I saw it at my BB this evening for both Xbox and PS2

I got a call on Monday from EB saying that it came out. I was surprised because I thought the release date was wednesday. Anyway, I have not had a chance to play it yet, I'm trying to finish God of War first. Can't wait though, reviews have been great and I love the series.

I picked up my copy from EB yesterday. Even though I had it pre-ordered (trade 5 for $50 deal), they had a ton of them (Xbox and PS2) for sale. The only thing they were scarce on was the limited edition for the Xbox. They had plenty for the PS2 for some reason. They only got in 3 of the LEs for the Xbox and all 3 of those had been pre-ordered.

Picked up an LE for the XBOX last night and played a little. Very nice. Graphics are a huge step up IMHO from Pandorra Tomorrow, which is a tough thing to do. I suspect that the boys at UbiSoft had one team working on this new architecture right after the original and another working with the existing architecture for Pandorra Tomorrow. The look is miles ahead.

Gameplay is similar...haven't really moved that far into the first level to talk about multiple paths, etc. I do like the fact that I can stab people instead of just knocking them out when I interrogate.

Hmmm, the game has me intrigued....although, Iwas never a big fan of the Splinter Cell series because of the slow, trial and error style of gameplay. Although, they got rid of that this game, I think

so has anyone played the multiplayer? i played the demo on the oxm disc and it looked like the game was just going to be freaking awesome. is it a must have?

I know what you mean. If the game developers just copied the same formula as in the previous two games, I can't see how this would get scores in the high 90's percent. Therefore, I'm just as intrigued. I'd like to see what they did [new] that has got critics praising the game.

I got the game yesterday. I went straight into the multiplayer.

To play in VS mode, you have to run through a tutorial which took me about 15 minutes. You're forced to go through a tutorial and pass a test. It wasn't difficult. I then went into the tutorials for a few maps so I can explore. This game got real complicated. The maps are huge with so many cool triggers. On factory, as a merc, you can cause an explosion by destroying 1 of many barrels in a room. The explosion will cause the pillars, holding the ceiling up, to collapse and crush anyone in the room. The Mercs won't be able to protect the objective anymore, but the spy's can easily climb over the rubble. There's also a crane that the spy's can use to open up a new room.

There are now multiple objectives on certain maps. The aquarium has 2 extractions and a few neutralizations. If you extract a data disc and bring it back to the tech room, it'll shut off all lasers on the map. Definately play through the tutorials for each map before going online. I didn't play any online matches, as I spent an hour just exploring.

When my friend got home, we jumped onto some co-op. The co-op moves are really cool and have awesome animations. Through the game, we'd just whisper to each other, "That's cool". One of the new features, the AI can hear you talking. A lot of possibilities in co-op.

The training mission took us a half hour. It sucked. we messed up an objective and the game wouldn't open up the next area of the map. It didn't tell us we'd have to restart though, so we ran around trying to figure out what we messed up. When in doubt, hit all the buttons. I hit the back button and it took us to the goals page. One of the objectives was x'ed out so thats the one we blew. We had to restart the game. It sucked. We re-did the training in 12 minutes and moved onto the first mission.

As we were breaking into the house, the game crashed. We restarted. We weren't able to continue our story, so we had to do the training again. We were pretty pissed off, so we just decided to do the mission mode instead and jumped into the 1st level. When we reached the window again, one of the guards noticed us so we decided to shoot them. We got disconnected. Connected to Xbox live and tried it again. Tried to do a co-op move and got disconnected again. It sucked. We were so pissed off. We finally got farther the 4th time around, but it definately left a bad taste. I'm looking forward to trying it again tonight though.

cowboy--

How is it controlling Sam?
How do you feel a keyboard and mouse would affect the game?

With all the sneaking around you would have to do, I think this game might be best suited for a gamepad with dual analog sticks.

I'm not a PC gamer but I think 2 analog sticks would be bettter for the game. You need an analog stick view the environment, and another to creep around. I don't think a keyboard would do.

FYI...your co-op spy feels like sam fisher and not the adversarial spy.

I didn't even look for PS2 and Xbox versions, but alot of places (sans Best Buy and Circuit City) had them.

Hi,

I am interested in Chaos Theory and the post which said $37 at CC etc.
Is that for this week or this coming Sunday's paper ad?

Did not see this for less than $49.99

Thanks.

JJ

It's for this week, but only for the PC version.

ok thanks.

Sounded too good!

I just redid the coop training on story mode 2 times already. The first time, we failed the hacking and had to restart. The second time, my game froze while saving, and my friend got disconnected. This is the buggiest game I have ever bought. It's pure frustration.

Damn, that sucks.
By the way, thanks for the feedback on the controls.

the sticks are way freaking better, the controls in the very first one for the pc IMO suck on the computer, but works better on the xbox. maybe it is just me, but i don't want to be fumbling around with keys and mouse to try to get the same thing done i can with all the controls right at my finger tips.

That's the price at Fry's today and tomorrow.

I finally got the PC version, but not before I ran into more problems.

First Circuit City didn't have it in stock, only the PS2 version, despite the ad showing it'd be available Thursday.

Then Best Buy had 23 copies in stock but the girl wouldn't sell one to me because her computer showed the "in-stock date" of 3-31-05. I told her the game came out 2 days ago. Another employee came over and said she was wrong, the street date (duh) is the day the game can be sold. So naturally they go and look, and not one of the 23 copies they have on hand can be found. I got the old "They might still be on the truck" line.

So I called Gamestop #1 and they told me the regular version is $49, the collectors edition is $54. Gamestop #2 said the regular version was $49, and there was no collectors version available for the PC (as in they don't make a collectors version for PC). Gamestop #3 said the regular version was $39, so I bought it there.

Strange day of shopping indeed.

Me and my friend have been having trouble with the co-op as well. First night we got on we messed up and had to restart. Restarted and got booted before we could finish the training. The next day we thought we'd give it another shot. Yay! We get all the way to the first mission (playing on Expert, cause we want it to last) and find out expert is damn near impossible. Then we can't figure out what to do, which isn't a problem we'll just play till we figure it out... except the damn game kicks us off again! So, we pretty much gave up on it for now.

I've been reading, and it seems many people are having the same problems. If anyone has gotten it to work or has any info let us know please. BTW, we're playing on the Xbox.

Spy VS. Merc is the shit. It's much better than Pandora Tomorrow ever was. It has a lot of depth in that there's so many different strategies for both mercs and spies. Spies have a chance of being stealthy with huge maps as opposed to the much smaller maps from Pandora. No more forced confrontations with mercs as long as you're being stealthy (as you should be).

Anyhoo, like I said before, if any of you wants to play some free games for fun just add me to your friends list and join my game or invite me into yours (just leave a message so I know who you are).

The game crashes or disconnects so often that it forces you to save your progress after any major event or confrontation. It really sucks because the maps are so large and the textures are so similar. It causes a problem because you have to backtrack through the map 2 or 3 times and you get lost pretty easily. When you pause the game to save, it takes about 30 seconds, and thats enough time to disorient you.

Unless you're a fan of the series, which I'm not, I don't recomend you pay full price for this game, or rush out to buy it. You'll have a much more enjoyable time if you wait til all the bugs are sorted out. Constantly being afraid of the game crashing is a horrible way to play a slow paced game like this.

Well, I rented it last night....still don't like the game. I guess I just cannot get into the Splinter Cell series....I really want to, but just TOO slow for my tastes. I can see where most will love the game though....just nto me

Propaganda and Shap Attack, I don't know if you guys are still around or not, but if you read this let me know. We used to play Pandora all the time I was wondering if you guys picked CT up and if you wanted to go a few rounds. Let me know.

I played the first level (whch was also the demo level) and it's awesome. It definitely looks sharper and smoother then the demo.

The only problem is I have sound stuttering every so often, it really pisses me off. Other then that, I can turn the graphics up to max, and enjoy the beauty of the game

Hmmm...
I don't mind paying for a game with a few minor bugs (very rarely is there a bug-free game released anyway), but I think the crashing would just end up making me frustrated and drive me crazy.