Review: Splinter Cell Conviction

Sam is angry, that much is certain. He moves now with a predator like pace, an animal let wild onto the streets. His every actions exude both extreme strength and perfect calm. He’s also hurt however – his daughter dead and the actions he performed in Double Agent have left him a shattered man no longer working for Third Echelon. Indeed, Conviction throughout manages to maintain far better emotional responses from Fisher than Double Agent ever did. He looks tired and now acts menacing because there’s no rules attached to him, and no one is going to stop to him.

It’s taken Ubisoft a long time to model out what they wanted to do next with Fisher. Original plans didn’t look promising and were happily scrapped. Bearded bum Fisher was changed to a sleeker more recognisable Sam from the old games, but apart from that everything else has changed. Darkness is still your friend but is no longer constantly available for you to use, with light seemingly everywhere causing you to think less about shooting all the lights out, and more about using tactical cover and movement.

Luckily the cover system is easy to use, with Sam clinging to cover when you need him to, moving when you want him to, and attacking when the time is best. Cover has become your friend, the brick wall or a car now the better alternative than trying to take out all the lights. When you do find darkness, the colours wash out and the world changes to black and white, one of the many design choices Ubisoft has implemented into this very different Splinter Cell game.

Conviction almost feels movie like at times with these design choices. Indeed if the future is gaming becoming more movie like, Conviction may give us a glimmer of that world. The GUI is minimal, and objectives are shot onto the world in bright white text, interacting perfectly with the surroundings. It’s a novel idea and it works very well, saving you the neccessity of having to look at a “watch” interface or a PDA to find out what you’re doing next. White text is not the only thing that can happen though. If Fisher is “thinking” about the past or the future, short movie clips appear in the world as well on different plot moments. Text can flash on and off in the surroundings if Fisher is angry.

And Fisher gets angry. The interrogation scenes of old involved Fisher standing around with a knife with Michael Ironside talking gently into the victims ear about hurting him if he doesn’t tell him the combination for a lock. In Conviction the physical surroundings of the map become Fisher’s tools, as he takes his victim and beats the information out of him to quite a painful looking degree. Every punch, kick and slam of head into wall feels powerful and you can’t help but feel sorry for the guy for being on the wrong side of Sam. Just a little though.

The story has also changed and this time perhaps feels more in line with a Tom Clancy book than prior outings of Splinter Cell, despite Clancy not being involved at all in the development. Though it’s a bit shaky in its plot devices; EMPs, kill the President etc, it trots along well enough to tell Sam’s story more than anything else, and by the end you do feel a certain sense of content closure with the game. Although the single player is at length only about 6 hours long, each hour does feel action packed enough that you don’t mind how short it is.

There are however problems with the single player; little niggles that Ubisoft seemed to have had when developing Conviction. You’ve already probably heard of the Iraq level, and the “If you’re seen it’s game over” scenarios, but the truth is that these aren’t overly bad and don’t cause to much fustration if you tackle it correctly. With the Iraq level it’s simply a case of throwing out the stealth and going in warfare style; it may seem odd for a Splinter Cell game but it works. For the don’t get spotted level there are ways to get around it rather easily. Secret tunnels that stop the problem.

The real problem is the checkpoints, oh the checkpoints. There have been times when I’ve been tempted to give this game a 6/10 for sheer idiocy at how these auto saving features are set up. You can find yourself having to repeat the same dialogue tripe over and over, or having to restart all the way back at the beginning, only to be inches away from the next checkpoint and die again. It’s extremely dire and not properly though out. Indeed it has to be the biggest weakness for me in the single player campaign. The other weakness is the peculiar tendency for weapon stashes to just be lying around. We’re supposed to believe that Sam Fisher is now more Bourne like. More versatile and deadly. Yet, not that long into the game, you’re given a healthy plethora of gadgets, weaponry and other gizmos to help you on your way. It seems flawed somehow – you’re deadly, but we feel the need to give you all these grenades and an EMP pulse backpack. Why?

The co-op is the other side of the coin for Conviction. You get the stealth gear and fancy weaponry and with your friend go into a prequel story with two new agents of Third Echelon trying to recover stolen nukes. Though i’m not usually a fan of co-op play, the game is surprisingly fun and more challenging than the single player story. Joining with a friend and coordinating your attack can result in exciting and brilliant results. Indeed the niggles of the first game seem to dissapear in the co-op as well, perhaps showing Ubisoft had a more clearer plan for this section of the game than the single player.

Conviction feels like a step in the right direction. It stumbles slightly in areas but by the end of it there is a feeling that the future of Fisher has gone in the right direction. Sam both feels deadly but not entirely invincible, and the results of adding more lighting and more cover means the player has to think more tactically about how they want to play. So Conviction is a success, and now we just have to wait to see where Sam Fisher will go next.

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