There are still a couple of games on my Ubisoft account that I have to beat before I can banish the Ubisoft Connect launcher to the Shadow Realm (until another free game for it comes out, at least). BACKGROUND:
I've talked about my experience with the Splinter Cell series in my blog entry discussing the first game. The only things I can add are a) I got this for free, and b) I heard that this particular title in the franchise is a fan favorite. PLOT: Sam Fisher's back at it again doing sneaky spy shit for the NSA's Third Echelon, and once again, he must do so to prevent yet another war from breaking out. The story starts out when an associate of a character from the first Splinter Cell is abducted, and Sam is sent to locate him. Said character has dangerous intel on weaponized computer algorithms (which was used to cripple the US's military in the first game), and most of the game is about Sam trying to untangle the web of conspiracies surrounding who intends to use these algorithms to start World War 3, and racing to stop their use from causing untold casualties. I liked this story a bit more than the first game, since it felt more like you were gradually piecing stuff together through every mission you complete. I enjoyed how intel gathered from the previous mission led into the next, and the stakes felt pretty big with how many times the algorithms Third Echelon is chasing after are weaponized to spread geopolitical chaos. Everything felt like a full-blown conspiracy, too, with the likes of war criminals, rebel leaders, private military outfits, and even government officials getting involved in the mess. Apart from that, this is your usual spy thriller. Sam gets to be more of a character here. He still shit-talks people during interrogations (there are some really funny lines throughout the game), and now he gets added bits of character like his banter with Third Echelon hacker Anna Grimsdottir (she likes to mock Sam for being old), his willingness to save people despite the protests of his superior Col. Lambert, and even a bit of inner conflict when an old friend of his appears to be involved in the grand conspiracy. Other than that, there's not much else, and a lot of the villains are standard fare in terms of motivations and personality. PRESENTATION: Although Chaos Theory is from the same console generation as the first game, this one boasts improved visuals overall. The 3D models look much smoother and the textures are more detailed; that said, this is still a game from nearly 20 years ago, and while I think it looks fine overall, the age does show itself in certain respects (one of the more notable examples of this is the rough-looking faces for the generic NPCs). The levels are decently varied here as well, and you get to sneak around in some novel locales like a cargo ship, a Japanese bathhouse, and even a literal warzone. Much like the first game, however, few areas stuck out in my memory since I was too preoccupied sneaking around and most places are poorly-lit anyway. Once again, music takes a backseat to make way for the sounds of the environment (which is handled pretty well), but I did notice there were a few more tracks than before. In sections where there is no immediate need to pay attention, some chill tunes will play that really fit the cool spy thriller vibe. And like before, there's plenty of voice acting, with decent work from the main cast and throwaway NPCs getting to talk. GAMEPLAY: Like its predecessor, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is a third person stealth game. Most of the basic mechanics and concepts are the same as the first game, and as I've talked about that at length in the blog entry I linked above, I'm not going to waste your time repeating myself. Here, I'll just note updates and additions to the established gameplay. Most of Sam's loadout and skills are the same, but there are plenty of additions to spice things up. First is the combat knife, which gives Sam close-quarter options when facing enemies, and is the main way Sam threatens people in interrogations. It can even be used in special interactions, like puncturing the gas tanks of generators to disable power, or cutting through canvas/similar material to create an opening. You can't throw it, unfortunately, but it's quite handy otherwise. The silenced pistol gets a surprising new feature: if you aim it at certain electronics (e.g. computers, security cameras, lights) and press alt fire, you can disable them (some permanently, others temporarily). I thought this was a really neat mechanic, though I only really used it to mess with cameras (since you can't simply shoot them in this game anymore). The main rifle still has all the functions of the original (scoped fire, alternate nonlethal ammo), and pretty much all of the nonlethal ammo returns here (and they're still a ton of fun to use). Not only is there a new nonlethal option in gas grenades, you can now equip different attachments to the rifle to give it more options. There's the foregrip attachment to assist with accuracy, the shotgun attachment (for close-range action), and the sniper attachment (the opposite). I didn't mess around with these attachments too much since I wanted to go as nonlethal as possible, but I appreciated the variety they introduce for the more aggressive play style. You still have access to night vision and thermal vision (both still quite useful), and now there's an additional vision mode for detecting devices that run on electricity. It's good for seeing if there are computers or cameras in the area, but not much else, unfortunately. There's also the sort of replacement on the laser mic which has been expanded to detect electronics that can be disabled with your pistol. Rounding out the new arsenal is the addition of flashbang grenades and smoke grenades. Both are self-explanatory and are incredibly useful. Before every mission, you actually have the choice to choose your loadout. There's the recommended loadout (which balances nonlethal and lethal options), stealth (which reduces your firepower in favor of more nonlethal options), and assault (which gives you more bullets and ordnance instead). I really like that you're able to choose how you want to play in this sense. In addition to all the new toys, Sam can pull off a bunch of new moves and interact with the environment in new ways. In the case of the former, you can snap people's necks with your legs while suspended or yank people off ledges while shimmying right below them. As for the latter, you can do all sorts of cool things like shoot a fire extinguisher to knock someone out, or aim a sticky shocker round into a puddle to zap a group of people standing on it. The stuff you could do before was plenty to me, and I'm quite happy they added more creative ways to render people unconscious. Most amusing to me is how Sam can now whistle to distract enemies. It's incredibly useful for luring enemies in challenging spots to places where you can more easily dispatch them. They also added hacking to this game, because of course they did. The minigame itself is straightforward (and totally not accurate to real life), but the act of hacking is rewarding since you can simply skip over finding keypad combinations, not bother with dragging officers to retinal scanners, and you can even find secret emails that give you juicy intel. What I found extra neat is that you can hack stuff remotely to deactivate traps and such. Gameplay itself has been expanded outside of what you can do in missions. One very welcome improvement is the addition of a sound meter to go along with the light meter from the original game. This meter not only tells you how loud the sounds you're making are, but it also indicates how loud the ambient noise in your surroundings is, allowing you to gauge how much noise you can get away with. Sound felt much more important thanks to this one addition, and I'm quite happy about that. Mission objectives are still tracked in the pause menu like before, but now the game gives you the chance to tackle extra tasks apart from the primary and secondary objectives that are meant to push the story forward. Each mission has opportunity objectives, which are optional tasks that you can tackle and are often the type of mission where you have to find multiple instances of an interactable in the level and interacting with all of them. I thought it was cool that you can take on extra missions that (apparently) help with the big picture, but I personally wish that completing them had a bigger impact in the story or in gameplay (nothing changes whether you complete the tasks or not). There are also bonus objectives that are completely hidden (or are only mentioned in passing by your team) and can only be revealed if you happen to interact with the right thing. Again, neat, but they don't change anything if you do them. The end of each mission now shows you a scoreboard, which shows you all the objectives you did or did not complete, and tallies various stats (like enemies knocked out/killed, civilians knocked out/killed, times detected, and more). The game then gives you a percent rating based on how well you did. I liked being able to see such stats at the end, though I found that one's percent rating really tanks if you favor killing over the nonlethal approach. While I prefer playing nonlethally in this game anyhow, I thought it was super odd that the game frowns upon you killing despite it being a completely valid (and sometimes cooler) approach to beating levels. If they wanted to encourage players to take up the challenge of going full nonlethal (which, in my view, is a fun but tough endeavor), I don't think lowering your score is the way to do it. I also liked that nearly all the levels are a bit more open in terms of their design. You're not going to get Skyrim-level open worlds, of course, but I noticed that there are plenty of alternate paths you can take as well as extra interactables you can take advantage of apart from the obvious stuff that you'll run into normally. I also noticed these elements long after I'd thought of my own way of clearing an area, and I think that speaks to how much freedom you have as a player to take on these missions in your own way. That open-endedness was one of the main things I enjoyed about the first game, and I'm quite happy this one is more open when it comes to your in-level options. The alarm system has also been changed in certain ways. I learned that for the first game, the game simply does a check and sweeps areas you left for bodies left out in the open, then raises an alarm if you didn't hide them well enough. Here, another person or a camera must actually spot a body for alarms to be raised, which is more logical than the old approach of nonexistent guards magically finding bodies in an area where you've definitely knocked everyone out. I'm kind of ambivalent with this change; on one hand, the new approach is fairer and more logical than what they did before (I almost failed missions in the first Splinter Cell because of a body I misplaced five areas ago raising an alarm). On the other hand, there's now less incentive to hide bodies properly because it's easier to go for the "no one will notice if there's nobody around to notice" approach. Another change to the alarm system is how enemies gear up when the alarm level goes up. When things get heated, they start equipping gear like vests (so body shots are less effective) and gas masks (making them effectively immune to your nonlethal gas weaponry). I only ran into these beefed-up enemies in mandatory encounters, and they're plenty tough to take down nonlethally since they're extra alert and can spot you even at your most quiet or even if you're in good cover. Learning that these enemies pop up if I raise the alarm enough times made me glad I barely triggered any alarms in my entire playthrough. Speaking of enemies, they're a bit smarter now, and they can even notice stuff like you being in the reflection of a mirror. I'd still say that the AI overall is still not perfect, as while little things like that are taken into account, stuff like a very audible automatic door opening doesn't raise any suspicion from anybody. But like I said regarding the first game, any observations of mine to this effect are just nitpicking and don't really ruin the game for me. Some stuff remain mostly unchanged from the first game. I found that shooting was still not as accurate as it could be (sniping is still a pain in the ass), and the platforming elements in the game's levels were barely used (in fact, it felt like there were less opportunities to jump or climb around). I will say that the map in the pause menu is more usable than the one in the first game, though. Oh, this game apparently has multiplayer, but I obviously didn't have the opportunity to try it out in any capacity. It looked like there's both a co-op campaign and a few versus modes, so I guess that's neat? VERDICT: Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory gave me more of the stealth gameplay I thoroughly enjoyed from the first game and expanded upon it in ways that gave me even more leeway to tackle missions however I saw fit. I liked all the new additions to Sam's arsenal and skillset, more options and interactables within each level, and I was more engaged with the story than I was last time. I still think some aspects of the game were missed opportunities, but apart from that, I had a blast putting motherfuckers to sleep throughout my time playing. The game only lightly references things from the first game, so you could probably get away with starting here if you're new to the series. The only caveat is that unlike the first game, you aren't put through a tutorial level, so if you're a new player, you'll have to watch the game's training videos to figure things out (which doesn't even teach everything). Whether you go for Splinter Cell 1 or Chaos Theory, my recommendation still stands that this is an "essential" game series that must be played at least once whether or not you're into this genre of game. Check out the game on Steam: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory® on Steam (steampowered.com) - end -
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June 2024
Derryck
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