Funny, too, because it was the only one that looked even remotely interesting to me.
Single PlayerTerrorist Cell MissionsDouble Agent (game) would've and should've been better, if it wasn't for some of the in-between terrorist training center missions that have repetitive, tedious and boring things to do -- such as the overly repetitive bomb-building mission and the cube-cracking mission. The bomb-building wouldn't have been so bad, if you didn't have to build so many bombs, which do take quite a while to get done. However, I did like that most of those terrorist-cell missions in the training center were basically ALL optional missions -- you did have to choose to side with something, though -- or else you'd likely fail, b/c you'd not be keeping one side happy.
There were other missions in that terrorist training area, that were good, though -- such as sneaking around, spying on conversations of lead terrorists, etc etc -- you know, which is the usual cool stealthy stuff in a SC game.
Regular MissionsMost of the regular missions (that were away from the training center) were awesome, though. And the last mission was excellent.
NSA Vs. Terrorist Cell MeterAnd the whole Double Agent scheme, with NSA Vs. Terrorist Cell meter was great, where you to do main objectives and optional side objectives where you wanted to keep both sides happy -- or else, you'd fail the mission/game.
In-Game PerformanceThe in-game performance was not too good, either. This was a very lazy port of SC: DA -- this can join the UbiSoft Lazy Port Club, along w/ R6: Vegas and GRAW series -- since both are very good games, but do have performance issues that they really did not deserve. I think the best running game I've seen on any of these UE2.5 or UE3 games here is basically Bioshock PC, running excellent at all times -- so, obviously Ubi's been very lazy on their ports.
Save SystemYeah, SC: DA's save system was pretty crummy. You might want to make a REGULAR SAVE (not a quicksave) before you quit the game out to Windows, since the game does wipe your QUICK and AUTO SAVES out after you quit the game out to Windows. Making REGULAR SAVES was the only way to keep your info, really -- yeah, you have to hit Escape, go back to menu, then hit save; the long way of saving, basically. Worst of all, the game doesn't SORT automatically or doesn't allow you can't even SORT your saves by Date, Level, or anything -- they're just all over the place. Big eww on that.
Chaos Theory is King for SC SeriesReally though, Chaos Theory was the best Splinter Cell, by far -- no comparison. Not only did the game look great for its time, it ran like it was optimized for the PC. The SP missions were awesome. It allowed for optional objectives, for the first time in the series. And the save system wasn't actually botched, either. It looked great and ran great.
Unfortunately, SC: CT on the PC comes w/ StarForce. Of course, there's ways around that crappy copy protection.