:

Petrified Screams and the Echoing Nightmare can only be accessed with seasonal characters.Only one player is required to transmute a Petrified Scream to open an Echoing Nightmare in a multiplayer game.Similar to a boss encounter, all players in a multiplayer game must accept a prompt to enter.While within an Echoing Nightmare, the difficulty scales as players progress in the encounter. Players can progress faster by defeating monsters quickly.Players receive the following rewards upon completing an Echoing Nightmare: EXP, Legendary Items, Blood Shards, Gems, and a new Legendary Gem, Whisper of Atonement.The Whisper of Atonement is a Legendary Gem used exclusively for Augmenting Ancient Legendary items. It drops pre-ranked based upon the player’s performance in the Echoing Nightmare.Rare monsters now spawn within an Echoing Nightmare.Meteors now fall from the sky.Hellish Machinations now appear, which spawn streams of Exploding Lunatics.Rift Guardians now spawn.Increased the frequency of which monsters spawn.Updated the Shadow Clone explosion to better reflect the area of effect.The exit timer has been increased to 60 seconds.Increased the possible rank a Whisper of Atonement can drop to 125 based on the Tier completed.Monsters in Echoing Nightmares can no longer be Frozen, Stunned, Rooted or Knocked Back.Fixed a bug that caused Conduit Shrines to deal less damage than intended.

New Updates (Post-PTR)

Monsters from the Echoing Nightmares no longer drop gold, items or health globes.Adjusted the damage done by Exploding Lunatics and Meteors to be more deadly.Adjust Meteor and Fallen Lunatic Molten damage to be Physical.Adjusted the difficulty of Tiers 100+.Replaced the Shield Pylon with a Speed Pylon.Adjusted the EXP rewarded by Echoing Nightmares to be aligned with Greater Rift turn-in rewards.Reduced the Echoing Nightmare closing timer to 30 seconds.Prevented Echoing Nightmares from being opened in games lower than level 70.Adjusted the drop rate of Petrified Screams from Greater Rift Guardians.

Greater Rift Updates

We wanted to improve the Greater Rift experience through quality of life updates, balance changes and addressing community feedback. We reviewed all of the maps and monsters that appear in Greater Rifts and reworked the probabilities overall to make sure players spend more time with the content they enjoy. Less spaghetti and more chickens!

Orek’s Dream: Greater Rifts have a small chance to roll as Orek’s Dream. These dreamlike rifts have a curated list of maps and monster compositions.

3 maps have been added and 2 maps have been removed from the Greater Rift pool. Added: Fields of Misery, Desolate Sands and Briarthorn CemeteryRemoved: Sewers of Caldeum, and Hidden AqueductsThe probability of Greater Rift maps has been adjusted.The probability of monster groups has been adjusted.The following monsters have been adjusted to grant more progression and EXP within Greater Rifts. Blazing GuardiansSmoldering GuardiansFrost GuardianNoxious GuardianShock GuardianBlood Clan SpearmanDark Moon Clan ImpalerMoon Clan ImpalerBlood Clan ImpalerIce Clan ImpalerHell WitchVile TemptressPlayers can speak to Orek to close an active Greater Rift. This option is only available when in a single player game.Further increased the progression granted by some monsters in Greater Rifts.Additionally, increased the progression granted by Fallen Shaman, Fallen Conjurer, Fallen Prophet and Fallen Firemage.Updated visual effects upon entering an Orek’s Dream.Updated the Orek’s Dream vignette to be more pronounced.

Items

Barbarian

Legacy of Raekor (4-piece Bonus): Furious Charge gains the effect of every rune and deals 1000% increased damage. For every 1% Life you are missing, the damage of your Ancient Spear is increased by 2%.Legacy of Raekor (6-piece Bonus): Hitting enemies with Furious Charge or Weapon Throw increases the damage of your next Ancient Spear by 5500% and causes it to release multiple spears from its target. This effect stacks and each spear throw consumes a maximum of 5 stacks.Arreat’s Law: Weapon Throw and Ancient Spear deal 150-200% increased damage. Weapon Throw generates up to 25 50 additional Fury based on the distance of the enemy hit. The generated Fury can go above the maximum cap by 200 Fury.Ancient Spear refunds up to 25 50 Fury based on the distance of the enemy hit and resets your Fury cap to its base maximum.The Three Hundredth Spear: Increase the damage of Weapon Throw and Ancient Spear by 150-200%. The attack speed of Weapon Throw is increased by 200%.Skular’s Salvation: Increase the damage of Ancient Spear by 150-200%. If your Ancient Spear – Boulder Toss hits 5 or fewer enemies, the damage is increased by 100%.

Developer’s Note: We’ve added additional Weapon Throw buffs to give players more build options when playing the reworked Legacy of Raekor set. We’ve also updated Arreat’s Law to allow players to reach new levels of Fury.

Developer’s Note: We reworked Raekor’s Legacy to give the set its own identity. It felt natural to the team to infuse the charging fantasy of Raekor’s Legacy with the Barbarian’s ranged skills.

Crusader

Thorns of the Invoker: The attack speed of Punish and Slash are increased by 100% and deal 67,500% of your Thorns damage.Norvald’s Fervor: Gain 200% increased damage while using Steed Charge and for 5 seconds after it ends.

Developer’s Note: Norvald’s Fervor is overperforming across multiple sets. We want to bring its power down, but we are Increasing the utility of Thorns of the Invoker to compensate.

Monk

All Mystic Allies spawned by Inna’s Mantra 6-piece bonus now have their duration refreshed with each attack.Mystic Ally – Fire Ally: Mini allies now have Passability.Mystic Ally – Earth Ally: Earth Ally boulders speed has been increased. Boulders always leash to the player regardless of how many monsters are on screen.Prevented Earth Ally boulders from being slowed by missile dampening.

Developer’s Note: We’ve made improvements to Mystic Ally that should make the skill feel more fluid and less clunky at times.

Bindings of the Lesser Gods: Enemies hit by your Cyclone Strike take 150%-200% more damage from your Mystic Ally for 5 seconds.

Developer’s Note: We’re happy with the gameplay of Inna’s Mantra Monks, but the Fire build is overperforming, so we removed the Fire Ally bonus from the Bindings of the Lesser Gods.

Bug Fixes | 2.7.3

Prevented players from changing difficulty while an Echoing Nightmare is active.Fixed a bug where Boon of the Hoarder allowed gold to drop in Echoing Nightmares.Fixed a bug where Orek’s Dream vignette sometimes goes away on Shrouded Moors and Festering Woods when entering anything other than level 1.Fixed a bug that caused Orek’s Dream opening VFX to display inconsistently.Read MoreGameSpot – Game News

Hideo Kojima says that Kojima Productions will stay independent, following rumors this week that it may have been bought by Sony.

PlayStation Studios recently updated its first-party studios banner to include Sam Bridges, the protagonist of Death Stranding, a PlayStation console exclusive. The game utilizes the Decima Engine, which was created by Sony’s first-party studio Guerrilla Games. Death Stranding and its Director’s Cut version were released on both PlayStation consoles and PC.

Kojima posted the banner himself onto his Twitter account without providing any further context, fueling rumors that Sony may have acquired Kojima Productions and that perhaps an official announcement would be coming soon.

However, Kojima retweeted his post and apologized for the confusion he caused. “I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, but KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS has been and will continue to be an independent studio,” Kojima clarified.

Kojima Productions is also reportedly working on a game with Microsoft. Amid these acquisition rumors, Kojima’s Xbox project is reportedly still progressing as planned.

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Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has a new book arriving next month that chronicles his life and gaming industry work, but the most important chapter detailing how he became a meme icon will only be available as an audiobook exclusive.

As part of an exclusive deal with Audible, Disrupting the Game‘s audiobook version will include over an hour of bonus content from Fils-Aime, sourced from an interview conducted by Game Awards executive producer and host Geoff Keighley.

“The vast majority of what we’re going to be talking about, isn’t in the book,” Fils-Aime said in a tweet promoting his autobiography. “When I wrote the book, I really wanted to focus on stories-that lets say–had a business point. A lot of these stories here, are moments in time, certainly things that I found to be quite special during my time at Nintendo.”

“Get into the memes as they say on the internet,” Keighley added.

As the public face of Nintendo of America for several years, Fils-Aime was the subject of plenty of internet humor, the vast majority of which was good-natured.

From Mega64 turning the Nintendo president into Reggie Fils-AMech to a Nintendo E3 show that transformed him, Shigeru Miyamoto, and the late Satoru Iwata into adorable puppets, the Reggielution that began in 2004 with his iconic E3 introduction quickly gained him a devoted following.

Lately, Fils-Aime has been busy with other ventures since his departure from Nintendo in 2019. After a surprise exit from the GameStop board of directors, Fils-Aime also criticized Facebook’s plans for the metaverse. Currently, he is the chairman of the UTA Acquisition Corp. and he also sits on the board of Brunswick Corp., a company known for making very nice boats.

If you’re interested in his book, which charts his origins from the Bronx to the boardrooms of Nintendo, you can grab the physical edition from Amazon.

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Hot Drop is GameSpot’s weekly Apex Legends column, in which Jordan Ramée takes a closer look at Respawn’s battle royale to provide additional insight into the game’s evolution, as well as dive deeper into its episodic storytelling and characters.

It’s been an eventful couple of weeks for Apex Legends. As we near the end of Season 12’s Quest, The Perfect Son, Lifeline and Octane stumbled upon a startling realization: Octane’s dad, Eduardo “Duardo” Silva, isn’t actually his dad. The real Eduardo Silva has been dead for a while, meaning the big bad of Apex Legends has been an imposter. So the big question is, of course, who the hell is Duardo?

We don’t know all that much about Eduardo or Duardo, but we have a rough timeline of the two men’s lives. Eduardo is the childhood friend of Darian Che–Lifeline’s dad–and the two played in Pecks Labs as kids. A genius, Eduardo would grow up to become the CEO of a galaxy-wide pharmaceuticals company called Silva Pharmaceuticals.

Eduardo would go on to create Stim, the powerful adrenaline drug used by Titan Pilots and, eventually, his son, Octavio “Octane” Silva. Eduardo wasn’t a great dad or husband, marrying four times and neglecting Octavio for the entirety of his life. I assume that somewhere here in Apex Legends’ timeline is the point where Eduardo dies and Duardo takes his place. Because it’s after this that Octane begins to notice some slight differences in his father’s behavior, including a willingness to orchestrate a terrorist attack during Season 7’s Quest, Family Portrait.

We subsequently learned that the attack was actually planned in an effort to undermine people’s belief in The Syndicate, the ruling group of The Outlands. Duardo continued this campaign in subsequent seasons, orchestrating the release of the deadly Medusa Vines virus in Season 9’s Quest, The Legacy Antigen, and the fall of Olympus.

He shifted the blame in both cases, making it seem like The Syndicate was responsible for it all. Now the general public blames The Syndicate for the Medusa Vines reaching Olympus, as well as for “allowing” a dangerous terrorist (Mad Maggie) to enter the Apex Games, who everyone blames for the fall of Olympus.

Lifeline and Octane have both long suspected that Octane’s dad has been doing all of this to shake public perception of The Syndicate so much that people will call for the group to fall under new leadership–and who better than the CEO of Silva Pharmaceuticals? His company was the one that distributed the cure for the Medusa Vines, and he added an easier-to-understand, more “family-friendly” bloodsport to the Apex Games (the limited-time Control mode). He also bankrolled a pretty hefty public relations campaign through Lisa Stone’s new podcast (she was the reporter who was interviewing Forge when Revenant stabbed him in the back), which revealed that The Syndicate was to blame for a lot of problems in The Outlands.

It’s after all this that Lifeline and Octane learn the truth about Eduardo and Duardo–the former has been dead for years, proven by his death certificate locked away in the latter’s safe. But who is Duardo? Well, I have a few theories:

Duardo is a simulacrum

This isn’t incredibly likely given that all simulacra in the Titanfall/Apex Legends universe seem to have very robotic appearances, implying that technology hasn’t evolved to the point to make them look human. And Duardo looks very human.

But this is also a universe where secret alien technology allowed someone to travel back and forth through time, so it’s just as likely that the necessary technology to make a simulacrum look human does exist. That isn’t a huge stretch of the imagination.

The basis of this theory rides on the fact that those close to Duardo, like his son and friends, haven’t noticed any major changes in his behavior–just small ones. So either Duardo has been Eduardo since he was a kid, or Duardo has somehow found a way to inherit Eduardo’s memories. As seen with Revenant and Ash, simulacra inherit the memories of the mind they are based on.

Duardo is a zombie

Also unlikely, but maybe Duardo is Eduardo after he died and came back to life. Revenant is able to use some horrifying technology to prevent his allies from dying–so it isn’t unthinkable that a more advanced version of his Death Totem exists, keeping Duardo alive as a shadow of his former self.

Duardo is a clone

Alright, let’s get to the more likely stuff. Maybe Duardo is just a clone. Do clones exist in the Titanfall/Apex Legends universe? Not to anyone’s knowledge. But like, c’mon–Respawn could totally write a “he’s a clone” storyline and we’d all just accept it. It’s a staple of the science fiction genre.

Duardo is Eduardo…but from another universe

This is my favorite theory. Apex Legends has dabbled with its multiverse since Season 2, when we learned that Wraith is actually from a different universe where the IMC beat the Militia during the events of Titanfall 2–she switched places with the Wraith of this universe. Then in Season 3, Pathfinder accidentally wandered into another universe where Revenant managed to kill everyone and ruled his army of shadows as a god. All of the legends returned to this shadow universe in Season 5’s Quest, The Broken Ghost collecting the scattered pieces of a simulacrum that ended up being this universe’s Ash.

So Respawn has already established that there are multiple variations of the characters in Apex Legends, all of whom exist across a wide variety of universes, each of whom has a very different history. And if that’s the case, why can’t Duardo just be Eduardo from a different universe?

This could answer the biggest question I have concerning Duardo: What’s his motivation? Duardo is the big bad of Apex Legends right now. He’s an abusive dad to Octane and wants to take over the organization that is either directly or indirectly in opposition to Wraith, Horizon, Mad Maggie, Revenant, Caustic, Bloodhound, Lifeline, and Crypto. But we still don’t really know why he wants to take over The Syndicate. Duardo already oversees one of the most prominent companies in The Outlands–he has an obscene amount of money and influence, so it’s not like he’s wanting in either department. Wanting to also take over The Syndicate doesn’t make any sense.

Sure, greedy rich people tend to just want more money and power but that’s a fairly boring motivation all things considered. I hope Duardo has motivations beyond just simple greed.

Like, maybe Duardo is doing all this in an effort to strengthen The Outlands. Maybe he’s from a universe that was devastated by some multiverse force and he’s traveled to this universe in order to prepare The Outlands for the coming threat. Or, hell, maybe Duardo is the threat, and he’s working to ultimately weaken The Syndicate in order to divide The Outlands and prime them for invasion.

Either scenario could potentially lead to a war between universes many seasons down the line. In several ways, Apex Legends is building towards a potential Titanfall 3 (maybe something I’ll discuss in a later column), and the idea of it centering around a multiverse war sounds cool as hell.

Duardo is some opportunistic guy

This is a less exciting variation of the multiverse theory. Duardo could be working towards strengthening or weakening The Outlands in preparation for instigating an attack on The Core Worlds or defending from an invasion from The Core Worlds.

This would mean Duardo doesn’t have to be from another universe. He could just be a guy made to look like Eduardo. We’ve already seen face reconstruction done in the Titanfall/Apex Legends universe–Crypto had to change his face via cybernetics to avoid facial recognition while on the run. It stands to reason that Duardo could do the same in order to trick facial recognition into thinking he’s one of the richest, most well-known men in The Outlands.

Duardo is just Eduardo and no one actually died

A boring and admittedly unlikely theory, but still possible: Maybe Duardo is just Eduardo and no one died–meaning the death certificate that Lifeline and Octane found is just a red herring to distract them from whatever the man is actually hiding. This would tie into The Williams Sendoff fairly well, which saw Wraith discover the death certificate for Jackson Williams, Bangalore’s brother. Jackson’s death certificate seems super fake (I still think Bangalore’s brother is Newcastle, potentially Season 13’s playable legend), so maybe Eduardo’s death certificate is also a fake.

Lifeline, Octane, and Maggie are the only ones who know that Duardo is responsible for what happened to Olympus.

Regardless of what’s going on, the revelation about Eduardo and Duardo will very likely impact Apex Legends’ story for seasons to come. At the very least, the revelation has created a schism between Octane and Lifeline’s sibling-like relationship. Those two are presumably the only ones other than Duardo who know the truth, since Eduardo’s death certificate has now gone up in flames. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t more proof out there, but for now, Duardo’s secret is safe.

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