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It’s 2007, and Sam Fisher’s back – although he looks a bit younger than last time. Asia is on the brink of major war, but Third Echelon has gathered clues that indicate all may not be as it seems. Fisher starts his mission in Panama where a kidnapped scientist has been taken for interrogation. From there, his clues will have him cracking open a bank safe, taking to the streets of Manhattan, and sneaking through a Japanese bath house.

New players may have a tough time settling in. First, Ubisoft forsook an interactive training mission for a series of videos that can be too much to absorb without getting in some practice time – even if you’re just learning the new features and remapped buttons. The second cause for bewilderment is the button map itself. The Xbox version crams a lot of functions into the controller, but since the GameCube controller has fewer buttons, players are left awkwardly holding the Z-button in combination with other buttons to access every function. What’s worse is that to switch rifle attachments, such as the fore-grip, shotgun, and sniper attachments, you have to push both Z and control pad down at exactly the same time, while all the other functions allow you to hold Z first and then press the second button. To further frustrate this feature, the button combination isn’t even listed in the manual or control diagram, and as a result, I played through the entire game without using the attachments: I didn’t understand how to access them and forgot I even had them. Even when I did go back to figure it out, it took me several tries before I actually got the timing down. I'm not sure why Ubisoft thought the weapons menu was inadequate for their inclusion.

As in previous Splinter Cell titles, gameplay revolves around sneaking through levels unnoticed, avoiding head-on enemy confrontations, cameras, and alarms. Chaos Theory both expands the stealth elements, and gives you freedom to be a little more aggressive if you wish. Players are given their choice of equipment when they begin a mission. They can pick from the balanced, recommended set of tools, a stealth-oriented set, or an assault-centered set. Going on a rampage still isn’t entirely condoned though, as is evidenced by the new scorecard at the end of each stage. It shows which objectives you completed as well as the time you took, number of times you were identified, enemies knocked out, enemies killed, bodies found, alarms activated, etc. The less noticeable you are, the higher your score will be. So now, we perfectionists have something to measure ourselves by, and we can keep going back to a level until we reach 100%.

Chaos Theory also focuses a bit more on sound than its predecessors. My favorite new addition is the noise meter, which is just under the standard light meter. The light meter shows how brightly illuminated you are, and likewise, the noise meter shows how much noise you're making. The noise meter also displays a mark indicating the level of ambient sound; as long as the noise you make doesn’t spike over that mark, no one can hear you, so you can use the sounds of a nearby truck or rolling thunder to mask your actions and move about a little more freely.

While Splinter Cell has always given you a choice between putting a bullet between someone’s eyes or knocking them cold, Chaos Theory intuitively maps lethal attacks to the right trigger and non-lethal attacks to the left trigger, much of the time. With the rifle’s launcher attachment, non-lethal attacks include the standard sticky shockers and cameras. However, this time out, you can also choose lethal or non-lethal attacks when you’re engaging a guard at close quarters or have him by the throat, thanks to Sam’s shiny new knife.

Although it’s a basic survival tool for most soldiers on the field, this is the first time we’ve seen Sam Fisher trusted with a knife of his own. Not only can you slash at enemies or stab them in the back after interrogations, but the knife comes in handy around the house too. You can use to it break open a lock, rather than picking it. You can slice a nice slit in the side of a tent. It can put a hole in the gas tank of a generator, or you can even cut a few wires here and there. Yes, the knife is a handy tool indeed.

For Sam’s pistol, pressing the L trigger activates a device called an OCP (don’t worry about what it stands for), which allows you to temporarily disable electrical devices like lights or cameras or even tanks. With lights, the OCP isn’t too desirable unless you really need to be silent, but the device is essential for cameras since they’re now so heavily armored that only the deafening sniper attachment can take them out. The device isn’t perfect either. Especially near the end of the game, some of the target points on devices are very difficult to hit, and it takes several attempts to knock them out even though you’re aiming straight at them. Because you’re often trying to time your movements and the OCP takes time to recharge, it can be very frustrating to “miss” a target over and over.

In addition to the new hardware, you’re also able to pull off several flashy new context-sensitive moves. If an enemy is behind a door, you can bash the door in to knock him out. You can hang from the side of a building or balcony, wait for a guard to come close by, then jump up and fling him over the rails. While hanging from a pipe over a soldier, there might be an opportunity to reach down and snap his neck. Ubisoft also threw an extra nod to GameCube and PS2 owners by giving us a water attack that isn’t featured in the Xbox version. Similar to the ledge move, you’ll be able to leap out of a pool of water to grab an enemy and drown him. The level design has even been altered to include a few extra locations for Sam to use this cool new move.

These new moves are made a bit more satisfying by the new physics system in Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. Rag doll physics have been applied to the character models, so that bodies’ animations and interactions with the environment are more realistic – a body will slump over against the wall rather than falling flat with its head half through the wall. The system evokes a strange sense of joy from tumbling an unconscious man down the stairs, and characters simply react more convincingly, whether you’re laying them gently on the ground or knocking them cold with your bare hands.

GBA Connectivity makes a disappointing return in Chaos Theory. While I didn’t play the GameCube version of Pandora Tomorrow, I was a fan of the 2D radar and sticky bombs in the first Splinter Cell. Sticky bombs are out completely, and the real-time 2D map has been replaced with a boxy “3D” map which is practically useless. I placed “3D” in quotes because what’s actually happening is that the GameCube is sending two-dimensional screen grabs to the GBA, resulting in an unacceptably laggy interface when trying to navigate the map. Considering that the map is already dramatically lacking detail or even so much as a mark to show your current location, it might be less frustrating to draw your own map like in the old days. Slightly better is the option to monitor sticky cameras on the GBA, which uses the same screen capture technique and allows you to switch to night or thermal visors. It can be handy in the right situations, but those moments rarely come.

The single-player campaign lasts ten missions in all, each one lasting about an hour. The story seems a bit overbearing at the start of the game, but as you progress, it flows more naturally as your intelligence-gathering leads you closer and closer to the players manipulating the unfolding war.

In addition to the main campaign, Chaos Theory also boasts a new split-screen two-player cooperative mode. You and a friend take on the roles of new Splinter Cell units in training, working on missions tangential to Sam’s. The stages are split into several shorter objectives, which works well for multiplayer, except for the long and frequent load times that you have to endure throughout the menu system. Although it seems like split-screen views would be limiting, the mode plays surprisingly well. There isn’t anything quite like spying out a facility side-by-side with your girlfriend.

Working together, the new recruits have several unique moves that are reminiscent of Chinese acrobats. One set of moves allows you to boost your partner up to a ledge, and then climb his body while he hangs from it. Another move has you tossing your buddy over long gaps or into enemies to knock them out. You can also drop a rappel line for your partner, so he can climb up or down an elevator shaft.

Even when you’re not using each other as step-ladders, you’ll have to constantly coordinate your movements and attacks. There are clear situations that call for cooperation, such as defusing a set of bombs by cutting wires simultaneously or jamming a camera while the other spy runs down the hall, but it’s the less obvious moments that will teach you to communicate with each other. If you both have different plans on how to take down a couple of guards, you’ll likely end up looking down the wrong end of an assault rifle. Conversely, if you work as a team, one of you can distract a guard while the other person comes up behind him. Co-op is only four missions long, but it’s a welcome addition, especially for GameCube.

I don’t typically do this during the review process, but after seeing all the glowing praise for Chaos Theory on Xbox, I had to rent the Xbox version to compare. I went through the first level, switching between the versions room-by-room, and the differences are incredible.

Xbox

GameCube

As you can see (even from my poor photos above), graphically, the GameCube version doesn’t come anywhere near the quality of the Xbox build. Even with the shocking downgrade, the GameCube version is also subject to nasty framerates at times. While there are some texture effects that couldn’t have been done on GameCube, it’s quite clear that a lot of short-cuts were taken to make the game as significantly different as it is.

If you look at the left sides of the screens above, you will see just a hint of the differences in level design. Large outdoor rooms have been split into three or four more confined areas; walks over fortress walls have been replaced by underground tunnels; and the level seems to have just been condensed overall, with entire sections missing. You also have to wait through loading times between sections that have seamless transitions on the Xbox version. Little details like bats flying through a cave are absent. Many more artificial lights are hanging in areas where the Xbox version is lit only by the moon, and a grey steel staircase is bright yellow in the GameCube version.

The EMF visor has taken a significant hit in the GameCube build as well. The visor basically allows you to see electromagnetic fields. On the Xbox, it’s a pretty cool effect. The background is a bluish color and everything electrical (power lines, generators, lights, etc.) shows up in a pulsating white light. On GameCube, the developers went with the bare minimum. When you switch over to EMF, there aren’t any cool effects; lights you can shoot out, cameras, and alarms are simply highlighted with little white boxes. Plus, that’s all you’ll see, nobody bothered to even highlight wires, refrigerators, or really anything you can’t interact with.

The final difference between the Xbox and GameCube versions that I’ll mention is a horrible oversight in the Displace level. When you start the level, you’ll be told how cool it is that certain windows in the offices can be switched from opaque to transparent with your OCP. Apparently, this works on Xbox, but try as much as you like, you won’t be seeing through this glass anytime soon on GameCube. That’s not all. Even though you can’t tell the difference, enemies will be able to see you through “transparent” panels, and your boss Lambert will refer to things as if they’re right in front of your eyes.

When it comes down to it, it’s not that the GameCube version of Chaos Theory is terrible, but due to a sloppy port job, it simply doesn’t measure up to the Xbox version and it has some ugly flaws. If you have an Xbox, get that version with online play and all without hesitation. If not, this version of Chaos Theory still has a solid core; you’ll just have to deal with a few extra frustrations.