Its generally good, but never really made full use of its mechanics.

Chaos Theory's stealth system is quite similar to that of the Thief games. Your main method of remaining hidden is to keep in the shadows where enemies can't see you and to watch your footsteps so as to make as little noise as possible (or at the very least make less noise than whatever is happening in the background). But while this system worked well for Thief, its a much more awkward fit for the rest of Chaos Theory's gameplay.

First, and most obvious while playing, is the disconnect between visual and auditory cues in the environment compared to what the game actually recognizes in terms of gameplay. If you see a shadow, god only knows whether you can actually sneak in it. Sometimes its exactly how it looks and you can remain undetected as long as you're underneath it but far too often the shadow wont actually offer any meaningful coverage. The area may be darker, but not dark enough for enemies to actually ignore your presense (oddly, enemies can see you in practically any lighting that isnt complete darkness meaning 95% of the light meter is irrelevant so far as gameplay goes) or the shadow might offer no advantage at all since the game doesn't actually recognize it. And with the 3rd Person perspective, the disconnect between how you see the lighting and how the game percieves it is even more apparent than in other titles and thus even more frustrating when that mismatch works to your disadvantage.

The sound doesn't tend to work well either. The volume you produce will fluctuate wildly even under identical conditions. Walking at the same speed on the same type of floor can produce very different sound levels which makes anything but the slowest speed possible a large risk. And while you have some leeway since you're allowed to make noise thats quieter than anything in the background, this never actually connected well to what I could actually hear. The game might recognize loud rooms full of machinery as being perfectly quiet where enemies could hear even a subtle footstep while quiet rooms with nothing more than a computer's fan blowing might offer substantial leeway. At least the game recognizes this issue to an extent and outright tells you what the ambient sound level is through the UI, but even then it can often fluctuate significantly even within a given area which made the system very unwieldy.

I can put aside these issues to some extent if the game offered a way around them, but that generally isn't the case. The big point where Chaos Theory diverges from earlier games like Thief is in its level design. This game is extremely linear. You have a start location for the level, a path towards the end, and a designated extraction point. While there may be somewhat different ways to progress along that path (Though typically its either the door or an air vent) you're always going through the level in the exact same order. Meaning that if there's a particular point where the game's systems are awkward and causing issues for gameplay, there's a very high chance that you won't have an alternative. There aren't any different paths from which to approach the problem or any way you can bypass it altogether. If there's a point where the game's technical problems are causing issues, you just have to deal with them and abandon any hope of sidestepping the issue through other means.


Chaos Theory is by no means a bad game, but there wasn't too much here that I thought was great. Its technical problems are common throughout plenty of other great games but, unlike them, Chaos Theory's structure meant they posed a far greater issue to the gameplay than normal. The level design was alright, the music was good, and the atmosphere was tense. Its component parts were generally good, but there wasn't anything exemplary that could elevate this game beyond everything else in the stealth genre.

The game is only 12 or so hours so its probably worth a shot regardless. But go in expecting a good game, not a masterpiece.

Reviewed on May 20, 2023


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