"The thing you gotta know about Sam Fisher is..."

Time for a formal look at Splinter Cell: Conviction.  Since the game's been out a while, consider this your fair warning to SPOILER ALERTS.   I'm gonna try to use a little bit of a Kotaku style review system.  Little bit of a breakdown about the game and it's elements, a small section of bullets breaking down personal likes and dislikes, followed by a general thumbs up or down.  (If this works well, maybe we'll try to find a unified format for reviews on this site, maybe even create our own that isn't from a much larger more popular gaming forum.

Breakdown:

    In this fifth iteration of the Splinter Cell franchise we find a pretty strong departure from the stealth systems that were found in most all of the previous games.  When the original Splinter Cell came out for the original Xbox, we saw a redefinition of stealth in a way that most games had never seen.  Metal Gear was probably the most realistic that most of us got, but to call Metal Gear is to stealth what Mario is to plumbing.  The series involved stealth, sure, but a majority of Metal Gear's gameplay revolves around tactfully displacing and manipulating the AI.  Whether or not you agree with the claim about Metal Gear, Splinter Cell changed things.  It added shadows and noise and movement to the list of things to worry about.  The rules for sight-lines and AI changed now that we had a light sensor to let us know when were cloaked in the beautiful darkness, and a meter for sound to let us know if we were walking to quickly.

    The system was so revolutionary that it spawned 2 (and a half) sequels that almost followed it to a fault.  Every game added some new stuff along the way, for better or worse, but it all seemed to be formed on the same foundation.  It almost looked for a period of time that Conviction was going to be growing from that tree also... until Ubisoft realized that their gameplay designs were too close to Assassin's Creed and needed to revamp their "homeless sam" idea, a tough financial decision I'm sure, but was probably for the best in the end anyways.  Assassin's Creed's crowd blending technique was unique, and using that as a core element in a competing (both ubisoft, btw!) game couldn't have been a good choice.

    As a result of the lack of discussion amongst Ubisoft as a company, we get a new branch to the Splinter Cell series that looks more like a branch that was grafted in from Jack Bauer's playbook.  Sam's life has been pushed to it's limit, with the loss of friends and coworkers at Third Echelon, the loss of his last tie to sanity, his daughter, Sam is a loose cannon.  He seems to be calm enough and keeping to his own for the most part, until an old acquaintance, Grim, the intel from the previous games, decides to light his fuse with promises about his daughter being alive. 

     Insert the generic government conspiracy story here.  I'm trying not to rail on it too much, because the story wasn't that bad, but it sure wasn't anything that surprised me.  It worked well enough though, giving a context to the super fast gameplay.  Using new techniques like the Mark and Execute functionality, Sam can literally breeze through a room of tangos and not even have a second glance. Although this new gameplay is super fun, it's hard not to think about how different it is from the Splinter Cell's of yesteryear.  More on that later.

Things Liked:

- Mark and Execute - Using this is a must, so it's pretty fortunate that it's really rewarding.  After getting a close range hand-to-hand kill, Sam earns a few quick executions on some targets of his choosing.  This is probably the biggest change to the Splinter Cell formula due to the fact that it basically requires the player to rethink why they're hiding in the shadows.  Older Cell games would reward the player who demonstrated patience, timing, and execution.  Conviction provides the player with immediate gratification rolling these older elements into the simple mark and execute format.  The only real difference is that you only need to be as patience as you need to, not the entire time.

- Co-op Modes - Although cooperative gameplay modes are becoming a standard in most games, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (their 3rd title) really brought something special to the table with their co-op story mode, and the Conviction team definitely showed some respect to their older brother here.  Co-op play has a unique campaign to the main campaign, multiple gameplay modes outside of the story, as well as a vs. mode (have yet to try...).  Although very similar to Sam's gameplay, two player play lets players share their executions with team mates, creating a sort of back and forth feel with the momentum of the gameplay.  It's an incredibly rewarding experience, something I'm glad to see brought back after it's absence in Splinter Cell: Double Agent.

- Environmental Guidance - I don't even know what to call this one, but it was awesome.  Having my goals and objectives built into/onto the environment I was apart of not only have me the information I needed without breaking up the flow of the gameplay, but provided me with some actual directions to help me on my way.  Absolutely brilliant.  (Carried to far in some cases... see below)

- Death and Execution Animations - Although purely stylistic, the death, execution, and interrogation animations are super fun to watch.  The player is given a small degree of control here, using the environment to get the facts they need out of uncooperative baddies.  I would imagine the temptation to make some sort of quick-time event for the interrogation scenes was high, but I think the detail work in the animation draws the player in enough without all that super exciting button-pressing immersion.

Things Not So Liked

- The dialogue - All of it.  Too much. Too heavy. Laid on too strong.  Oh, and everyone really loves to swear.  It's so distracting from the gameplay at times.  It's a clear attempt at trying to thrust the player into a fearful situation that Sam should be in, but the heavy-handedness of it all along with the high use of profanity makes it difficult to take it seriously, and it mostly comes off as juvenile.  "Fisher! You can't f***in' hide, this is an airport!"  ::sigh::

- Who is this? - "The thing you gotta understand about Splinter Cell: conviction was this... Sam Fisher.  He's the main roll. Who am I?  The thing you gotta know about me... is that I'm the one... the guy who's narrating this story... that surrounds Sam... ..." I couldn't wait to finish the campaign so this guy would stop talking.  Everything he said was the last thing he would ever say.  I'm still not entirely sure why he was needed to narrate the story anyway.  It seemed to stand on it's own really well, and this guy always seemed to distract me.  Whatever.

- Environmental Feelings - Although the objective guidance built into the world worked really well, projecting Sam's inner thoughts and feelings felt odd and simple.  Words like Rage, Hate, Revenge, being printed in front of me don't make me any closer to feeling those words, character decisions do.  Also, what tense are these in?  Sometimes the wall writing feels like tips and instructions from on high begin written for the players benefit.  Sometimes it feels like Sam's inner dialogue.  I'm alright with either, but both happening simultaneously was a small, but borderline sloppy choice, I think.

- Sonar Vision - What am I a bat? Give me my night vision goggles back.

- Desaturated Stealth Alerts - In Conviction Sam doesn't have the support or the resources to have a fancy light meter reading suit like he previously did.  To work around this, designers used the color saturation as a means to let the player know when they were hidden.  This gets kinda frustrating because color saturation doesn't really have a "middle ground" the way light brightness does.  It also takes away from the brilliant colors of the game being seen.  I'm supposed to hide, right, if I'm playing the game right?  Then why does my game look better when I'm not playing it right?  (This one is up for debate... maybe messing around with color saturation is cool now.)

Final Thoughts

I'm a little surprised at how easy it was to come up with dislikes and how hard it was to articulate the great things, as I generally liked this game.  I'm still cranking through all the co-op modes and looking forward to doing some achievement hunting with this one.  My guess is that my knowledge and love of previous Splinter Cell titles has really held my mind back, letting me see more that's "wrong" than right, even if these "wrong" things were pretty cool design choices (i.e. color saturation).

I could easily recommend anyone giving Splinter Cell a fair shake.  It's unique enough that it won't feel like white noise amongst the myriad of shooters most of us have filling our shelves.  Older Splinter Cell fans might feel a tad bit alienated by it, but once the game is looked at for what it is, instead of what it isn't, a much better and well-done product is found.  My only other warning would be the length.  The campaign is one of the shorter ones out there, only clocking in between 5 and 6 hours.  The only reason that this didn't make the "dislike" list was because the replay value is pretty high if you enjoy it.  Finding places to climb, routes to take, and ways to work through most levels cooperatively or solo really opens the doors to many possibilities.  I don't think it's gonna feel like any real work to get these achievements since I'm looking to play most of it again anyway.

Drop your thoughts and weigh in on this.  I'm almost more curious to get the opinion of someone who's not played the previous Splinter Cell installments... figure out of some of these dislikes are really issues or maybe just my nostalgic expectations not being met. 

Amateria, out.

::Edit:: I realized after I published this and went to bed that the impression I may have left was negative, due to the high quantity of "cons".  I really enjoyed this game a great deal, and I think if you've got someone to play the cooperative modes with, the replay value and in turn, the enjoyment you get from the game, will ultimately be there.