Dropped this game mainly because of everything here feeling so extremely risky and unreliable. Usually, my strategy while playing stealth games is the "can't be found if there are no enemies" approach, which involves killing or neutralizing all enemies I find. Problem is, in this game I found that to be extremely unreliable. Multiple times, I surveyed the scene, shot an enemy with what I assumed was a silenced weapon, only to miss even though I was aiming right at his head and triggering an alert instantly. I also felt like it was very unclear what the enemy could actually see. Even though you have a sound and shadow meter at the bottom, which in theory should work excellently to show how noticeable you are, in practice I found it to be pretty damn unreliable. I was found by enemies multiple times even though my light meter showed that I was in pitch-darkness. And it is also often unclear which way an enemy is facing, making you get detected easily even when you think the enemy is looking away. I only got three levels in, and gave up there because of how frustrating it was to sneak past everything just to trigger an alarm that you couldn't even see. I may return to this game in the future, because I really do not consider this to be a bad game, but at the moment, I feel like I don't have the energy to continue. The soundtrack is absolutely one of my favourite soundtracks of all time though. Amon Tobin is a bloody genius!

Definitely earns its praise as one of the best stealth games ever made. Not as trial and error heavy as the previous entries, you can finally quick save too. Most of the levels allow for several different ways to tackle them, the Panama bank being my favorite. Sound and lighting is as great as ever, especially the latter. The soundtrack is also fantastic and not what you'd expect for a stealth game.

The most impressive thing about the game though is the enemy AI. It's better than games today, which is both sad and amazing. They notice when a door is left open or has been hacked, computer's been turned on, or when a person in a conversation has gone quiet. When lights are shot out or turned off they take out a glow stick to check the area, the list goes on. Highly recommended for anyone looking for a stealth fix

Chaos Theory a lot of the time feels like playing a horror game where you're the monster/killer, you take out all the lights around 2 guards, whistle at them to get their attention then circle around and pick one off and see the other one turn around and notice his absence before freaking out, being seconds away from him also being taken out from behind.

It feels amazing to do that kind of shit. though...if I'm being honest the real star of the game are the interrogations, they are amazing, these are some of the funniest guards I've seen in a game. One time a guard told me everything he knew without hesitation then claimed he was the biggest coward ever and told me that he pissed himself which was hilarious. Another time I saw 2 guards talking about a certain ninja that did some stuff in Georgia in 2004, one guard even claiming he was attacked by set ninja. Either way he can now claim he was attacked twice by a ninja as the second I grabbed and interrogated him he started going on about how he knew there were ninjas there and Sam was really confused by the whole thing and when threatening to kill him the guard just said that it'd be cool to be killed by a ninja. One time a guard thought the whole thing was a training exercise and Sam went along and used that as a way to get info lol.

I could go on but you really have to experience this game for yourself as it's such a huge leap forward from the first game that I don't see any reason to go back at this point.

All the annoying things from the first game have all been either fixed or gotten rid off completely and the level design has never been better. Every level is designed to be done in multiple ways, oftentimes exploring rewards you with secret entries that will make your life easier or maybe a side objective, sometimes items or just a guard with important info for you. You can do every mission without killing any guards, I think the same was true of the first one but it was clear that sometimes you kinda had to kill the guards to make your life way easier, here it's only a matter of planning ahead what you'll do as you have a lot more gadgets at your disposal to get past the guards. The game does a good job at making the game get harder as it goes with new enemy types that serve as counters to you with thermal vision, making it way harder to sneak past them but not so hard that they become annoying/unfair, the amount of turrets has been toned the fuck down from the last game where they were useless in all but one area, I think I only saw like 2 in the whole game.

I liked how you can choose to either leave or save 2 pilots from an explosion at one point despite your orders. There isn’t any reward nor do you ever hear from those pilots again but I kinda liked that tbh.

Chaos Theory in every way lives up to the hype and stands the test of the time, unlike with the og there weren’t any moments where I thought yeah this hasn’t aged well or wow this really feels like a 2000s game huh.

It’s just back to back great levels, not every level is perfect and amazing but out of 10 missions, the worst level simply being really good (bathhouse) speaks to the game’s quality. Cargo Ship and the Bank mission were my fav’s in the game as to me they felt the most open with Bank even giving you 2 ways of entering the bank itself, either through the front door or from above, repelling down from the roof.

There's some really tense moments in the game. In one of the missions I had to access a server but the door that would lead into the server was stuck due to a blackout I assume and some people were also stuck just outside of the server room. After lookin around for another way to get in I managed to find a vent that let me enter from above, once I accessed the server, seconds later the power went back on and I only had a few secs to get out so I had to use the rope i used to climb down to get back up as lights were slowly coming back on around me and those people were approaching, it created for a really tense moment where I didn't know whether or not I was gonna make it or if I would have had to restart from last quicksave (last quicksave was like 7 minutes beforehand btw). Obviously that's just an example and one that was obviously scripted to happen but there's plenty of non scripted tense moments, having guards walk past you in the dark as you think about whether you are too close to them or not, interrogating someone and seeing another guard come close to you and overhear, wondering if it'd be worth to knock the guard out now or try and move and look for a better spot to knock him out so you can deal with the other guard without having the body seen, etc etc.

I’m looking forward to trying out the coop at some point with a friend even though the way to get it to work is a bit complicated from what I’ve seen but I’ve also heard nothing but positive things about it so it’ll prb be worth the trouble. This is most definitely a game that I will come back and replay countless times.

The best the franchise ever put out, everything came together in Chaos Theory.
Starting with the gameplay, it’s tense and sharp, stealthily skulking through the dark with nothing but Sam’s goggles indicating where you are, grabbing an enemy are interrogating him for information and sometimes getting hilarious feedback.

The game holds up very well even to today’s standards, the dynamic lighting and weather physics still hold up.

If you like stealth games look no further that Chaos Theory!

Guards in stealth games have received more ridicule than they ever deserved. It’s easy to point out how they don’t notice things real people would notice, or how they forget about intruders they saw less than a minute ago, but realism rarely makes a game more fun. If guards were perfectly astute, stealth would be nearly impossible, and the unpredictability of human behavior would make it a frustrating game of trial-and-error. Instead, they’re given a set of patterns that allow players to make plans, and sharp enough senses to only punish definite errors. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory does a great job of communicating these parameters, with a visibility meter broken into four distinct sections, and a similarly segmented noise gauge. All it takes is one look at the meters to see what gave you away, and to know what to avoid in the future. Ideally, this level of clarity would minimize the compulsive savescumming the genre is often criticized for, but Chaos Theory falls at the last hurdle with the aforementioned over-astuteness that makes these tools nearly useless. The visibility meter being broken into four sections gives the impression that as long as you’re in the darkest quadrant, you’re as good as you could be, but this is far from true. Instead, it’s a weird sort of tiered binary, where being in total darkness means guards won’t see you even when you’re nose to nose, but being one tick above that means you can be spotted from roughly five meters out, with the distance increasing from there. Since all the levels are within buildings and enclosed spaces, what this really means is that you’re either invisible or not, with the smallest missteps leading to instant detection. The sound meter fares slightly better, but sounds other than your footsteps have their own inconsistencies. Even with subsonic ammo and a suppressor, shooting windows will have guards running straight to you instead of towards the distraction. It makes the stealth system the worst of both worlds, where it’s too realistic to be much fun, but with enough unrealistic elements in such sharp contrast that it’s almost laughable. What’s a shame is that with a few patches to make the visibility meter work more linearly, and for the distractions to be more useful, Chaos Theory would be a pretty good game. While weak level design would still hold it down, it would be fun enough to where I could recommend it to stealth fans. However, this game came out before the age of post-release patches, so I’m afraid that its full potential will forever go unnoticed.

Not only is this just peak Splinter Cell, this is peak stealth action gaming period. I can't overstate how well designed this game is an how much it refined the genre.

Firstly, this is a pretty good looking game for 2005. The dynamic lighting and shadows were very crisp and clean and added so much atmosphere to even the simplest looking room. The reason why I bring up visuals is because of the way they add to gameplay mechanics. Just like the original Thief series, you stay hidden from enemies in the dark and can be easily seen in the light. The clear, crisp shadows really adds to the consistency of whether you are hidden in the dark or not. I wish more games had visuals that impacted their core mechanics like this.

So the gameplay is good, it's really good. But what I really want to talk about is the soundtrack. This is, honest to god, one of the most refined and creative soundtracks I have ever heard from a videogame. Written and produced by electronica artist, Amon Tobin, the music mostly consists of heavy bass and percussion, and eerie, droning synth instrumentals. It's the perfect infiltration music and really goes the extra mile to pull the player into the world of Splinter Cell.

The original Splinter Cell had a lot of rough edges, but it was easy to see that smoothing those edges out could create something truly special. Thankfully, that's exactly what Ubisoft did with Chaos Theory. If Metal Gear Solid was about "tactical espionage action", then Chaos Theory is a tactical espionage thriller.

The level design is top-notch in this one. Every single stage takes you to a different part of the world, each with really fun scenarios. You almost always have more than one path you can take to reach your next objective. There's also a bit of replay value in how the game scores you on how stealthy you are, or with optional objectives, giving you reason to explore and learn the levels inside and out.

The dialogue in this game is actually one of the highlights for me. Sam Fisher is snarky and sarcastic and old. Grabbing guards to interrogate them always got a laugh out of me, as well as the banter that Sam has with his support team over the radio.

The game looks and sounds fantastic, and it kind of needs to, because sound and lighting are your bread and butter when it comes to stealth. The addition of a sound bar is ingenious, telling you how loud the current area is, and how loud you are. Sam's pistol can also temporarily disable any electronic device, excellent for creating a distraction, making darkness to hide in (without shooting out the lights), and turning off cameras.

Honestly, I can see why this game is held in high regard. I'll definitely return to replay it in the future. Deserving of the title of "one of the greatest stealth games ever made".