Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory post-release

The PC demo was fucking awesome...I couldn't stand the first one, and was sorta won over by Pandora, but Chaos was fucking great...Can't wait to pick this up...

OXM is hinting that it may be their highest-rated game ever. I've been playing the demo a lot, and I think this game is gonna rock. Multiplayer and co-op look awesome. I'll be pre-ordering this one (something I don't normally do).

I'm really exicted for this game. The videos I've seen of it look great. What's the offical release date? I know it's soon, but I can't remember the exact date.

(Side note: Jacob--I don't know where that sig came from, but it's just about the funniest damn thing I've ever read.)

3/31/05, I believe.

I am also very excited for this game. I like that they adopted the deathmatch as an option for competitive play. After a while, everyone just seemed to be playing deathmatch anyway, ditching the objectives.

Co-op sounds very very impressive. And Ubisoft was really good about timeley downloadable content keeping the game fresh (hint hint BUNGIE!!!).

I don't know if it will dethrone Halo 2 for me, but I will definitely put my money down for it.

9.9

http://img236.exs.cx/img236/4343/scctroptimized9pw.jpg

Holy Hell!!!! I feel like drinking something so i can spit it at my monitor in pure shock.

Fucking figures this game would come out on the day I move cross-country. By the time I get everything unpacked and get my cable service set up again, everybody is going to be an old pro at this game already. Gah.

Of course, this is the same magazine that gave Rogue Agent and Tork "good" ratings but seeing as it's Splinter Cell, I'll take the bite. The demo was very addictive.

Maybe until about three days after you play, then our necks will be snapped as you say those immortal words: "Hey there, Huckleberry."

Well congrats Slater.

I'll be out of the country doing shit as well...you've always been a better spy...you can kill me lots the first/second week of april.

co-op is going to be awesome.

Yeah, I've been crossing my fingers for a stealth Batman game for years. Never gonna happen, though. For whatever reason, the Bat-license only seems to go to the worst, most uncreative developers on the planet.

I'd like to see Splinter Cell's gameplay used in a horror game as well. Honestly, I'm shocked that nobody has really tried stealth horror yet. It seems like such a no-brainer.

The stealth-horror idea was used a lot in Sony's Forbidden Siren. Of course, the amount of frustration that came with that title pretty much sunk it. Hopefully, SEGA and Monolith's The Condemned will do it better.

I gotta say, I am very excited about Chaos Theory's release next week.

I got into Pandora Tomorrow's multiplayer late last time, and I sucked horribly at it, but it was very very fun once you figured out the levels.

I think the co-op mode looks fantastic though. Can't wait to try it out with you chud guys.

Actually, isn't the new Batman Begins video game being described as Splinter Cell-Lite? GameSpot just had a hands-on with it. Doesn't sound like anything great but not terrible like I was anticipating.

OK, I'm pretty confused. What day is the game coming out? It's listed differently everywhere. The new Best Buy ad says it's available Wednesday, Circuit City says Thursday for the consoles and Friday for PC, Gamestops' website says Monday, which is listed most places as the official release date. I plan on picking up my copy at Meijer's (where I work) at midnight whenever it's available. Nobody there knows anything about anything, so I didn't even ask, and I just want to get it as soon as possible.

I think I'll just end up going there at midnight every night until I get it.

I'm in the same boat as you, Mr. Corkum.
I've seen it being released for everyday this week except Friday.

As long as it IS this week, I'll be fine.

Well, its usually the same case with all big releases, but it always comes down to this rough scenario:

Specialty stores (EB games, Gamestop, etc) get the game Tuesday...usually only enough copies for pre-orders for the bigger games

Chain Stores (best buy, target, CC, wal mart) all get the game at random times depending on the store's geographical location, but they most certainly won't be selling it on Tuesday just because they are dicks (save for a few stores here and there). On the west coast, you would be lucky to get a new game before Thursday from best buy or circuit city. They just dont put it out on the shelf till then.

It. Is. Mine.

Impressions/ Fanboi babbling later.

Sphinx. pull yourself away from the damn game and give us some impressions!!!


The only bad thing about being on the west coast is that we are always getting the late shipment of games.

Lowest review so far is the Gamespot one (not surprising).

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/...l3/review.html


Call me crazy, but the score does not correspond to the review at ALL. Most of the review is glowing praise, but it still scored lower than "In all, Chaos Theory holds onto the Splinter Cell mantle of being one of the best-looking games out there." And yet, a 9 in graphics? The game's the best in the series, but it got a lower score than SC:PT (and Republic Commando, for that matter). Hmmm....


Oh well. At least the review itself is overwhelmingly positive. I should be picking this up hopefully later this week (and get raped on Live 'cuz I never played SC:PT online 'cuz I got it too late).


So many games I want to play....

Ya i find gamespot's review numbers to be totally random compared to what they actually write.

Their writeups are well thought out, and do a good job of pointing out what is WRONG with a game. All the other gaming sites just gush about the AAA titles of the year. But gamespot's actually scoring comes off very harsh and this one didnt seem to match up at all.

They are the only site to have said that the multiplayer co-op is not brilliantly done. which is interesting.

OK, I've dutifully pried myself away from Live to file this report. The "game" is really three wholly independent games on one disc- the single-player campaign ("Solo" mode). The co-op game, which I experienced through XBox Live (but you can also play it split-screen or on system link). Finally, the multiplayer "Versus" mode, which can be experienced on Live or through system link (but you'll need four XBoxes and four televisions. And four friends.)

Single-player campaign- Well, I've just progressed twenty minutes or so into the first level, the "Lighthouse" level. The gameplay is realistic to a fault, just like the two previous installments. Graphics are even better this time on the Box, the first frames of the game showing off spectacular weather effects. They say this is a new engine but damn, it looks very much like the old engine with just a few tweaks and refinements. Perhaps the improvement is more pronounced on the PS2 or Cube editions. When Pandora Tomorrow was released this time last year I didn't own a digital sound system, so I can't fairly compare the old to the new... all I can say is, with Dolby Digital 5.1, the game is atmospheric as hell. Straight up some of the best use of sound-placement in a video game.

As far as gameplay changes... minimal. He has a knife. OK, fine, but that's nothing revolutionary. The other big change is the ability to customize (to some extent) your arsenal before each mission as either Stealth, Assault, or Redding's Recommendation (something in between fine-tuned for the particular mission at hand). Mostly the game seems to adjust to your desired mode of play, but Sam is still (realistically) fragile when bullets and grenades come in his direction. If you want to play Assault, be prepared to reload the game a lot.

There's a lot more humor and personality in the single-player game than I recall from Pandora Tomorrow. It's obvious that Ubisoft is building Fischer into a cinematic action hero- he's more sarcastic and world-weary than ever. And some of the in-game cutscenes look cut directly from The Hunt For Red October. All in all single-player looks to be more of the same, with signature Tom Clancy rah-rah Americentric plotlines fleshed out with a slightly exaggerated vision of real military capabilities and tactics. Whatever your opinion was of the first two game's single player mode, you'll feel the same way about Chaos Theory.

OK, onto the second mode (really, a whole second game). Co-op. I have to admit my experience in this was limited to one 10 minutes session, playing through the "Training" mission, and I was paired with some guy who had obviously completed the Training mission a couple dozen times. He would run forward to some objective and yell (through the Live Communicator headset) "Hey, get over here! Press the black button. No, stand in front of me and press the black button. Now press 'A' and take two steps left. Pull out your pistol and aim at the blinking thing. NO the other blinking thing..."

Yeah, ten minutes of that.

I obviously had no time to so much as read the descriptions of what I was doing, much less how and why we were doing it. I did pick up a few things... First, Co-op is very much about team work, as it should be. Certain moves can only be done by two spies working together, and that's critical for climbing certain walls, opening some doors, etc. The trick is to figure out where to apply these techniques, like a puzzle game... but the old Splinter Cell formula is still in play, so sometimes you're trying to find a way over a wall, and sometimes you're zapping cameras and strangling guards. The co-op game LOOKS very much like the single-player game and the controls are similar. The storyline, what little I saw of it, bears no relation to the single-player mode. As I say it's an entirely separate game. I believe Co-op could be very enjoyable... if you pick a good partner who can communicate and strategize. Also, Co-op games can be saved at the end of each mission, so you don't feel obligated to try to complete the game in one sitting.

More in the next post...

Finally, "Versus" mode. It's the reason I shelled out $50. I played a couple hours of this, and also went through all the tutorials and the overviews of the new maps. Damn, it's better than ever. The core of the gameplay is still the same- Spies and Mercs, two on two. Mercs get all the firepower and spies get all the tech toys. Mercs play in first-person view and spies have the magical ability to watch their own backs. It's a great formula, and Ubisoft has made modifications that make the game fairer, more complex, and flat out more entertaining.

Here's a few of the better changes- Mercs are deadlier. Yeah, in principle they were already the killing squad and smart spies avoided head-on confrontation... But in reality the spies in PT could be every bit as deadly as the Mercs. Part of this was the HUGE advantage of being able to see your surroundings better, and having better vision modes. Also, mercs were too easy to stun, and once stunned the spy could take his time breaking his opponent's neck.

Those happy spying days are long past. Mercs have a couple of devastating close combat moves now, most impressive of which is a "spin" attack that will throw the spy to the ground, regardless of which side of you he's standing or crouching. It makes you a little dizzy, so "spinning" constantly is no strategy, but it does help even the odds at close range. Also, the merc has a couple extra guns to choose from. The fully automatic machine gun is very powerful at medium range, but even better is the shotgun- it will take down a spy in one shot at close range. So spin, and while they're on the ground one shot with the shotgun. Dead spy.

There's a bunch of new gadgets, some more useful than others... Mercs get a new kind of mine (a poison mine, which rapidly saps away the life of a spy but has no effect on mercs). They also get a 'Camera Net uplink', which is pretty nifty. Every map (including the older maps from Pandora Tomorrow) are outfitted with a handful of special indestructable cameras in strategic positions, and mercenaries can 'link' up to those cameras and look around at any time. They can turn them and zoom in and out and get a pretty good view of the main thoroughfares of each zone, and there's really nothing a spy can do to avoid it... other than knowing where the cameras are and keeping far out of their way.

On the other side, spies get an active camouflage, similar to the invisibility devices from Metal Gear Solid or Ghost in the Shell (how's that for realistic?) It's kinda crappy, though... it has only a short battery life, and it doesn't fool motion detectors, and if you move too fast you become visible. Better is the added functionality of the "Sticky Cam". In PT, you could toss a sticky cam on a wall and look around, and even set off a little booby trap... but once you needed to do something else, and you cancelled out of the camera mode, you lost that camera forever. It was pretty impractical. NOW spies can look back at their last sticky cam at any time... meaning you could be on the other side of the map looking at a critical spot, guiding your partner along. That's cool.

Other cool things include even better use of the Live Communicator and headset- Now, as a spy, you can shout into the headset and mercs will hear you. That's handy for creating distractions, and its fun taunting em. Too bad they hunt you down and kill you for it... mercs have no sense of humor. The heads-up displays for both sides are a little smarter... It's easier to see objectives, and the mercs have a much better reticule-sound sensor thingy. Other nice touches include a low hum when the mercs use their lasers, and that results in less sound sensitivity. And the new maps have opportunities for spies to use their snazzy dual moves from the co-op game (and mercs now have an opportunity to get easy double kills with one grenade).

About the maps- There are several popular maps brought over, almost unchanged, from Pandora Tomorrow. I played several rounds on the fantastic Riverside Mall stage and the ONLY changes I detected was the introduction of the armored cameras for the merc's Camera Net ability, and the floor in the Hi Fi area now creaks. That's it. I haven't tried the other maps (including the Bank, Warehouse, Museum, and Deftech Belew). I assume the changes to those maps have been minimal as well.

But the new maps... well, they're fantastic. You won't be spending much time in Riverside Mall after you get a chance to play in the Aquarius, the Club, or the Factory. They're all BIG... I think the biggest map from the first game was probably Deftech, and all these maps feel bigger. EAch map has its own personality, with one (Factory) feeling very much like Deftech, another (Aquarius) plays somewhat like the Museum, and so on. They all have unique touches that, in my opinion, inject a lot of life into the game.

Take Aquarius as one example. The spies must meet three out of five possible objectives on the map. Unlike Pandora Tomorrow several different kinds of objectives may be contained on one map at the same time. For instance, one objective in Aquarius is a retrieval mission- you must take a "hard drive" from one location to a safe spot elsewhere. There are also "neutralize" objectives (similar to the standard Pandora Tomorrow stand-at-the-objective-for-twelve-seconds missions). Finally, there are bombing objectives, in which you place a bomb and the mercs have about 25 seconds (that can be a loooong time) to destroy your bomb.

On top of having multiple objectives, completing any single objective has some effect on the map that makes life easier for the spies. The "retrieval" objective, for instance, is difficult to do... but if you accomplish it, all the laser traps on the stage are deactivated, and those are more or less the only traps on the map. Complete one of the neutralize missions and most of the lights go out. Successfully place a bomb and several rooms fill up with thick steam... which the spies can see through with their heat vision, but mercs are left virtually blind.

So the balance shifts as the game goes on- mercs start out with a well-defended fortress and the spies must gradually steal away their advantage. It's a hell of a lot of fun, and the strategy is quite a bit more complicated (and therefore less predictable) than the PT experience. And that's just ONE of the new maps. Some other maps have entirely different mechanics. One in particular, the Orphanage, is so radical that it will either be a titanic battle of skill or a spy-shooting gallery.

All in all I lost track of a couple hours playing Chaos Theory "Versus" mode. It's better than ever, in my opinion the best Live experience possible, as long as you can reliably find three people who can enjoy the give-and-take nature of the game. I can't wait to play a few rounds with other Chewers.

Guys, don't worry about variations on numbers once ratings get that high on Gamespot reviews. They don't appear to feel any need to be specific about just HOW great a game is. When they rate a game a nine, they seem to deem that enough, lose focus and randomly pick the number following the decimal. Example: Half-Life 2 is rated a 9.2 while Halo 2 is a 9.4.

Edit- After watching the live review, I have a gripe with them saying shit like "Though the premise of the story is a techno-thriller that lives up to the Tom Clancy name, storytelling has never been Splinter Cell's strong suit, and Chaos Theory is no exception." (that was version from the written review) Maybe they should write Ubisoft and tell them that Splinter Cell needs more Russian pistol specialists with English sounding names, cowboy fetishes, and wonderful, teased contemporary Japanese hairstyles who, inexplicably, have managed to retain the attitude, characteristics, and world view of a spoiled 11 year old momma's boy even after enduring the extreme hardships required to not only gain an impossible level of skill with a pistol, but also become the leader of an elite Soviet paramilitary unit.

They do have a point though. Splinter Cell's stories are boring and generic as shit. It's pretty much a series that's all about the gameplay (and well, when you're like me and find the gameplay as equally boring that doesn't leave much to cling onto).

ya one thing that i never liked was that in the first two games, they ended so abruptly that I felt the game had screwed up or something.

The story just gets you from locale to locale.

Nice impressions Sphinx. Hopefully we will join you later tonight and get that training session out of the way quicly.

Realism is not an excuse for uninteresting storytelling. What's boring isn't stuff that could really happen, it's stuff that could really happen used within a story that's utterly generic, devoid of any personality, desperately straightforward and utterly lacking in memorable characters, turn of events or dialogue.

Pardon my ignorance here... I'll be picking this one up soon. But, I was wondering, the whole Vs. mode, is it easy enough to get into if I spend some time with the manual or any tutorials? I just signed up for live recently and I have Pandora Tomorrow. I tried the Vs. mode (definitely need to get a headset... will soon) and didn't really know what to do and probably just ended up pissing people off. I tried on PS2 first before I set up Live and got banned from a game. D'oh! I can handle the Merc well enough, but I think I need some spy advice in order to be effective. Until I get the hang of it I'll keep myself busy with Rainbow Six 3 and Halo. Rainbow Six Terrorist Hunt online is awesome. But I REALLY want to enjoy some Splinter Cell...

Cool, thanks Mr Singer. I'll have to wait until I get the headset, then hopefully I can get my feet wet and hook up with some of you guys sometime. Might be hard to coordinate though. I still need to figure out the inner workings of Live... buddy lists and all that. I have nothing as of yet. With all luck, I'll see you guys online sometime.

I just got back with my copy. I'm, a complete Splinter Cell noob and am trying not to be overwhelmed. I am enjoying it so far.

about to hit up live, but as far asi single player.

The light house stage is really a great graphical showcase and it showcases a lot of the open ended approach that they are trying to imbue this game with.

I for one was sorely longing for something like this. no longer do i have to care if i actually get seen by someone. I can actually have a shoot out and not lose the mission.

I seriously can't get enough of the knife. I love the gurgling gasps that the guards make when you slit their throats, as sadistic as that sounds. I would have enjoyed some blood, which could have been a negative of going for a knife kill (leaving blood stains would raise some eyebrows for the rest of the AI), but hey im impressed so far.

ADDENDUM

Jesus christ. The multiplayer maps are GIANT. I was playing with Corkum tonight and we had no fucking clue what was going on. But near the end of the night I slowly started to understand the dynamic nature of the levels in "story mode". The makeup of the maps actually change as the spies complete objectives.

Also, once I came to the realization that co-op moves are neccessary in Vs. Mode for the spies to get to certain objectives my outlook on the maps became a bit clearer.

I gotta say that the Mercs are no longer helpless spy fodder. Their spin move and charge move, and finishing move are actually quite powerful and makes the mercs quite formidable. The shotgun is fun to use . But this is going to seriously take some walk throughs to get used to all the maps. We need to set up a CHUD time so we can all just figure out the maps.

Haven't done co-op yet, but I am extremeley pleased with vs. right now and its ginormous options.

Just picked up my copy after some trade ins. I'll probably get my hands on a headset any day now. When I do I'll do my best to at least be competent in the Vs. mode. Besides that, the headset will enhance some of the other stuff I already play from time to time. I idn't get the fancy collectors edition, although it does look really nice.

Sounds good. I have the others but never played them much. It's a problem I have with most games. Lack of focus. This one sounds a bit more forgiving in the single player game, no instant failures, so I should be able to get more into it. I have to find free time here and there to play.... usually when my finace is away. No late gaming nights for me dangit!

Thank God, because I'm not really a stealth kind of person and didn't want to have to sneak all over the place, brute force is a option I use often. It's one reason I didn't ever pick up the first two.

I'm up for some of this tonight. I'll be getting on about 11pm or so, Eastern time.

Went and got my copy today at lunch (it's sitting in my trunk, taunting me..). Gonna play through some single player this evening to get re-introduced to the SC world.. (played orginal but only rented PT). Maybe I'll see some of you on Live soon..

It's the same thing for me. So far in single player I've been trying to sneak around, but I pretty much always end up fighting. I think I just need a bit more practice to get out of Halo mode, which I'm still stuck in. Because of that I'm definitely better as a Merc in multiplayer than a spy. I won't be on tonight, but I will definitely be on all night Thursday.

I played the single player for a little bit last night. Not enough to get a real impression of the game, but I can at least tell that it's pretty. One question though: Is Dennis Haysbert not the voice of Lambert anymore? The voice I heard sounds close to Haysbert, but not quite. I could be wrong, but it just didn't sound like him. Anyone know?