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For the co-op portion, however, you star as two up-and-coming NSA operatives (we'll call 'em Red and Blue) engaging in a variety of missions that were eluded to in the singleplayer portion of Chaos Theory. Not only does Chaos Theory allow you to play out your secret super spy fantasies...it allows you to play out your secret super spy fantasies with a friend. It's hard to really pinpoint a *particular* favourite incident, because the whole experience is incredibly awesome. I'm sure this is going to end up as a hella long post...
*Ahem!* Some of you may know that Moonbase Commander and myself are cousins. Therefore, we had the luxury of playing this co-op campaign over LAN during a family get-together at my house. I think it was Christmas of last year, or so.
We hunkered down in a darkened room, the door closed, caffeinated beverages at the ready, our faces bathed in the glow of our monitors. Occasionally, one of our other cousins/aunts/uncles would pop their head in, give us a funny look, and ask us: "What the hell are you guys doing?"
We'd invariably end up turning our heads to our disruptive relative, a silhouette in that glowing portal to the outside world, and hiss a simultaneously vicious: "SHHHHHHHHHH...!" A few of our other nerdy cousins came to watch (provided they were quiet and could offer helpful advice), but the rest learned to stay away from the room o' nerds.
Despite being in the same room, we decided to nerd-it-up a little more, and use Chaos Theory's excellent built-in voice chat system which delightfully has real in-game consequences. Your voice actually has the potential to alert soldiers to your position, so you have to be really quiet. You have to whisper...or they might hear you.
Additionally, being the hardcore nerds that we are, we opted to use "the lingo".
"Get in position. I see your target approaching at nine o'clock. Can you see him?"
"Roger."
"Get ready to take the shot..."
How's that for immersion?
Another factor in the awesomeness of this experience is the benefit of sitting right next to your partner in crime. You can coordinate things; in fact, you can coordinate things really, really well:
"Okay. I've lined up my target."
"Hold on...the other target is being an elusive little bastard...okay. He's in my sights."
"3, 2, 1..."
The best part about this game is your ability to either go in and take everyone out with a bullet to the head, or to be sneaky ninjas. Get in, get out; fire as few bullets as possible. We opted for the latter. Sometimes, however, we had to use our Fifth Freedom (KILL EVERYONE). That was usually when we fucked up. We'd come around another corner, and another challenge would be laid out in front of us.
"Take that one out...nice...and slowly."
"Oh, shit. He has friends. Lots of 'em."
"Okay. We'll take them all out...Frag out!"
Now, I haven't had as much time to play videogames as much as Moonbase since I picked up another rather time-consuming hobby, so he is much better than I am. Frequently, he'd have to save my ass from some epic fuck-up I managed to incur.
"Ah, shit! They spotted me! I'm taking fire, I need some help!"
"Hang on, I'm on my way. Stay in there."
Thankfully you can be revived once via a syringe, and there are health kits around. I don't think Moonbase had to use them nearly as often as I did.
One of my fondest memories is of the excellently integrated mini-games. There are tons of these. There are parts where you have to simultaneously coordinate to defuse a bomb, mix an antidote for a viral weapon, and...my personal favourite - rappelling.
There are certain parts in the game where you have to use your partner to rappel down. The fellow rappelling down can control the vertical up/down movements, but the partner above can control the horizontal side-side movements. This makes for some REALLY intense portions where you're trying to coordinate a rappel down a windowed building to avoid the unseemly gazes of your AK-toting terrorist lunkheads.
"Okay, uh...shift me a bit to the righ- OH, SHI'. NO, LEFT, LEFT, LEFT!
...
...
"Okay. It's all good. He didn't spot me."
However, the best part of this game comes when something unexpected happens. In one level, we were in some sewers. We had to be careful not to alert the enemy, as we were low on ammo. There were TONS of enemies, and not enough bullets to take them all out. This meant we had to be stealthy, and we had to be on the ball. No mistakes.
As we crept along the sewer (ever so slowly), ducking from one alcove to another, always making sure to stay in the shadows, we saw a couple of long shadows flit across the slick walls of the South American catacombs.
"Shit. Enemy spotted."
"Yeah. I see. What's the plan?"
"Let's hide, and wait for them to pass."
"Roger."
Luckily for us (and thanks to the level designers!), there was a pipe running along the ceiling of the sewers. Conveniently, we could attach ourselves to the pipe, and wait for the soldiers below us to move away.
We hurriedly leapt to the ceiling, and tried to maintain a low profile, that is, until they were right under us...
[In a very quiet whisper.] "Uh, shit. They're not moving."
"Fuck. I can see...wait a second. i'm in a good position to...hang on."
"What are you doing?"
At this point, Moonbase shimmied along until he was right on top of one of the soldiers.
"Okay. Get ready to grab the other one."
"What? What the hell is going on? Okay...I'm in position."
"Drop down...NOW!"
With this, Moonbase reached down from his ceiling hiding place along the pipe, and snapped one of the soldier's necks. I dropped down from my perch, grabbed the other soldier, and put my hand over his mouth to silence him, a knife to his throat to let him know we meant business.
If I weren't a super professional spy, I would have exclaimed, rather loudly: "HOLY SHIT! THAT WAS FUCKING AWESOME."
It *was* awesome. :D
Our hearts pounding, Moonbase dropped down, hoisted up the body of the unfortunate soldier he had dispatched, and we made our way to an area where we could interrogate the living one, and then dispose of the bodies. Fucking PRO, am I right?
In my opinion, Chaos Theory was the epitome of the Splinter Cell series. Not only do the singleplayer and co-operative missions coincide with one another, but they are superbly executed. The visuals (for the time) were top-notch, the gameplay oozes with attention to detail, and the necessity of teamwork was been carefully considered and highlighted through the various challenges.
The co-op is nothing short of bro-lovin', masculine camaraderie, and I was horribly disappointed to see that the latest iteration of Splinter Cell lacked my favourite feature (or a decent implementation of it).
Anyhow, that's my...uh...mish-mash of stories. Hope you enjoyed reading.
*Some parts of this post have been embellished because I don't remember the actual details...just that it was fucking awesome.
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