Phyrfight Intel

“Chaos Theory” is a good subtitle for Sam Fisher’s next assignment to protect America from those who would harm us, but I think a more well-suited subtitle would be “The Game We Wanted the First Time Around.”

The original Splinter Cell was developed by Ubisoft Montreal and the primary focus of that game was to incorporate light and sound into an espionage game like no one had ever done before. Long story short, they succeeded. What they failed to do, however, was to create compelling and interesting gameplay and level design. The levels became tedious and mundane near the conclusion of the amazing story, and the EXTREMELY linear gameplay turned off many who enjoyed the idea of being a spy.

The sequal, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomarrow, developed by Ubisoft Shanghai, almost went backwards in terms of single-player gameplay. One or two of the levels had interesting and unique segments, and occaisionally there were even multiple paths, but for the most part the levels were even more repetative than the first’s. To add insult to injury, the developer did a poor job of informing the player of exactly what was happening in the plot, leaving the player with little or no idea why Sam was doing what he was doing. Apart from the added multiplayer, the game was a failure. The future was not looking bright for the series untill….

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory! Ubisoft Montreal reportedly handed over control of SC:PT because the team wanted a jump start on their own next attempt at the game. What has been told and shown of the next installment is, for lack of a better phrase, “The Game We Wanted the First Time Around.” Ubisoft has widely expanded the gameplay with greater player control over what is taken into the field, multiple paths through every scenario, and new equipment such as a 3-D map to help the player find the multiple paths and a knife for deadly close combat. Mix in the revolutionary adversarial and brand new cooperative modes and the game is shaping up to be something special.