So I've been playing through SCDA and, in spite of a couple of annoying as hell bugs (I'm looking at you "Can't open Emile's door, even from the inside, causing you to get locked in"), it's been ok...

Until Kinshasa 2.

The very fact that you can't load any save games during the mission is in and of itself psychotic. Add to that the fact that my graphics got all screwed up when the second part of the mission began, causing everything to look washed out and making it impossible to see any shadows in which to hide in (in a goddamned stealth game no less).

Well I found 2 things that'll make it less painful, and I apologize if this is common knowledge. First of all, if anyone else is getting the same graphical problem I am, turn on HDR lighting, then load a save game in the level. Once in the level, go to options and turn HDR back off. When you return to your game the graphics will be normal. And the best part is, if you save your game now, it'll stay that way

The second thing is to skip some of the long as hell videos when the game loads. If I have to go to my desktop everytime I want to load a save game, there's no way in hell I want to look at the company logo of the people who are responsible for my torment.

So go to:
Program Files\UBISOFT\Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent\SCDA-Offline\System\Videos\

Make a folder called "Backup" and move "menu.bik" and "Ubilogo.bik" to that folder. Voila! Now you don't have to watch Ubi's logo, or the weird, unnecessary, unskippable knife throwing thing in the beginning.

NOTE: The screen will stay black for about 2 seconds as it skips the videos. Don't panic.

If I find anything else useful I'll post it.

And fyi, this is the second worst console to PC port I've ever played. The worst was Metal Gear Solid 2, which on my top of the line hardware at the time, couldn't render the textures, and everything was just gray shadowy models. Also, the controls had to be configured outside of the actual game, and bound to their equivalent PS2 controls (I'll be damned if I know what the hell X does in the game on the PS2. If I did, I wouldn't be playing the PC version now would I? -_-). So congrads Ubi! At least you beat out Kojima by making a less terrible port

HMM... I should try the same thing for the shaderloss in the first level. Thanks. I had the same problem in Kinshasa 2 by the way.

Thanks for the help. This might make me reinstall again. It's almost become a game in itself to see how long you can get SCDA to run without crashing, then reload and try to beat your record.
That spinning knife video is skippable ONLY IF you get it soon enough with the esc key, wait too long and haha, fooled by UBI again! :P