This is an IGN opinion piece from Ryan McCaffrey, who worked at Official Xbox Magazine from 2002-2012 during the original Xbox and Xbox 360 era before joining IGN, where he remains “the Xbox guy.” In the run-up to Xbox’s 25th anniversary, he’ll be sharing his memories from the platform’s first quarter-century.
Those of you who’ve been reading my stuff long enough may remember that when I reviewed Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, the third game in Ubisoft’s stellar Tom Clancy stealth series, for Official Xbox Magazine, I awarded it 9.9 out of 10 (interestingly enough, IGN wrote the shortest news story ever about it back then). It was, at the time, the highest score the magazine had ever given. And it wasn’t even as high as I wanted to go. I actually tried to give it a full 10, but our editor-in-chief talked me down. But even at .1 of a point lower, Sam Fisher still got a higher score than Master Chief – Halo: Combat Evolved got a 9.6 in one of the magazine’s very first issues in 2001, and Halo 2 got a 9.7 in 2004.
I stand by that incredibly high score to this day. Chaos Theory was – and is – that good. It’s essentially three 10 out of 10 games in one; more on that later.
But first, let’s rewind to some months before Chaos Theory’s March 2005 release on the original Xbox. The Splinter Cell series was no longer an Xbox exclusive, but Chaos Theory was, technically speaking, vastly superior on Xbox when compared to its PS2 and GameCube counterparts. That was the first sign that this would be a must-play for Xbox owners.
When you’ve been playing games long enough, whether as a gamer or games media writer, you eventually develop what I refer to as a “Spidey Sense” – meaning, you usually get a pretty good sense for how good a game is after just a short time with it. And the first time I played Chaos Theory at a preview appointment, that Spidey Sense tingled. “I think this one might be really special,” I thought to myself. It wasn’t a surprise then or now, as Chaos Theory was being built by Ubisoft Montreal, then one of the premier development studios in the world, and the makers of the original Splinter Cell (Ubisoft Shanghai handled the first sequel, Pandora Tomorrow, and the game after Chaos Theory, Double Agent – both a tier below Montreal’s work). That the Montreal crew was cooking wasn’t a surprise in and of itself, but just how incredible a game they’d made wouldn’t be revealed until I sat down to review the finished product.
Chaos Theory wasn’t a full open-world experience as we know it today, but there were almost always multiple ways in and out of each space.
Back to that “three 10 out of 10s in one” comment from earlier: you all know about the single-player campaign. It featured many incredible, memorable missions, from the opening Lighthouse to the open-ended Bank, to the “anti-ninja” floors in Hokkaido, to the steamy Japanese bathhouse. You could play Sam Fisher as a sadistic serial killer who electrocuted his victims with Sticky Shockers before executing them with his silenced pistol, or you could do the opposite and attempt full ghost runs where you don’t kill a soul, leaving only a trail of unconscious-but-otherwise-very-much-alive bad guys in your wake. And the settings themselves were open-ended; it wasn’t a full open-world experience as we know it today, but there were almost always multiple ways in and out of each space and every encounter was a multiple-choice problem.
I could go on, but let’s talk about the PvP multiplayer for a moment, which provides the next 10/10 game of the package. Spies vs. Mercs returned after its debut in Pandora Tomorrow, and continued to prove itself as one of the most unique and innovative multiplayer games of not just 2005, but all time. Playing from a third-person perspective, Spies were equipped with nonlethal weapons and could only kill by sneaking up behind the fully armed Mercs (who played with more limited vision thanks to their first-person camera). Proximity chat added depth – Spies could taunt Mercs, distracting them to enable that sneaking-up-behind moment, and then proceed to snap their necks. Guns vs. gadgets, brains vs. brawn. It was truly brilliant.
And then, finally, there was the co-op campaign. This was not simply the main campaign played with a buddy, but a completely separate story in which you and a friend played as Shadownet spies infiltrating various locations. You’d work together, such as going back to back to climb up an elevator shaft, or one person running at the other, who’d throw them into bad guys like a human missile. There were four of these missions in the box, and two more were added as free DLC after launch. This arguably paved the way for the dedicated co-op games we know and love today.
Oh, and all of it was powered by some of the most incredible dynamic lighting we’d ever seen in a game at that point, a vital piece of Splinter Cell’s puzzle, given that you could take out lights with your gadgets or silenced pistol to keep Sam Fisher – still voiced to sardonic perfection by the inimitable Michael Ironside – hidden in the dark.
I continue to lament the absence of a new Splinter Cell game in our lives. The last proper entry in the series was from the tail end of the Xbox 360 generation. Supposedly the remake of the original is still in the works, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Until then, I’ll remain grateful for Chaos Theory, the best original Xbox game ever and one of the best stealth games ever made. It doesn’t pack the graphical punch it did 20 years ago, but the gameplay holds up if you’re tempted to give it a try today.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, and a co-host of Next-Gen Console Watch. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
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