Looking forward to 3D Splinter Cell on your DS? Stop.
Like many Splinter Cell fans, I was impressed by the first screens of Chaos Theory DS and excited about the multiplayer prospects. However, the finished product (if you can call it finished) is far from exciting.
As a first note, I’m disappointed to say that we were not able to test the multiplayer modes since they require each player to have a copy of the game, and we only had access to one copy for the review. Considering the single player portion of the game, though, it’s unlikely many of our readers will be able to find another person with the game for co-op missions, much less three others for spies vs. mercenaries.
Anyone that has played the console versions of Splinter Cell Chaos Theory should be advised that Chaos Theory DS is almost an entirely different game. This is not a good thing. Despite Ubisoft’s claim that the DS version features “all the new moves and gadgets of the console versions,” the truth is that vital basic moves, such as elbowing an enemy or shooting out lights, are missing. You can forget about fancy things like sound meters, hanging upside down, drowning enemies, or flinging people over the railing.
Not surprising is that the majority of game dialogue is delivered through text (although three compressed cinema scenes made the cut). For some reason, though, rather than taking lines directly from the original script, most of the dialogue has been rewritten for the worse and seems to be edited to the point that those not familiar with the console game may not have a clear understanding of what’s going on.
The controls are manageable, but not built for speed. The touch screen is used for camera control in addition to radar, alternate vision modes, and the weapons menu. It works fine if you simply want to reach your thumb over to look around corners, but using it for aiming weapons is sluggish and imprecise. In fact, since you can control your rifle’s scope with the control pad, it’s generally easier to get to an out of the way spot, zoom in with the Select button, and then take aim that way.
The touch screen is also used quite logically to type codes into keypads and pick locks. Lock-picking is cool and intuitive at first, requiring you to pull out your pick (stylus) and tap the pins individually to open the door. However, as locks get more complicated, it becomes hard to get a feel for any patterns, leaving you to eventually start tapping pins randomly until you find the right sequence.
The level designs are similar to the console game in name and key objectives only, and two of the levels (the Cargo Ship and Seoul) have been entirely removed from the DS version. Where the console version goes out of its way to give players multiple paths through a level, the DS version goes out of its way to force players into the most linear and tedious route imaginable. As a matter of fact, there are “doors” everywhere, but most of these doors are merely painted on, forcing you to go from one to the next until the Interact menu finally appears. Another fun feature about doors is that despite having a set of lock picks and being able to bash in doors, Sam will often come up to a door that can’t be opened, forcing you to crawl slowly through a long twisted ventilation shaft, only to come out on the other side of the door. And it’s not like you can open it from the other side. Oh no. If you want to backtrack, you need to get your butt back in that hole. Other fun level design qualities include suspiciously placed moving lasers and having to backtrack an entire level with all the surveillance turned off – you’re simply running (and crawling through holes) for a very long time.
The guard AI has two settings: ‘Psychic Super Soldier’ and ‘I think I’ll stand here and wait to be shot’. The second one is their default. Generally, the best way to take out a soldier is to run directly in front of him, and hide in the shadows. He will then walk to where he last saw you and stop. He’ll literally stand there for a good minute or more, giving you plenty of time to set up the perfect head shot. However, if you happen to get too close, the guard will shout, “HEY YOU,” signaling your un-negotiable death. Alarms will go off instantly (there’s no need for anyone to physically pull an alarm), and guards from three rooms away will run directly to your current position to shoot you in the head before you have a chance to even pull your gun out.
There’s not much reason to go to great lengths to be stealthy. Hiding bodies is largely unnecessary: cameras don’t notice them, and you’ll rarely have one found by another guard. Moving around, you’ll need to stick to the shadows and avoid cameras, but if you have the choice, it’s generally better to shoot a guard than try to sneak up and grab him from behind. For one thing, very few characters in the game can be interrogated. Secondly, many guards have an uncanny ability to shout “HEY YOU” even after you’ve grabbed them, bringing you once again to your instant doom.
While your doom may be instant, your chance to try again is severely hampered by load times and sparse save points. There can be as much as fifteen minutes between save points, and the load times are worst in the oddest places. Loading a save file may only take two or three seconds, but if you want to skip a dialogue sequence, you’ll be stunningly greeted by a loading screen that may last as much as ten seconds, possibly longer than the conversation would have been.
While the graphics may look decent in stills, the first thing any player will notice is that the game seems incapable of ever running at a steady framerate. When it’s “running well” the game is quite choppy to begin with, but as you move about, you’ll frequently encounter hitches where the game seems to get stuck for a second, often accompanied by visual artifacts such as black bars or breaks in the screen. These problems only become more severe when using blurry thermal vision or pointless night vision modes. Somehow the game even manages to look choppy and encounter delays in the menus and during the credit scroll.
That’s only the start of the graphical hijinks though. Some textures have visible seams that make walls look more like checkerboards. There are also visible seams between polygon structures at points. At times, text will appear outside of a text box or on top of other text or, sometimes, you’ll see a text box with no text at all! Most DS games are subject to color distortion when viewed from extreme angles, but Chaos Theory’s tolerance for angled viewing is so low, that in order to see both screens clearly you’ll need to push the upper screen flat, beyond the point that the hinge usually locks.
The sound engine is in worse shape than the graphics. It seems as if the game is incapable of running more than two or three channels of audio at a time, even with the music turned down. The result, of course, is a very sterile sound design and endless moments of frustration. Alarms will go off without you noticing them, and you’ll likely find yourself dead because somehow you couldn’t hear the gunfire over the hum of the surveillance camera in the next room. This ruins the feel of the game, and the most idiotic moment comes early, when you snipe Hugo Lacerda from the top of the lighthouse, with Lambert commenting on how fortunate you are that the thunder covered the sound of your rifle - what thunder!?
Overall, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory for Nintendo DS is just full of problem after problem, but even without the bugs and glitches, the game is simply dull compared to its console counterparts.
Note: The save glitch detailed in the original version of this review was fixed before the game shipped.
