Let me say that Splinter Cell conviction is a great game, but screw this game dude. Its full of amazing mechanics and not so great mechanics. A lot of the the game will involve you throwing your controller across the room because that one last guy happened to see you as you were shooting him. While you play the 'Deniable ops' part of the game (were I got 60% of my fun) you play as Archer and Kestrel, American and Russian Splinter cells. These two guys are amazing, especially when you get to play with a friend and they are the other agent because whenever you mess up you get to blame the death on them.
Sam Fisher lost his daughter a few years ago to a murder, that explains why he is on a murderous rampage to find out who/what killed her. I'm going to say it now, I didn't play any other Splinter Cell games... You can hang me if you must, but that doesn't take away from the story in this game, it's intense, everything about it is fast paced and in almost every mission there was a integration sene. These things are the bomb, you get to slam people's heads into fridges, holdem' into a paper shredder or just stab a knife through their hand when they don't cooperate.
In the first level you're chillin' in a outdoor restaurant when you get a call from your old friend grim. She tells you that she's been watching you blah blah blah, and that she wants you back in the game. She tells you that there are bad guys coming and you must get out of there, that's all fine and dandy until you get a flashback of your daughter. The game uses the flash backs as a way to teach you the mechanics of the game without actually teaching them to you. It sounds like a really good idea but in practice it's not, the cutscenes are unskippable so when you replay the game you're stuck in like 5mins of cut scenes. The cut scenes are flashbacks of when Sam's daughter was little and he's trying to get her to sleep with the light off, until some assholes come and break into there house and Fisher commences badass mode and kills em'.
This ''badass mode'' is new to the Splinter Cell franchise and it's called 'mark and execute'. This mechanic is really well done, different pistols have different amounts of marks up to four at a time. If you're a purist and don't want to play the game using mark and execute you can, it'll be difficult on the higher settings, but it's doable. You also have gadgets and secondary weapons like the other games, I can't comment on how they are done in relation because I haven't played the others.
This game plays amazingly, especially when you get good - you can jump around and everything feels like you caused it. One second you are marking people and the next you are jumping off a ledge on to someone and killing all the people you just marked. The animation isn't that great and sometimes it doesn't match up as much as it should, not a big deal but you'll notice it.
This game is a looker - the textures are good for the most part, and Sam looks like Sam so what else really matters right? When you are in the shadows the game turns black and white so that not only you can see better but so that you also realise you are hidden, this comes in useful later because it makes it really easy to tell if you are hidden or not. Did I mention that the Ai in this game is decent at best, sometimes they'll get alerted to your presence when there is no way they should have. Some other times they are obviously looking at you and either don't care or there just coded bad, either way it's a little weird.
For all the flack this game received from the media and reviews of people, it turned out awesome. Maybe that's just my young not educated mind talking about I think this game is really good and deserving more then it got from everyone. Go buy it if you can, the games cheep or at least should be now a days. Be wary of the PC version - it has uplay DRM and on top of that no one plays multiplayer.