This is part of a series of four reviews examining the specific pros and cons for each of the four sixth-gen console games in the franchise Splinter Cell. The games in chronological order are: Splinter Cell, Pandora Tomorrow, Chaos Theory and Double Agent.
Of the four, Chaos Theory is the clear winner in my estimation.
Plot
I have never once understood the plot to Chaos Theory, though I have played it many times. There’s a Peruvian terrorist organisation who kidnap a dude to get information on a missile chip, so you somehow end up in Panama and find out who else is involved, and then there’s an interlude with a blackout or something and you get some information on that dude, and then a missile strike causes war in Korea but then you go to Japan and figure out who’s really behind it, then you go to some other place in Japan and find out who’s REALLY behind it… Honestly, I don’t care. Just wanna grab some dudes.
Attacks, Weapons and Gadgets
The laser sight from Pandora Tomorrow was replaced with the electromagnetic pulse, which temporarily jams security cameras, lasers and other electric powered devices. It is a device I like, though given the choice I would have liked both as alternative attachments, or on different missions depending on the map layout and whether or not it had a large amount of electronic security.
Pandora Tomorrow had a specific device for jamming cameras temporarily. You had to hold down the button and it would automatically lock on as you walked. In addition, you could permanently disable cameras by shooting them, with the exception of armoured cameras. On balance, I think I prefer the Chaos Theory system of all unbreakable cameras, but all can be disabled with a touch of a button for a fair period of time. It gives you more power and removes the temptation of making a lot of noise destroying a camera which isn’t going to be that problematic. Noise draws NPCs who, if they clearly hear shots fired, will raise and alarm and start shooting. Cameras are tough buggers and need a sturdy gun, so NPCs can hear you shooting them from quite far away.
You can break locks from Chaos Theory onwards, rather than picking them. Picking locks every time you fail the mission and have to restart is a bore indeed, so I was glad of this change.
Sticky cameras and diversion cameras were all merged into one thing for Chaos Theory and your weapons were broadly chosen by you, rather than assigned depending on the level requirements. They got rid of the flares to – you won’t miss them. Rarely if ever do your want to create more light in your environment, even as a diversion.
Throwing items only work in Chaos Theory. Firstly, there are enough objects with which to do it. Once intended only as a distraction, you could knock people out with a well-aimed brick, and it was hilarious to watch, because they dropped to their knees like a sudden attack of narcolepsy. In reality, they’d say “Ow!” and swing round yelling for backup.
You can bash doors open in Chaos Theory, which you couldn’t in Pandora Tomorrow. The ability to knock guys out by bashing the door into them from the other side was a great non-lethal, though not especially stealthy, way of taking care of a single guy in a room, introduced in Chaos Theory. It makes a sound like a cannon blast.
AI
Finding information on computers and finding key codes to unlock doors requires the player to be investigative in their stealth, and thus is not sanctioned by NPCs noticing disturbances. In Chaos theory, turning things off and on catches attention, as does breaking anything.
I think that future incarnations of the franchise should score mission points depending on how much of the surrounding environment is disturbed. I like to be rewarded for my perfectionism, and even in the smooth Chaos Theory, it is impossible never to leave any traces of your having been there; either you must hack the retinal scanner, or grab a bloke and force his face into it, then knock him out.
Stealth
The darkness meter is key in Chaos Theory and it is easy to create darkness, as nearly all the lights are destructible and there are a variety of objects one can use. Disabling the light then shooting it in while it’s disabled also garners no more suspicion than just zapping it.
From Chaos Theory onward, automatic alarms aren’t called when you leave a body out in the light. As long as no one finds the body, you’re off the hook. As long as everyone in a room is knocked out, you needn’t move the bodies to darkness before moving on.
You can also hack retinal scanners, meaning you don’t absolutely have to grab dudes and cram their heads to them like an aggressive party guest forcing the birthday boy’s face into the cake. Goons can tell when something’s been hacked, but it’s not as conspicuous as an unconscious body on the floor. It’s all a matter of degree.
The Alarm System
Starting with Chaos Theory, a series of alarms does not mean game over. In fact, you can continue playing until the end, though it sometimes means all objectives except your primaries are cancelled. Getting four alarms also means enemies abandon their posts, making following any walkthrough or planning your movements much harder. It also effects your playing experience; the game is more fun on lower alarm levels. Often, an enemy on a low alarm level will be sitting in a chair with his back to you, just waiting to be grabbed. 0-3 alarm level makes enemies don helmets and body armour respectively, lessening the effectiveness of bullets or less-than-lethal attachments.
The upside of the more punitive systems that came in later and earlier instalments is that they gave you motivation to continue to be careful. If you mess up so badly you get a level four alarm, you are tempted to rush through it murdering everything that moves and running naked past the cameras singing You Can’t Catch Me, I’m The Gingerbread Man. The problem with this is, playing a stealth game like an first person shooter is almost painfully easy. If you feel the game is getting too hard, that option should be afforded to you, but it does sort of defeat the object.
Game Design & Unique Gameplay
In Chaos Theory, there were a variety of characters instruct you in your earpiece, depending on their expertise. As well as Grimsdottir (who had a voice and personality transplant after Pandora Tomorrow – and again for Blacklist of the seventh-gen), you had Redding, some nerd who knew his shit on weaponry. And a cockney bank robber inside a jail, who used rhyming slang that had to be be translated in the text box so the poor Americans could Understand this Mysterious Creature from Olde London Towne.
By far the best unique thing about Chaos Theory was the mission percentage. This gave you a score out of 100% for how well you completed the mission. It was dependent on how often you were spotted, raised an alarm, had a body discovered by an enemy and how many people you killed. No fatalities, no alarms, not being caught with your pants down and a completion of all objectives earned you 100%. In some cases, there were hidden, bonus objectives you had to figure out for yourself. This appeals to the perfectionism I have with games, stealth in particular. I know I’m not alone.
Chaos Theory introduced a comprehensive quick switch between two weapons. This was usually greatly useful because there were generally only two weapons, plus attachments, you were likely to want to use; the pistol and the launcher / rapid fire gun.
Until Chaos Theory, you could not move forward while holding someone. This made it difficult to gauge when and who to grab, because you couldn’t just walk them calmly away from their concerned colleague, but rather had to risk waiting to be caught in your tangled embrace. You couldn’t hurry people while they were talking to you, either, so you ran a higher risk of detection and had to put up with someone’s repetitious yammering.
Alternative play modes
There is a co-op mode introduced in Chaos Theory, using split screen. This split-screen is a major drawback, as there is to much crowding around one another; you can get injured by someone climbing down the same ladder as you, if they go faster and land on your head. The collision detection isn’t great, either, so you can find that it is difficult to get past each other in confined spaces, of which there are many.
When trying to get away from an advancing enemy, it’s quite aggravating to run into your colleague, who is taking up the entire corridor, sitting there solid as a titanium statue with a curious invisible forcefield around him. There isn’t as much separation as there could be in Chaos Theory, which was improved for Double Agent. Separating in Chaos Theory usually involves one person standing around uselessly waiting for their team-mate to do something.
The co-op mode is intended to work in tandem to single player, so these are different variations of the same levels with similar goals. It is not quite the same as single player though, involving significantly different play elements. There is an infuriating feature (sadly not dropped for Double Agent) that changes the pistol’s electromagnetic pulse so that you have to hold down the button. This is so the other person can sneak past.
This smacks of making up reasons to play co-operatively, when this is far from needed – not only is is fun to play co-op in many games, but in these Splinter Cells there are various manoeuvres that can be completed by pairs. Some of the co-op levels were chaotic and not that fun for stealth, while others were satisfyingly short, enabling you and a friend to fail to complete the level in various amusing ways without losing progress and getting annoyed at the need to repeat various uninteresting steps. This makes it funnier when someone messes up and is caught and allows more pissing about for amusement, which is what multiplayer is for.
For example, one mission involved one character grabbing a mark while the other opened a door. Aryan brother and I had great fun climbing up his trellis and perching on his window sill, trolling him and his guards. Not to mention the perpetual hilarity of switching off the lights on the level with the Palestinian NPC who said “You can never be too suspicious!” in a curiously Welsh accent.
Glitches
Splinter Cell games are generally pretty glitch free. Throughout the whole game series, there is only one other glitch that I found besides the admittedly quite serious Pandora Tomorrow debacle. In Chaos Theory, there was one level which supposedly had electro-chromic windows. These are walls that can be turned see-through or opaque with an electric charge. In my GameCube version at least, if you did this, everyone in the game would react as though the walls had changed their opacity, when actually they didn’t look any different. So I didn’t know when I was hidden and when I was proudly on display in all my squatting glory. I found it best to leave the walls alone.
Easter Eggs
In Chaos theory, there are several ways to piss Lambert off for your amusement. Playing around with Bruce Morgonholt, destroying important equipment, attacking civilians. My favourite is where you knock out the old geezer in the Penthouse level. Lambert yells at you and Sam bleats his excuses: “I’m sorry. I thought he was the enemy.” Then, if you kill the poor old man while he’s unconscious on the floor, Lambert will yell at you again and Sam will bleat the same excuse.
Some Easter eggs are hidden in plain site. There is crossover dialogue between co-op and single player, which you can hear both sides of if you play both. And on one mission, Lambert warns Sam about the alarms, and Sam says “Don’t tell me – three alarms and the mission is over.” No doubt referring to previous splinter cell games. To which Lambert replies: “Of course not. This is no video game, Fisher.”
Also, on the bank level, inside the treasurers office, if you approach the painting on the wall, there will be a hack option. Successfully hack and get hold of a solid gold bar, which works as a throwing object.
Controls & Game Mechanics
From Chaos Theory onwards, pressing the jump button while holding a body lets you quickly drop ’em. I never understood why Sam insisted on laying them tenderly down on the ground. Once you’ve punched someone in the head and knocked them out, a few extra bruises on the arms seem trivial.
The sniper rifle system of having to steady your hold by holding breath definitely adds a level of enjoyable tension to sniping, and being able to adjust your view so the third person camera points over the left or right shoulders is helpful for looking around walls and aiming at things beyond them while staying hidden.
Map Design
In any decent stealth map, there has to be adjustable terrain and map furniture. Poles, ditches, bodies of water and crawl spaces all provide alternative ways to move across level. Repeated plays of Chaos Theory showed there to be numerous ways to complete a level, often distinct from the way advised by your team back at headquarters. For example, in the bank level, the best way to get in is to waltz on through the main doors – which are automatic and mysteriously open for you without the front desk guard noticing, even though out of hours, he must have been the one who opened the doors for you – destroying the lights in the entrance way and the reception hall in order to avoid the cameras.
Like most games, Splinter Cell has one or two ways in mind for you to complete the level and often the advised way is not the best way. Sometimes, the obvious way is the best way after all, even when extended effort has been put into making a less convenient way. I don’t know if this is a mistake or intended as a red herring. Certainly, the ease of getting into the bank in Chaos Theory feels like a sterling bit of trolling.
And personally, I think it’s pretty odd for a secret agent to be using a lift, yet not a single one of these games with without one. I always think how embarrassing it would be to be caught standing in a lift wearing a wet suit and night goggles. Like that scene from Spiderman 2 where he loses his powers.
Saving Systems
From Chaos Theory onwards, you can save any time, a drastic improvement from Pandora Tomorrow with its checkpoint system. It takes a while to save, but it’s better than the alternative. Besides, you don’t have to save every five minutes. It’s just good to know the option is there, especially if you’re a perfectionist and you want that 100% mission rating. When you have one bit you can’t do out of a sequence of bits you can, having to repeat the bits you aren’t getting wrong over and over again is just plain annoying.
However, it doesn’t have any mid-level automatic saving system to compliment manual saving. Having to manual save all the time interrupts immersion. You can also sometimes save yourself in awkward positions due to mistakes or glitches, and without any autosave or load previous save option, you might have to restart the level.
A better system is the Deus Ex: Human Revolution system of and any-time save, plus autosave, plus “load previous autosave” option, so if there is a bug, the player can go back to a recent earlier save and hopefully override it. But of course, DEHR is a much more recent game, thus has the technological edge; its autosave can operate during play and won’t interrupt you. Vitally, multiple options are the way forward, as different people have different play types, some preferring the slick and uninterrupted to-bad-you-lost arcade style, others favouring an RPG style. Surely stealth games, slow as they are, suit the RPG better-safe-than-sorry style.
Instruction
All Splinter Cell games have a tendency to assume things. The first level of Chaos Theory mentioned the EEV, without bothering to explain it or how to bring it up. I got to the final level without knowing that, if you stand in bright light, you can’t be seen by enemies wearing night-vision goggles. You learn that in the earlier Pandora Tomorrow, which I played second. Read the manuals, and be prepared to go online sometimes.
Much of the information is available on loading screens, which makes it subject to chance. They try to make the information relevant to the level you’re about to play, but the developers and I differ as to what is the most useful information. It took me a while to figure out how to destroy the active amour in Seoul, and Double Agent kindly never told me about deactivating laser grids by using guards. In Chaos Theory, they talked about “staying in his electronic shadow” which is ridiculous. Knock him out and put him where you want him. In that particular instance, the bank level, you could completely avoid the first laser grid by bum-shuffling over the desk to the right, anyway.
In a way, it’s nice to be able to figure certain things out for yourself, but being told to do things one way when that way is actually worse is a bit confusing. It makes you wish the developers had put in a button for removing Sam’s ear piece.
Here are the four games from best to worst in my estimation: LINKS
1) Chaos Theory
2) Pandora Tomorrow
3) Splinter Cell [original]
4) Double Agent
You Must Insult The Ones You Love 