If you don't buy this for Xbox, stop playing games
By Yahoo! Shopping User Apr 13, 2005 | 3 out of 3 found this Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory review helpful
Pros: Literally every aspect
Cons: Nothing at all
Let me tell you one thing before commencing my review. I got Halo 2 a few months ago. I finished it, enjoyed the single player and multiplayer, and guess what? I haven't touched it since I finished it. When I played the first Splinter Cell back i...n 2003, I was stunned. I hadn't seen any game like it. Pandora Tomorrow's single player campaign was good but was not as satisfying an experience as the original Splinter Cell's, since Pandora Tomorrow was made by Ubisoft Shanghai, and not the original Ubisoft Montreal studio. Let me tell you, the Splinter Cell series has no place on the PS2. The PS2 and GameCube Splinter Cells betray their fully fleshed out, awesome Xbox and PC counterparts. If you own only a PS2 or GameCube, get some good PS2 games like Jak, Ratchet, Devil May Cry, Metal Gear solid etc, but if you want to fully appreciate Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (or the previous two) in all its majesty, play it on Xbox or PC. Mark my words, there is no other game like Chaos Theory on any system to date. THIS is the best game on Xbox, no way does Halo 2 bag that prize. In this detailed review, I'm going to review each aspect of this exhilirating experience so I can get my simple message across: best game on Xbox. Chaos Theory is developed by Ubisoft Montreal, the studio responsible for the first Splinter Cell and the Prince of Persia series. Chaos Theory is a game that caters to every kind of gamer. The first two games limited you to stealth and were obviously linear, but Chaos Theory is leagues ahead in terms of design. Ubisoft Montreal did a brilliant job with level design, with none of the alternate pathways feeling contrived, all placed with subtle genius. It offers an immensely satisfying experience, and the single-player campaign alone holds replay value. There are so many ways of tackling objectives in a mission, or the mission as a whole, that you wonder how other action/adventure games haven't got it right. It never, ever feels old each time you stalk an unsuspecting enemy and slit his throat or stab him with your knife, or push him off a railing to the bottomless depths of the sea. The levels and encounters are never repetitive. A critical factor that adds to this freshness is the exceptional rag-doll physics. In the previous two games, every time you shot people in the head, they'd fall down the same way and recoil. Things are different here, and the rag-doll physics are nothing short of incredible. There are probably about fifty different ways of an enemy hitting the floor when he's struck by a bullet in the head, and this could also depend on the gun's distance from the target. It's simply brilliant. There are several new gameplay elements such as hacking into certain devices, temporarily disabling electronic objects with your pistol's secondary fire, lethal and non-lethal attacks, open-ended level design and multiple paths. If you haven't followed by now, the single-player campaign of an experience of immeasurable depth and immense satisfaction, and one that is simply just pure tension and fun. Now that I'm done with the gameplay, let's move on to Visuals and Audio. For some weird, psychological reason, if you don't enjoy Chaos Theory's gameplay, you would be mad to not say, "Are you watching a movie?" if you saw someone playing. In short, calling the visuals of this game "most realistic, beautiful, gorgeous, stunning damn eye-candy in the boundaries of our solar system" would be an understatement. I am NOT lying. One look at this game and you would have no option but to agree with me. The textures in this game are so realistic that you want to run your hand over a wet rock in Hokkaido; the lighting is so, so, so incredible that you'd be fooled into thinking it is an Xbox 2 game, the particle effects will cause you to go in for an eye surgery because they would have fallen off, and don't even get me started on the Godly animations of Sam Fisher and his adversaries because I've run out of words. To sum it up, this easily wins the award for Best Visuals on any system by a mile, or maybe two. The audio is stupendous. That's an undeniable fact. First off, the music in the missions is genius. Amon Tobin's variation dumps a megaton of intensity into the missions, depending on how tense the situation is. The briefings from your team are incredibly natural and movie-like and the NPC voice acting is phenomenal. Whether you're in Peru or New York or Tokyo, the NPCs of that particular place really immerse you and make you feel that you've actually come from New York to Japan, and that you're no longer in America, and that you're in hostile, foreign territory, where the accents are perfectly loyal to that region. The sound effects are excellent and the practical use of sound as a brilliant, organic gameplay mechanic should simply be commended wholeheartedly by people who have played or own Chaos Theory. Whew! Jeez, I've run out of gas now. All I have to say now about the cooperative missions is that there're just four missions, but don't whine. This is the best co-op game on the market now, and yes, it does offer a much more satisfying experience than Halo's co-op, and I am saying that wholeheartedly, even though there are only four co-op levels. There probably will be mission downloads via Xbox Live. I could write tons more on co-op alone, but you know that it's awesome. One last thing to mention about co-op is that the cooperative moves are jaw-dropping, such as torpedoing your teammate onto an unsuspecting guard. There are many more co-operative moves, but I'm seriously out of gas. Well, that's the end of my long detailed, 1000-odd words review. I hope you've got an idea of truly how inspiring this game is, and how it literally smacks everything else on the market with a club in all of its flawless aspects. A must-buy for any Xbox owner. Read more Less
