Weapons

Given the exceedingly dangerous nature of his missions, you can expect Sam Fisher to be given the best of the best in terms of equipment. This section will give you a little run-down on what sort of items you can lug along on missions, and what they're useful. These are the same weapons you’ve been using in the past three Splinter Cell games, but as per usual, there are a few changes.

SC Pistol

The pistol is going to be your best friend if you intend to sneak through the single-player game without killing everything in your path. It's much quieter than the SC-20K rifle you'll be packing, so you'll be able to use it while relatively close to your enemies without them noticing you.

For stealth players, you'll usually be using the pistol's fire to shoot out inconvenient lights, so that your chosen path of approach is nicely shrouded in darkness. For small targets like individual lightbulbs, you'll need to be relatively close to hit it accurately (a missed shot will be much more likely to alert the guards to your presence), but most light sources are decently large, and you can hit these anywhere along their lit portion to blow them out.

The pistol's EMP will be useful when dealing with light sources in front of you.

The pistol also has a unique alternate-fire mode, the EMP, which is also good for taking out light sources. When you use the EMP while aiming at a light, it will flicker out and remain cold for 20 or 30 seconds, at which point it will come back on. Although it may sound like shooting out a light is the better deal, since shot lights remain out permanently, the EMP has the benefit of being completely soundless and almost perfectly accurate, allowing you to pop out lights from a good distance away without having to worry about anyone hearing you. (There's also something to be said for the purity of completing a mission without firing off a single round. EMPing devices also doesn’t count against your stealth score, whereas shooting lights will.)

The EMP can also be used on other electronic devices, such as computers and surveillance cameras. Indeed, cameras will usually only be bypassable with your EMP; you normally can't shoot them out. A non-light device that's been afflicted by the EMP will normally produce whirring sounds that can mask your movement; these are especially acute in mechanical objects like computers.

If you need to kill someone quietly, then the pistol is a better choice than the rifle. You are going to need to be pretty close to your target to hit them accurately, though; crouching and standing still for a few moments will let you tighten your aim considerably. A missed headshot will almost certainly alert your foe to your presence, though, resulting in a return of fire and a probable alarm.

SC-20K Rifle

The SC-20K has a number of unlockable attachments available for it if you play the game somewhat stealthily.

The SC-20K is a compact assault rifle complete with silencer and muzzle-flash suppressor for maximum stealth application. Your primary fire here is a pressure-sensitive fire that will fire off a single round if you tap the button, but which will shift to automatic fire if the button is held down. Of course, headshots are just as deadly from the rifle as from the gun, but again, if you have more than one target in sight, rifle fire is more likely to alert the friends of the guy you take out.

If you want to use the SC-20K as a semi-sniper rifle, you can do so by switching to your scope view while aiming it (click on the right analog stick). As in previous Splinter Cell games, the scope drift here is going to be fairly bad; to steady your grip for a moment, use your alt-fire button to hold Sam's breath for a moment and freeze your crosshairs.

Sticky Shocker

The shocker is arguably the single best weapon Sam has at his disposal. It's essentially a one-shot takedown on any enemy you can accurately fire it; the projectile has no dip in its arc, so far as we can tell, so it can hit enemies a good distance away so long as you wait for your targeting cursor to stabilize. When you hit an enemy with a sticky shocker, they'll go down like a lump of meat, having been shocked into submission by the massive electrical jolt carried by the projectile. In previous games, a sticky shocker could disable multiple enemies if fired into a pool of water that they were all standing in, but this situation doesn't occur too often in Chaos Theory.

Airfoil Round

Airfoils have changed since their implementation in Chaos Theory. They act somewhat like sticky shockers, but in Double Agent, the first time you hit an enemy with an airfoil round, they’ll only be woozy for a second; hitting them with another round will be required to actually knock them out. Theoretically, this allows you to fire a single round, then run up behind the soldier and interrogate him, but the length of the wooziness effect is fairly short, and there are very few cases where you’d actually prefer to interrogate someone instead of simply knocking them out.

In practice, the new version of the airfoils are more or less absolutely worse than the previous versions. The one good thing about them is that, if you’re quick, you can fire two at an enemy, then run over and pick them up before they disappear to avoid losing any of your stock. If you wait too long after firing, though, they’ll disappear from the ground and be gone for good.