Splinter Cell 3: Chaos Theory -- Final Opinion.

Splinter Cell 3: Chaos Theory is damn near perfect. Damn near it, but not quite. As usual, we'll start with what's right. Visually the game is about as impressive looking as any late generation Xbox title is likely to be.  The game looks even more impressive than Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow and contains none of the vertical-sync tearing of the first two games in the series. The surfaces are even more texture mapped. Effects are on display just about everywhere you look. The sounds are all loud and clear and rich. They sound perfect. The vocal performances are the best in the industry. The music is a bit of a surprise. They used a new composer this time around, Amon Tobin. He's a famous European ambient techno artist. His music strays heavily from the far more film score approach of the previous titles. Listening to the soundtrack before the game had me wondering just how it would fit in with the game. It actually meshes quite well. I thoroughly enjoyed his music within the game. Some people might not care for it though. The game play is deeper than ever. The new ambient sound system is a brilliant addition. It adds a wonderful wrinkle to what you need to play attention to. The new gadgets are great and were well used and heavily implemented. They thoroughly reworked the online Vs game. No shortcuts there. They didn't have to do half of what they did considering the full sized offline game and the addition of the online co-op. The online co-op is the real star of this game. It is just greatness. Really fun. It's definitely in the future of gaming. It's here to stay. All is not perfect though. I do have issues with the online Vs game and the critical flaw of the grab move.  There is no excuse for it being just so incredibly spotty. Other online issues arise in co-op. The frame rate goes to hell in certain areas of the co-op maps. It's the Xbox being taxed beyond itself. It's not just a stutter, it's a massive drop. It effects the gameplay.  As of the date of this entry, the online connectivity issues have improved since the initial days, but it's still not as solid as it should be. This might be due to how Splinter Cell 3 uses the disc and the drive issue of the Xbox or it might purely be an online connectivity issue. I've said the game was just about perfect, and I'm going to score it as close to perfect without being perfect as my scoring system allows. I've given the game a 9.5. I can't wait until Mr. Fisher's next mission.

Next time it will be a little revisionist history, SEGA style.