Life Changers: Splinter Cell Chaos Theory

By Emily Buxton

Welcome to Life Changers!


One of the reasons I’ve waited so long to pitch in with a Life Changers article is that I simply haven’t been able to settle on which game has made the biggest impact on me. Without wanting to sound too wishy-washy, there were always a number of games that would immediately spring to mind and then refuse to be discounted, making my choice annoyingly problematic.

One of the strongest contenders for top spot was the original Doom, even though most people become unnerved hearing about an eight year old girl sitting and playing Doom until her eyes watered and fell out of their sockets. Like an early attempt at Trogdor, it just didn’t seem… natural. Parenting issues aside, that choice wasn’t The One, so I passed over it and considered the more child-friendly option of the 1989 classic, Super Mario Land for the Gameboy.

Being able to clock the whole game at a near-breakneck speed without losing a life was also a little unsettling to the adults I tried to show this to at the time. Didn’t they realise I was a veritable Rain Man in a pink dress? Thousands of dollars worth of marketing opportunities flew by my oblivious family, and my talents went unnoticed and unappreciated.

Another potential option was to go for Dooms’ predecessor, and one of my favourite DOS games of all time, Wolfenstein 3D. But rather then delving backwards into my Nazi-riddled gaming history, I decided to look a little further forward at a game that totally and completely turned my world around.

My very first review writing for NZGamer was Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and without mincing words, it knocked my socks off.

Before then, I’d seen pictures of Sam Fisher, crouched down in a corner with his night vision goggles all a-glow. Why, I’d ask, would I want to play some sort of military game that would likely be way too complicated and inaccessible for me to enjoy? A little further down the line, I’d even been cajoled into playing through some of Splinter Cell 1 and 2. It was an up and down experience - giving me a taste for being sneaky but with heavy doses of frustration at once again failing because of rigid gameplay and linear mission structures.

Being brutally whipped into submission by the NZGamer bigwigs until we reviewed whatever game was placed into our hands does apparently have its benefits. Forced to thoroughly explore the third installment of Splinter Cell upon its release, I was drawn into a world of stealth and betrayal, where your individual style of play actually did make a difference to how each level played out. The graphics were superb, crafted to push the original Xbox to its limits, and the soundtrack was nothing short of astonishing, still frequenting my most popular iTunes playlist even as I type this.

The levels were varied and exhilarating, ranging from Ocean’s 11-esque vault break-ins to carnage aboard the high seas. More exciting than anything else however, was the thrill of finally discovering a game that was both flexible but also catered to my odd Stealth Issues. A rampaging attack with the SC-20K was always a viable option, but the lure of using sticky shockers was too strong, and so began my love affair with the stealth genre.

A mere three years ago does seem a little late into my gaming life to have encountered The Game which changed it, but without the mind-warpingly gruesome array of games I enjoyed in my early childhood, I may never have come to appreciate the delicious style of a truly sneaky kill.

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