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By: Nick and Nate
The Story
Did you say Chaos Theory? Sam’s back and with a whole new story. In the last few games such as Pandora Tomorrow, Sam was investigating and eliminating terrorism, however Ubi Soft has changed it around a bit. Chaos Theory faces a new breed of action, information warfare. Japan’s creation of an information self-defense Force or ISDF has created a violation of international law and has formed a new Japanese constitution. This violation has caused an increase in tensions between Japan, China, and North Korea. China and North Korea have taken things into there own hands and created blockades of shipping across the Korea Strait. Japan is desperate and defends there newly made ISDF which makes matters worse for there own economy. Japan has asked America for help in accordance with American obligations under the Article 9 of the postwar Constitution.

Having seen a tension and mobilization of the nations the U.S activates the USS Walsh; the Walsh is a break through in electronic and information warfare. The Walsh heads out to check out the situation. Third Echelon finds a very small incident that they think may become a global problem in the future. Sam is moved in to investigate and find any intel he can, to bring a conclusion on the new tensions that are brewing. Sam first heads to panama, which is where the story begins.

Game Play/Changes
You may know that things have changed in Chaos Theory; you may love them or hate them. One Change would be Sam’s moves; first off, Sam now carries a knife around with him and can slash his enemy. I personally like this change because it’s got a more ‘spy like’ feel to it, it makes you feel invincible. Remember in the first and second games where all you could do is grab your enemy, however, grabbing them at times was difficult. Sam now has the choice to slash there neck or stab them, to do this simply hit the ‘R’ trigger while a guard is passing you. Other things you can do with the knife are: Slash screens, tarps, stab objects and back stab, the list goes on. Nothing makes you feel more like a splinter cell when you can, slash a screen, climb into the darkness and slash your enemies’ neck. You must understand that the knife is not a secondary weapon and Sam can not pull it out at any time. You use the knife when you are allowed to. For example, when Sam sees a closed tent, he can go up to it and slash it grabbing the guy at the same time; it really is a nice touch, but not a feature you can use all the time however.

Other changes include the ways you can enter doors. There are the same old options; however there are three new options. You can now just cut the lock, use this sparingly however; this is real noticeable to your enemies. Another options is to open the door ‘stealthily’, this makes it less noticeable. The last new options is bashing the door open, only use this when you have an enemy standing by the door. Bashing the door is a great new change; it gives the game a new twist to it. Of course you still can lock pick and use your fiber optic cable as well. You will appreciate these new changes, especially when you use the ‘Bash door’ option.

Another break through in the game is the back ground sound; Ubi has decided to make it louder to cover up Sam’s movements. Making this change was a very nice change I thought, although it did make it easier to grab your target. The change wasn’t that noticeable at first until I played for awhile and noticed Sam’s foot steps were hard to hear, which would be the case when you have so much noise in certain areas. With this change I find myself enjoying the game more, it makes it more fun when you can ‘toy’ around with the guys so much without them noticing you.

You may have also noticed that the game looks a whole lot lighter to you, however, the guards/enemies see you the same way. Don’t think this change is a bad one it is almost unnoticeable, you will not notice it until someone points it out to you. Once you know you will find it a lot better then in the first two games. This change creates Sam to be in the darkness while still being seen by you but unseen by the guards, again a change I totally appreciate and you will too.

Another thing that grabbed my attention was the AI (Artificial Intelligence) of the enemies; they are a lot smarter while looking back at the other two games. Let’s say you’re sneaking around a dark hallway and you notice you missed a light, if you don’t hit that light and miss, the guard will come running as he did in the first game but will carry a flashlight with him when necessary. This not only makes escaping him difficult but hiding as well. When the enemies carry flashlights the whole stealth thing in a way disappears, but overall not a bad change to and outstanding game. Just remember the guards will be more alert about broken glass, open doors, broken locks and anything that’s out of order. Not only is the AI better but you also have the option of hacking now. As in the first and second games you still need to gather intel and hacking is a great alternative. When you hack certain things you have a time limit and if you do not hack in that certain amount of time you will trigger an alarm. You can hack all sorts of things, such as: computers, retina scanners, keypads, elevators and the list goes on. Hacking is new in this game and just adds even a more ‘spy like’ feel to the game.

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