Reviewed by: Radchek
Developer: Ubisoft
Publisher: Ubisoft

This third instalment of the Splinter Cell series continues the adventures of super-agent Sam Fisher. The storyline begins with the theft of uber hacking-technology. The usual Tom Clancy style of conspiracy theories & double-crossing then builds up over the ten levels of the game.

For those who’ve never played the Splinter Cell games, it’s a third-person-view stealth-‘em-up. Your goal is to complete objectives (kill someone, steal data, record conversations, etc) in various locations while keeping as low a profile as possible.

To aid you, Fisher has a ninja-esqe jumpsuit filled with sensors which tell you how visible you are while hiding in the shadows and how much noise you can make without being detected. His trade-mark green visor gives you various visual options including night and thermal-vision. Weapons include a silenced-pistol, combat knife and a rifle which has auto, sniper and shotgun modes. The rifle can also fire attachments including shockers (to electrocute people) and wireless cameras (to keep an eye on areas when you’re not there).

You can jump, crouch, run, climb up & along pipes, sneak around and hang precariously from the edge of buildings. Keeping to the shadows and being quiet lets you sneak pass people unnoticed. Rather than just shooting enemies, you can creep up behind them and grab ‘em. This gives options of interrogation, making them open locked doors or maybe even just being a human shield. A choke hold or a knife through the heart will incapacitate your victim. You even pick up bodies and hide them so they won’t be found by patrolling guards.

Finishing a level rewards you with a video-cut scene which lays out the story for the next level.

In addition to the solo campaign, there is a Co-op and Versus mode. Co-op mode lets you play a story campaign with another player. It also provides several new moves which let you boost, lift, throw and resuscitate your buddy. Versus Mode provides deathmatch or objective based games. One side plays the normal third-person-view spy while the other side play FPS-view Mercenaries.

As with it predecessors, Chaos Theory’s visuals and sounds are great. It very rarely suffers from dodgy camera angles that jinx some 3rd-person view games. The character control layout is one of the best I’ve used for a third-person game. Level design is excellent, with some corkers such as the Bank Robbery level and the Rural Japanese Retreat. Ten levels seem just about right for the solo campaign, any more than that would have started to get tiresome. It took me between 16-17 hours to complete the solo campaign (not in one stretch, I might add).

Annoyingly, SC:CT doesn't have a training level like its predecessors; it has 8 or 9 long-winded videos that tell you how to do things instead. It took me nearly ten minutes to find an explanation of how to hack an electronic lock.

The levels are very open and you can chose to be a ninja (and sneak through the level) or take the Jack Bauer approach (shoot and torture everything that moves); whatever you choose, the end of a level is always the same and your actions don’t have an effect on the set storyline. I found it very odd for a stealth game not to reward you for being stealthy. The most you get is a stealth statistics page at the end of each level.

The enemy AI is good and especially intuitive when engaged in combat; enemies will provide covering fire for each other and use furniture or doorways for protection whenever possible. Most of the glitches from previous games have been ironed out. If you dump a body against a wall, it’ll slump there perfectly without the ‘head disappears into wall’ glitch that occurred in the prequels.

The cut-scene videos look good but the storyline isn’t particularly gripping. Michael Ironside (the voice of Sam Fisher) was inspired casting, though. Advertising rears its ugly head in the cut-scenes more than once. I guess honking products in-game is a necessary evil these days but Airwaves Chewing Gum? Wtf? One cut-scene sees Sam Fisher having a conversation with his boss while busily opening a pack of Airwaves. I half-expected him to turn to the camera and say:

“Hi there! My name’s Sam Fisher. While stealthy snapping the necks of hapless terrorists all day, I like to chew Airwaves! Mmmmm…”

The solo-campaign hasn’t got much in the way of replay value once you’ve completed it. I was as stealthy as possible while playing so I may give it another go in a few months and opt for the more violent approach.

Co-op and Versus Mode are very well designed. The FPS mercenary game-engine in Versus can proudly stand side-by-side next to most pure FPS games. The objective based games in Versus require you to know each level quite well, which is a small price to pay for getting a bit of in-depth multiplayer gaming, IMHO.

Both modes have Voice options so you don’t have to mess around typing while someone is shooting at you. Co-op and Versus cunningly require that you play through some short training levels before you can play for the first time (presumably to cut down on the amount of noobs playing). I played the Co-op campaign with a friend over the net and the new moves are very easy to pick so long as you’ve played the solo-campaign.

My real problem in Multiplayer, as always, was people. In Versus, everybody wants be the spy. Most of the servers available had restricted the Mercs capabilities (i.e. limited weapons), making it a very-one sided game. Out of the 15+ games I played over the course of a week, I only found one server (which has since vanished) that used normal options and had players who tried to use teamwork.

If this were the first game of its type I would give it top marks. However, there’s nothing new in the solo campaign. The characters haven’t evolved throughout the series and the storylines all seem to have blurred together. Enemies that happily walk around in the dark and ‘Sam Fisher sized air-vents’ are starting to get questionable, too.

You could play the SC series back-to-back and the only difference would be the odd new gadget and revamped graphics. If you read Bobiroka’s review of the original which appeared three years ago, it might as well be exactly the same game. For the next one, Ubisoft need a Gordon Ramsey type advisor who’ll “stick a fork up their fookin’ arse if they don’t buck up their ideas!”

I’m all for sticking with a winning formula but the SC sequels have been lazy. Compare them with a game like GTA, which added tons of features & fresh ideas to each new release and you may see my point.

Negative comments aside, it’s an enjoyable game and Ubisoft deserve a gold star for the Co-op campaign and Versus mode. A final bonus is that you can pick it up a tenner these days, which is definitely value-for-money in my book!