Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Ubisoft
Stealth
1-2 Players
ESRB: Mature
I have almost intentionally stayed away from the stealth genre up to this point. Stealth parts in games like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Beyond Good & Evil were very frustrating for me. I am not one who likes “sneaking”. I prefer a clash of action and strategy, but very less so the whole stealth portion. I knew that I would have to try a stealth game at least some time, so I figured I’d start with the recently released Chaos Theory. I am now officially changed. The fun of playing with the minds of my enemies without ever revealing Sam Fisher (protagonist for you who don’t know anything) is much more exciting than I had first thought. Also, Chaos Theory tends to take an almost direct tactical approach. I mean, this could be a real-time strategy game featuring one unit, and it would probably pass. That might sound strange, but I will explain…if you read the review.
Chaos Theory details the further missions of Sam Fisher, a “Splinter Cell” for the government. His job is to covertly fill out objectives without allowing his persona to be discovered and prevent having a full assault take place on various locations. We start out seeing Sam try and rescue a prisoner being tortured for information. This information will pretty much be your goal throughout Chaos Theory, as it has almost infinite capabilities in information warfare. For a few missions, Sam is sent in trying to eliminate all people who would know of that information (as the prisoner squealed before getting electrocuted to death). However, many twists lie along this road. An old friend of Sam’s, Doug Shetland, owns a security agency that has an odd tendency to show up protecting the men who know the dangerous information. Oh, and North Korea is about on the verge of starting World War III. While Sam doesn’t see any frontline action, he is usually between the main troops and support of North Korea, during the war missions. Shetland’s company, World War III, and the information warfare are a perfect mix for this Tom Clancy-style story, and it works pretty well in during the missions.
That is the only strange thing though, as the story is told in a better fashion during the missions themselves, rather than during in between cutscenes. This is only because Sam is the one who uncovers all the information, interrogates the enemies who usually know something, and eavesdrops on the more important and secret meetings. Then Sam usually gets a little call from his friends back at Third Echelon (the division he works for) that explains the more technical terms you/Sam may not understand. Oh, and there is some pretty good dialogue between Sam (who’s getting pretty old for the job) and Grim (who’s a pretty young ‘un). A nice one details how Sam was having a bad year in ’89 having to camp out avoiding troops while Grim was having a bad year as well. It was tenth grade for her.
Anyway, as the year is 2007, our boy Sammy has some good things in his belt. First off, he has those three glowing lights that no one in the game ever seems to catch the glow of. This gives Sam night vision, thermal vision, and EMF vision (which basically highlights everything that Sam can screw up, like computers, lights, etc.). His other handy gadgets usually remain from the beginning to the end, but their uses become more often used in the later missions. Hand, flash, smoke, and gas grenades can all be a part of your arsenal, but whether they are or not depend on what setting you chose before each mission. There are three: stealth, assault, and Redding’s Recommendation. Stealth and Assault usually have more items of their designated strategy. Stealth holds more sticky shockers (knock out enemies on impact) and sticky cameras, while Assault gives almost all the grenades. Redding’s usually features a combination of both, although it changes depending on the level. The only problem with this is that you will soon realize stealth is easier to manage once you get the hang of the game, and having more sticky shockers is always the best idea possible. Oh, and you almost rarely pick up ammo and gadgets off the ground, so what you have is usually what you can only use. This all pretty much reduces use of grenades, as it will easily alert other guards in the general vicinity to your presence.
Luckily, Sam has everything to not alert those troops (unless you want a fire fight, which is something Sam can get mowed down in easily). New to Chaos Theory from previous editions is the sound meter, which will calculate how much sound you are making, compared to how much the ambient sound is coming from the environment. So when there is dead silence, walking really slowly is often times the wise decision, unless you want an AK-47 blasting in your direction. Also, if you are smart enough, you can shoot a few guards in the head while something really loud (like thunder) roars in the background as to not alert any of the other guards. You also can silently grab an enemy from behind and drag him into darkness to interrogate him.
Darkness is actually one of the bigger concepts in the game; a concept that some like and some are having trouble with. I frequently hear that on this version the game is too dark and you often times have to play with your night vision. Oddly, I never really had this problem. I thought it was too light, only to see that my light bar (like the sound meter, but calculates how visible you are to the enemy) was in the darkest section available. However, there is a darkness-lightness meter which you can change in the options menu, if you do encounter this problem.
Some of your other stealth features are pretty nice to have, so I better mention them. Hacking, while very confusing to learn, is easy to master and will make many things a breeze nowadays. Having trouble with a retinal scanner or keypad? Just hack into the device to easily open it. However you are timed and you have to pick a set of four numbers out a list of about 20 sets, so you generally have to be quick to eliminate sets. Oh, and this can be done for computers, which is the basic way to get high-profile intelligence in Chaos Theory.
There is also something that I actually never noticed until the third mission (no manual, forgot it was even there). It is pretty much the replacement of the camera scrambler, and it comes with your handgun. Instead of shooting out lights that will always attract the attention of guards, you can scramble a light to make it shut off for awhile, and then proceed in the dark. This is the same for cameras, which are usually placed in annoying places and hard to get around otherwise.
Okay, let’s say you do catch the attention of the guards. However, they haven’t seen you, but they think they heard something. There are several paths that can happen. 1) You move away slowly and quietly, staying in the shadows and sneak past them while they are still investigating. 2) You back off like before, but instead of sneaking away you shoot out the lights and further bewilder the guards. They can’t see you in the darkness, and won’t open fire unless you shoot in their general vicinity. So you sneak up on a guard’s back, grab him, and drag him to a corner. There you can either kill him or knock him out. Killing detracts from your final score, but if another guard finds a knocked out buddy, he will wake that guy up and you have some alert guards on your hands. Anyway, after taking out the first guard, you sneak up on the other and instead of grabbing him (you are positioned wrong); you just knife him for a kill. 3) You try to sneak away, but you either enter a light and are seen, or make a loud footstep by accident and the guards send fire in your position. The majority of the guards hold automatics, which can mow Sam down in 2-5 seconds. You can fire back, but you become open even when shooting from behind cover, and your weapons are single shots (weak, by the way). If the guards didn’t directly see you, they will shoot where they last heard you, but you can still sneak behind them and they won’t ever notice. If they see and know your position, they will advance on you with advanced AI mechanics. This is a pretty nifty feature, as the mercenaries show much more intelligence on taking you out through several techniques, as opposed to the regular guards just trying to shoot you down. However, the strange thing is that guards never seem to notice that their buddies are gone unless they see the body. I was in a small room with a few boxes, and there were two guards. They were in a bit of conversation, so I waited until that ended and then knifed one of the guards. The other continued a patrol, and never even bothered to think of where the other guard may have gone.
While the mechanics are all pretty good (despite the few small quips I had here and there) controls take a little getting used to. On the GCN’s lack of buttons, you have about eight functions assigned to the Z button + something else feature. This doesn’t generally apply to the more important actions like shooting, aiming, etc. However it generally requires you to use the small d-pad and 50% of the buttons with the Z-button to do one of Sammy’s various actions. It is annoying for the first few levels, but as you get the hang of it the annoyance will go away. Unless you are too used to the plethora of buttons on the PS2’s controller.
Let’s go back to that setting of getting the guards to notice you. Now before that, the music was off. Everything playing was an ambient noise that related to the environment, like a slow rumble of a machine or whirring of a computer. When those guards notice you, this music will suddenly start to come blaring out of your speakers like the whole world is about to collapse. The good thing is that this music is actually very well done and of high quality. It easily fits the situation at hand, as a spy being noticed, and never seemed to disappoint. I mean, I heard all sorts of instruments coming out during some of the exotic locales where I was seen at. And of course, as soon as you neutralize the situation, the music dies down suddenly and it is back to the solitude of nature.
However, the sound is actually more important than the music quality. As it directly ties in with your sound meter, you have to be always listening to what is going on in the background so you can quicken your pace and risk a bit of sound with your footsteps. There are times where you can turn on or off fans, radios, or computers just so the sound will be able to hide your presence. I’m glad to see Ubi Soft greatly emphasis the sound portion of stealth, as it is a great way to know more of how much your presence is known to the enemy at all times.
Also dealing in with the stealth gameplay is the graphics, which on the GCN have disappointed many. First off, the graphics have created some very extensive load times (along with the fairly large levels). You have load times for each area (about three-five per mission), saving times which last a minute or so, loading times for starting a game or loading a save. It just creates a good amount of time loading, which can be very annoying to many. I wasn’t too bothered, as I know that one of the virtues is patience, silly head. Anyway, the graphics are better than some of the games on the market. However, you just sometimes feel the Gamecube could have done much more. The Xbox version is out and it looks much more beautiful, but a high-class game from Ubi Soft should at least have some more impressive graphics. The models are okay, as Sam’s is very good while the guards lack in some areas. Animations work in the game, but during cutscenes they are a bit robotic. The detail in the environment is probably the best feature, and the lighting is fairly impressive as well. Some of these surfaces just seem to come alive when you have a good light shining on them, strangely. It has its faults, and it isn’t as good as you would think it would be, but the graphics, as the great Larry the Cable Guy says, “Git ‘r done!”.
Now, you might not like the following fact, but the GCN has probably the worst offering of all the platforms. It isn’t as pretty as the Xbox, and doesn’t have the quite innovative online versus mode of both the PS2 and the Xbox. However, those who have owned the GCN for awhile should be past the fact that Nintendo won’t go online with this console, and will probably have realized this already. There is a still a co-op mode, which adds another four hours onto the ten hour single player campaign, and is pretty good. It uses most of what Sam has in single player, but gives you more options with two players. It also ties directly in with the single player plot at a few places, so it makes it seem more important than a side feature.
The most replay value will probably come from the open-ended environments though. Oddly, even in the small confrontations with multiple guards, there are many possibilities for completing your objectives. Should you try and interrogate every guard before proceeding, or avoid any risky confrontation and sneak by them while giving them a good knife in the back? There are also multiple paths to get through areas. You can even bypass a good few rooms full of enemies by taking a detour through a ventilation shaft. This can also place you in better starting places, so instead of approaching a guard from a door facing him, you can take a vent to the storage room behind him and then grab him while it isn’t expecting it. The possibilities aren’t endless, but they are fairly close.
Overall, Chaos Theory is a title that shines through its faults. I have never played a stealth game thoroughly before, but Chaos Theory was able to take me behind the shed and…well show me the ropes. It is sort of like hacking in the game: hard to learn, easy to master. As soon as you can get the hang of grabbing guards and completing the objectives, the game will fly by in a whirl of fun. I absolutely love this game now and somewhat wish I hadn’t only rented it.
Gameplay: 9
Controls: 7
Graphics: 8
Sound: 9
Lasting Appeal: 7
Overall: 8
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