Each of the spies could hack from any of the four stations, though beginning a hack let the entire soldier team know which station was under attack and to come running. But each station wasn’t tied to a single file. So you could download 5% of a file from the red station, then rush off before the cavalry came and grab another 10% at the yellow. All portions of the file stayed on your wristgaurd until your death. We won that match, mostly due to Jinx managing to grab both files while the other teammate and I kept the mercenaries distracted by letting ourselves get shot.

Playing as a solider was fun too. I got a gun. One of the first things I used it for was to help kill Valkyrie, which made me feel proud. I figured out how to use the grenades and throw them in the hiding places I had prized before as a spy. What was great about the second match was that we really started working as a team. If one of us ‘felt’ a spy nearby with the rumble feature, we let the others know and the two or three of us would usually manage to flush them out or kill them before they did damage. If there were no active attacks, we would patrol the various rooms, trying to flush out any spies or catch them in the act of hacking.

I enjoyed the camaraderie and began to understand the popularity of this series. I was sorry to have to put down the Xbox 360 controller and rejoin the audience. We did not play the single player at all, though I heard good things about the storyline where you play Sam Fisher, who must infiltrate a terrorist cell and stop it from doing something extremely nasty without blowing your cover. Splinter Cell: Double Agent will be available for the PC, Xbox 360, Xbox, and PlayStation 2 this October.