I remember doing the soy face when I got to that mission because Snake really doesn't wanna do it and asks if "Sam or Gabe" could do it instead (Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell and Gabe Logan from Syphon Filter, two competing stealth games from the time)
You just reminded my how much I miss OG pre-Conviction Splinter Cell. Sure, the politics were trash, but you just don't get meticulous stealth games like that anymore
Chaos Theory is a miracle of a game and it still rules. Games don't have that level of interactivity anymore. You could pick up a brick and throw it at a guy's head if you wanted. The bank mission absolutely rules, you have multiple points of entry to the place. You can shotgun a door off its hinges if you want, go in through the skylight, hack a door's keypad, interrogate a guy for the code. Whatever. The levels are huge and let you go hog wild. The newer Hitman games kind of scratch that itch for me, but still feel a little limited somehow. I don't know.
Also yeah, the politics are pretty much "it's bad when anyone other than Americans do scary assassinations or use WMDs." Chaos Theory's story is particularly bonkers, where a Japanese general is trying to provoke the DPRK into launching a nuke onto Japan because...something something restoring the Empire.
Also the music is dope
God, Chaos Theory rules so hard.
Also, as awful as the politics are, I remember the story kind of blew my mind because the real big bad (Shetland) and Japan creating the ISDF were both set up in the previous game, Pandora Tomorrow. I'd never seen games do that kind of setup lmao
EDIT: Never occurred to me until just now, but CT had a lot of similarities to immersive sims. It wasn't one itself, but it had a lot of the elements
I remember playing the demo as a kid and being in awe of these futuristic things called "analog sticks"
i like back when it wasn't fully standard that the left stick is for moving and the right stick is for the camera
ape escape's right stick was used for manipulating all the gadgets and they worked differently. Like you could swing the stun baton in a circle by moving the stick in a certain way, or there was a cool little RC car you could move around independently of your character and control both at the same time
games are sometimes neat during transition moments like that
I love how the one ape in the bottom corner has a gun
Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the apes must be frustrated, by force if necessary
Love those games. I'm hoping at some point the basic mechanics get some attention in the indie game scene, especially since Sony doesn't seem to want to do shit with the franchise.
