YMMV / Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

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• Anti-Climax Boss: All Admiral Otomo does at the end of the game is give Sam his Motive Rant, then proceed to attempt Sepukku, after which point all Sam has to do is stabilise him and then escape with him in custody.
• Best Level Ever: The Panama Bank mission is a very popular and memorable mission for its multiple approach options and the cool factor of robbing a bank as a cover for gathering intel. Even the game's developers consider it to be the best level they ever made.
• Even Better Sequel: To the first game and Pandora Tomorrow. The first two games are solid on their own, but Chaos Theory really cranked it up. Not only does it have a great story with interesting themes and excellent writing, but it also has what many stealth fans consider to be the best gameplay in the franchise. There are tons of gadgets, open-ended levels like in Hitman, multiple objectives that change based on difficulty and even whether or not you completed the previous level's objectives correctly, and the game looked, quite frankly, gorgeous (and still holds up to this day). The result is a game that many praise as being a 10/10 experience, and is the height of the franchise in many ways.
• Porting Disaster: DS version. Not only it was based on the N-Gage version (which wasn't all that good), but it suffered from numerous technical issues such as choppy framerate (which worsen when you activate night-vision or thermal goggles), visual artifacts like black bars and breaks in screen, and prolonged load times up to 10 seconds.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Sometimes when taking down a guard, even silently, the game's soundtrack will kick in with high tempo alert music which can falsely make the player think they've been spotted.
• That One Level: The Bathhouse level was really tricky with turrets, fog, and a layout that is easy to get lost in. But the part that everyone dreads is the part where Shetland sends out the Elite Mooks with THERMAL GOGGLES and extremely powerful automatic rifles, meaning the only way to get past them without getting into a firefight is to game the AI's peripheral vision and make good use of smoke grenades as they can't see you through the smoke. Then right before you confront Shetland for the final showdown, there is a part where you have to avoid him, and he can see you even in the dark WITHOUT night vision goggles. Oh, we forgot to mention, you are all doing this while disarming bombs, meaning you are on a time limit.
• Tough Act to Follow: Chaos Theory is considered the best of the series for a reason. Not only was it as well-written and structured as its predecessors, it finally fixed all the awful AI problems from the last two games,^ex.(The most notable instance being that an alert previously made every enemy aware of your location, proceed to charge and flank you from all sides, and able to see you through walls and darkness. The only way to escape an alert was to murder everything in the area, charge out of the current enemies' bounds, or to backtrack far enough they'd give up.) removed the alerts problem (no longer game over after three), added the knife and non-lethal melee attack to massively change things up,^ex.(the knife could kill-melee enemies, interact more with the environment, and could break locks rather than pick, both it and the non-lethal strike means you could quickly knock a guy out if taken by surprise) added a noise meter to aid with stealth, added a remote hack to remove some fake difficulty, added the OCP and EEV vision, added different loadouts/playstyles, added CO-OP missions, and had an amazing soundtrack by Amon Tobin among several other highly praised features. It's not really surprising that Double Agent, a game that continued to pile on new features like a Karma Meter and useless gadgets^ex.(e.g. automatic lockpick when the knife and picking game were fine, coloured night vision which is actually detrimental, unneccesary, and unlocked one mission away from the end) and felt the need to change up the entire formula for the sake of it, was so poorly received. Of course, despite Version 2 of Double Agent (read: old generation one that was much closer to Chaos Theory in gameplay) being better received than Version 1, the series was changed up even further for Conviction, which was incredibly unpopular to say the least. While Blacklist was better received than Conviction for bringing back some of the stealth mechanics that were removed, it was still too action focused and flawed enough^ex.(Detections once again making every enemy on the map know exactly where you are, charge and flank you from all sides, and able to see you through darkness, overpowered dogs that detect you at the drop of a hat and will follow you bringing guards with them if you get within about 20 feet of them, lack of manual saving, simplified light/dark system akin to Version 1 Double Agent, more linear level design and lack of optional objectives, less interaction with the environment and features still missing like interrogations, the OCP and hacking, lots of forced action sequences especially in CO-OP missions, no humor, a big number of glitches and Spies in Spies VS Mercs having an incredibly overpowered 1-hit kill melee attack) that Chaos Theory is still considered the better game.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The fact that the National Guardsmen you see in New York are equipped with XM8 assault rifles firmly dates the game's production to around early 2005, as the XM8 was cancelled later that year, after which the idea that the National Guard would be equipped with it would seem a bit odd.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Chaos Theory was praised for its graphics being years ahead of its time. Pandora Tommorow was looking like this◊ in 2004, and Chaos Theory was looking like this◊ in 2005. Talk about a major leap for graphics in just one year. Easily one of the best looking video games of all time and the graphics still look state of the art.

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