Chameleon (2005)
This game is too new to be forgotten by most people, because they probably even don't know it exists in the first place. Chameleon was made by Silver Wish Games, which was a division of Illusion Softworks. Ring any bells ? How about Mafia ? SWG dev team used the LS3D engine and made a really good stealth production. What is surprising, that the studio closed its doors before the program could be released to the public. After being put into cupboard Cenega, which is a polish publisher made a deal and started manufacturing physical copies. Chameleon was released with polish subtitles and original english voice acting. The only problem is horrible Star Force protection included on 3 Cd-roms. I don't know if our fonts will be visible for the rest of you, but you can easily navigate through the whole gui and menus if it isn't your first game ever played.
You can choose the equipment for each mission (we visit Belfast, Moldava, Baltimore in US, and a couple of other countries) to find the killer of our parents. Great work on the missions, the places feel really "alive" although we don't have a full fleshed sandbox game at our hands, we don't feel constrained and there is still plenty of room for our own initiative. I don't think you can ghost all the levels, since there are tough moments where you really need to use pistol to help yourself. Sometimes the gun is your best option, and you will learn that sooner or later. You can choke from behind and hide the bodies, electrocute, lean and crawl plus there is always handy night vision googles. Although we play in 3rd person perspective we don't have any sticking to the wall option like in Splinter Cell or disguising per se like in Hitman.
The difficulty is high when you are detected, the 1 vs 1 shooting can easily result in your death. When there are 2 soldiers you can load the game already, you won't manage to survive. We also have the bar in between that indicates how visible we are. The difficulty gradually rises from Hitman 2 beginning level to some better missions in Splinter Cell (the columbian prison mission especially brings many memories). The only letdown is last mission, which turns to be more like an arcade shooter. The maps are really big and you really need to be focused to not let be seen.
The graphics are still decent, they have really good style and each location looks really good. Soundtrack is awesome - when we keep everyone silent it's very subtle, but when someone sees us it changes dramatically. Very stable, no crashes and the plot overall is really good.
The game could be bought for less than 5 euro here, and that is the best money you will ever spend. Shame about the SWG going the dodo way, they had so much potential and could add more in stealth subgenre.
Paging
Alienman as he made separate thread, but it went dead very quick.
Here is one of the tracks from the soundtrack made entirely by Milan Malik.