Splinter Cell: Conviction
Splinter Cell Conviction is a third person shooter by Ubisoft. The game is the fifth in the Splinter Cell series of games. Generally this series of games rely strongly on stealth game play, even though this game does heavily rely on stealth, the stealth mechanics seem to have been diluted in comparison to others in the series.
You play as Sam Fisher a ex third echelon agent who went rogue when his daughter was killed 3 years prior to the games storyline. The game starts in a Maltese market where Sam is contacted by Grim an old friend from third echelon. Sam is told hitmen have located him. After dispatching them and interrogating the leader Sam finds out that a drug lord Dimitri is his daughter’s killer. Going on a revenge mission to kill Dimitri Sam then is told his Daughter is still alive and her kidnapping was some plan of third echelon. Sam now has a new mission against his old boss’s to find his daughter and find and stop his old company’s plans.
Conviction introduces many new gameplay features not yet seen in any other shooters including “Mark and Execute”. This is a feature where you can mark up to five enemies(depending on which gun you have and if they are in range) by highlighting them with the crosshair and pressing the right bumper and Sam will automatically take those enemies out with perfect stealth kills. To get this special skill you need to score a melee takedown. In my opinion this is a very useful skill to have in your arsenal. Although this can make the game a little easy as my tactic seemed to end up taking someone out, marking the rest of the enemies and pressing y to take them out. This tactic made the game a little repetitive and at times boring. There is also last known position, when an enemy catches sight of you and is alerted, a silver silhouette will appear around where that guard thinks you are allowing you to flank that position ready to take out enemies who attack your last known position. This is very useful and exceptionally fun to play around with. There are many different weapons in the game each can be upgraded 3 times. To upgrade a weapon you need points. You can gain points by doing many things i.e. stylish kills, stealth kills and so on. Although there are a large amount of weapons it seems that the stock pistol is all you really need for the whole game and the best tactic seemed to be lining up headshots from cover with the silenced pistol. Another new element for this game which seems a very smart and immersive idea is projecting major plot points on the wall, be that your next objective or Sam’s thoughts in the form of videos, this keeps you immersed in the game instead of playing cut scenes or making you press back and go into a menu to see where you have to go next. There are also new competitive and cooperative multiplayer game modes in conviction. The co-op modes seemed to stand out more for me, you play as either Voron or Kestrel, 2 third echelon agents and use the games stealth tactics in either there own side story and many other game modes. My personal favourite is hunter where you work together to eliminate all the enemies in a certain area and when all are eliminated you move n to the next area but if you alert and enemy to your presence an extra 10 will rush you. The aim is too work together and keep quiet to pass the levels. Mark and execute also changes slightly in the multiplayer because one person can mark 4 targets and the other is able t execute all 4 kills or some of those with his team mate.
The game looks great, it runs on LEAD (a modified version of The Unreal 2.5 engine), still not the best looking game I have seen on the Xbox 360. I love how when you hide in the shadows the visuals go black and white to let you know you are hidden.
Splinter Cell Conviction is one of the best third person shooters I have played on the Xbox 360. The mark and execute skill is extremely useful and I can see many games using it in the future. Although for all its good points Conviction does have a few minor problems, I found that sometimes it can be hard to connect to other players online and the game is pretty easy in its entirety. The games is also very short lasting about 8hrs from start to finish in the single player, the multiplayer modes more than make up for a short story and breath allot more life into the game once you have breezed through its story. Splinter Cell conviction is truly a great game and in my opinion a big contender for this years game of the year. Thumbs up.