Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

• No, you can't save Morgenholt in the Lighthouse mission. It's impossible; don't try. Although there is a little piece of interesting dialogue if you put a bullet in him to be sure he's dead--Lambert gets angry at you for leaving NATO rounds in a torture victim.

- If you want the highest post-mission score, I'm pretty sure that you have to use nonlethal takedowns. This means a lot of shooting out lights/temporarily disabling them (target a light source with the pistol and hit L1 on a PS2 controller to temporarily short out the light) and then sneaking up on your quarry from behind. Once you've grabbed/interrogated them, you can either knife 'em or do a sleeper hold.

- Speaking of mission scores, it's just there for bragging rights. I'm reasonably certain that the game doesn't change one iota if you go through the game noisily murdering everyone you come across. But it's a lot less fun that way. The game doesn't even change if you kill/don't kill Shetland .

- If you do ever use your sniper rifle (pull out your SC-20 and push R3 to look through the scope), holding L1 will have Sam hold his breath, giving you a steady shot.

- Every mission in CT has an optional opportunity objectiv -- or example, in mission 2 (cargo ship) they ask you to find a certain number of special boxes. I'm not absolutely sure if they contribute to your post-mission score (I think they do), but if you're like me, then you'll do them anyway out of a sense of completion.

- About the only thing I use the SC-20 rifle for is the sticky shockers and air rings. The gun makes enough noise to wake up the neighbors and is very bad for remaining stealthy. The pistol should serve most of your needs.

- You've got 3 visual modes, aside from the normal mode: night vision, thermal, and EMF. Night vision will be your most useful, but you'll occasionally use the other 2--EMF is very hard to see anything in, but it's great for spotting cameras in the darkness and disabling them before you walk right in front of them.

- Save relatively often, especially after a difficult section. You don't really want to have to take out the same 3 enemies time and again just because you got spotted my enemy #4.