Rizzotto
An Australian that likes shooting things.
And no, my name has no relation to the phrase “Rizz”. Grow up.
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Me with a Mushroom Granny shaped neck: gulp "I don't know"
Unlike the first game where it was a bit too linear for any expression, there's multiple ways to tackle your objectives in Chaos Theory. Even the simple act of unlocking a secure door has multiple solutions. You can either hack the keypad, find the code by interrogating a guard, or find the code on an open desktop if you prefer to ghost the level instead.
Even areas where the game wants you to engage in combat, there's always a way to sneak by guards undetected rather than being boxed in and forced into a shootout like the original game.
On top of this, it helps a lot that 8/10 of the levels are brilliantly designed and all of them look beautiful for a game that came out in 2005. The dark and stormy Lighthouse and classic break-in styled Bank levels were standouts.
The only reason why I knocked off half a star is that the Seoul and Bathhouse levels were pretty crappy. The bathhouse level especially as it introduces enemies with heat vision goggles so they can perfectly see you in the dark which makes stealth against them in that tense bomb defusal sequence basically pointless. It amazes me I was even able to get a mission rating of 90% on the Bathhouse level on Hard difficulty.
Overall, Chaos Theory is a massive improvement over the original Splinter Cell and is a must-play for any fan of the stealth genre.
First off are the missions, which are the same from start to finish and have no variety at all. You'll be doing the same things such as having to consume an officer and disguise as him, then infiltrate some area and then just kill or destroy everything. Sometimes you have to control a shitty vehicle to "spice" it up a little.
Surely the combat when you get to the killing is where the fun begins? Right?
ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT!!!
Alex Mercer controls like a dog with zoomies which just had its dog food mixed with crack. You'll be slipping around over the environment because the studio thought it would be a good idea to make a ton of parkour animations when you sprint over anything that get you stuck on geometry or fuck with your momentum.
Then you got the actual combat and enemies. Starting with the game's lock on system, holy shit it's so bad. No Prototype, I do not want to cannonball into the random civilian that I'm not even looking at, I am aiming at a fucking attack helicopter that has been peppering me with homing missiles for five minutes. Speaking of, lets talk about the enemies. First off you got the military which will slowly chip away at your HP with their ARs at range or you got the 7 billion RPG soldiers that will Lee Harvey Oswald snipe you off-screen that will knock you off your feet EVERY SINGLE TIME. Every time Alex gets tickled by an explosion, he goes tumbling on his face. It's so annoying, it makes melee combat unviable and makes you resort to just throwing shit at them or dive kicking them from a distance. You'll also deal with tanks and helicopters that will also smother you with explosives with terrifying accuracy. Occasionally a random military soldier will call for a strike team which comprises of 4-5 attack helicopters trailing you with heat seeking missiles until you hide or kill them all. And this happens all the time that if you want to get to one place without triggering the entire military, you just have to disguise as someone and not do anything "suspicious"
Then there's the Hunters, which are these Amazing Bulk looking mutants. They suck even more. You have tons of powers at your disposable except they barely flinch to any attack. Don't bother stringing attacks against them, they'll hit you out of it with a flurry of attacks that eat through half your health. To stun them you need to charge up attacks, but it takes so long to charge an attack up that they'll pounce at you before you can let it rip. Any fight against more than one Hunter is a nightmare because they zip right up at you and stunlock you to death. The only reliable way to take them out is to either throw stuff at them, spam cannonball/diving blade slash or to unlock the one move where you can actually grab them.
You also get these really cool super moves, but the catch is you can only use them at full health. You will NEVER be at full health in fights and these super moves also have to be charged up, so pray a soldier doesn't hit you with a rocket or a hunter doesn't pounce you in that time, but who cares about praying it's gonna happen anyway.
To heal, you either have to be outside of combat for a slow auto-regen or consume enemies in combat, but you still get damaged during these animations so you end up taking more damage than healing. It's so stupid.
Don't even get me started on the awful boss fights, I don't have anymore energy left to talk about that shit.
I can't recommend this game at all unless you like funny aerial divekicks and cannonball moves that home into things and make them splatter. Maybe Prototype 2 will be better, but my hopes aren't up from this game.