Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow Gets A Surprise Steam Release And Is Just Playable On The Steam Deck

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It's always a treat to play some classic games that helped define my early years of gaming, and that's what makes this so exciting. Out of nowhere, Ubisoft brought Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow to Steam today. The classic title was originally released in 2004, and while it was released on PC at the time, it had never made its way to Steam. Still, it made me excited to see, and I was ready to take control of Sam Fisher again and dive into stealth ops.

While the game remains largely unchanged, there appear to be some improvements, like shadow rendering, which does help improve visual quality. However, I wanted to see just how well the game runs on the Steam Deck. So, I immediately bought and downloaded the game to try it out, and while it runs as expected, there are still some little nuisances here and there.

With the game being over 20 years old now, it's pretty expected that it will run well on the Steam Deck, and it does. On the high quality settings, which is the default, we can get 60 FPS while sticking to around 11W battery drain. The game does look a little dated, but for the most part, it should have solid performance no matter what.

The biggest issues come from the lack of controller support, which would have been nice. It can feel very awkward to control due to all the specific actions that Sam has. This made it less enjoyable to play overall, and even with specific changes to a controller scheme, it just doesn't feel nearly as good as it would with proper controller support. I did end up using the "Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow Steam Deck" controller scheme made by Steam user JackyBryant, which helps a little, but it still feels a little awkward. It's playable, but just feels off.

The other problem I found was that the game sometimes launched with incorrect settings. When I rebooted the game, the resolution was completely off, and battery drain was around 22W. As soon as I went into the settings and set the resolution to 1280x1024, the screen went back to normal, and battery drain went back down to 11W.

So, while Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow is playable on the Steam Deck, it is a little bit of a nuisance. The controls don't feel great, and there are some issues with the resolution when launching, but it's still in a playable state. I appreciate the shadow fixes, and the game does fit the Steam Deck's screen fully, but it just doesn't feel as great. Hopefully, we will get an update that adds controller support, which would make it significantly more enjoyable, but only time will tell.

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow is on sale for $5.99 until October 28th.

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