Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Demo

Taking an entire enemy facility by surprise is no easy feat to accomplish, but when your name is Sam Fisher, there are very few things that cannot be achieved. Thus, in the cover of darkness, everyone's favorite stealth agent is back in business again, ready to undermine as many shady operations as possible.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is the third installment in the highly acclaimed stealth shooter series, which brings you a whole new array of missions to sneak through and a wide variety of gadgets to use on the unsuspecting victims. As with every other title in the series, the main goal of every mission is complete stealth, which means that you need to avoid killing people, regardless of their convictions or the way they make a living.

You can, however, also go on a rampage and start shooting everything around you, but that technique is bound to fail quite quickly, especially since the AI is clever enough to avoid such situations. Every NPC you meet throughout the game is unique, since they all have their own routines that you need to observe before making a move. Thus, with darkness as your ally, most of the gameplay is spent watching guards patrolling and moving into the right position to ambush them when they are alone.

Part of what makes Sam Fisher so recognizable is his particular set of skills that allow him to perform various acrobatics, which usually involve him hanging from the ceiling or some sort of martial arts technique. Moreover, he also has a wide variety of gadgets at his disposal, including nightvision goggles and a selection of non-fatal grenades.

The third installment also comes with a heavily improved graphic engine, which is now capable of rendering incredible amounts of detail. The lighting and dynamic shadows have also been improved, while the Pixel Shader 3.0 technology makes the models look very realistic and convincing. Sound-wise, the game features a lot of spoken material, most of which are NPCs chatting among themselves and the dialog Fisher has with his superiors at Third Echelon.

In the end, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is a big step forwards for the series, since it manages to bring improvements on all the chapters, including gameplay, graphics and story line. The new gadgets and ways you can take out the enemies offer you much more liberty when it comes to the course of action for every mission, as do the multiple routes you can take and the intelligent AI.