I think if I played this when I was a kid I would have joined the military

edit: okay so I've replayed this a few times and even though I will admit that some of these missions are kind of rough around the edges (Battery is bad and there's specifically 1 room in bathhouse that can go to hell) I'm kind of blown away by how genuinely phenomenal this feels to play. Fisher controls like butter, and using the scroll wheel to control your walk speed works beautifully. You have such a tight control over your speed and movement, and every other interaction (taking out your gun, switching attachments, tapping phones, picking locks) feels as if it happens fast enough that the player can maintain a high tempo through each level, but takes just long enough that when the enemy is searching for you things become incredibly tense. This is complemented by the fucking phenomenal score. This is what makes the game to me- I'm pretty sure Penthouse is my favorite level entirely because of the song that plays in it. Chaos Theory's soundtrack conveys a ton of tension and momentum, and does an incredible job of encouraging you to do quick thinking to evade guards and de-escalate even as things get louder and more frantic. I get that stealth games as a whole tend to usually have some form of reactive music, but the composition and tone conveyed by Amon Tobin's work here is just so perfectly in tune with how the game looks, feels and plays. Wish there were more good crazy-budget stealth games